Small.. simple.. and seamless.  Those have been the primary messages since WebMatrix was announced back in July, and after six months and three beta releases, WebMatrix goes live today!  The launch event – Enter the WebMatrix - will be streamed from CodeMash at 12:30 ET beginning with an hour-long keynote and followed by three hours of live sessions and short deep-dive demo videos!

WebMatrix is a perfect name for this development tool – a suite actually – since it incorporates multiple technologies – all FREE – into a integrated whole.  I touched on WebMatrix back in September in conjunction with Windows Azure DataMarket and PHP, but as a quick review here’s what WebMatrix comprises:

• an IDE – supporting the new ASP.NET Web Pages framework with Razor syntax as well as PHP,
• IIS Express – a lightweight web server; that’s lightweight in terms of installation profile and no requirement for administrative access, but with a full web server feature set (URL rewrite, SSL, IIS 7 modules, etc.)
• SQL Sever Compact Edition – a free, embedded, file-based database engine (that’s right, no server installation required!)
• Web Gallery integration – the Microsoft Web App Gallery hosts a slew of Open Source offerings: CMSes like WordPress and Drupal; blog platforms like Subtext and BlogEngine .NET; photo galleries like Mayando and Gallery, and more.  All of these can be easily subsumed, configured, extended, and published to a hosting provider without leaving the WebMatrix IDE!

Be sure to tune in today at 12:30 and learn more about the quickest way to the web!