Visual Studio Express Team WebLog

This blog is maintained by the Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions Team here at Microsoft. We hope to use this as a means of communication between ourselves and the coolest group of developers ever (VS Express users)! So please, jump right in and comment on a posting today.

Introducing Microsoft's latest web development tool...

Hello, I’m Omar Khan, the lead program manager on the Visual Web Developer team.  Myself, and the entire Visual Web Developer team are super excited to introduce the latest web development offering from Microsoft  -- Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.

 

Visual Web Developer provides developer enthusiasts with a compelling feature set to build fun and exciting web applications.  From the web development focused IDE, rich designers, to the built-in starter kits, we’ve designed Visual Web Developer to be the most productive environment for quickly building ASP.NET web applications.  We hope you share the same feelings after giving it a spin!

 

As this is a Beta release, we are also very interesting in hearing your feedback and comments to help us build the best product possible.  Two really good places to give feedback on the product are listed below.

 

MSDN product feedback center:

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/

 

Visual Web Developer Express Forum:

http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowForum.aspx?tabindex=1&ForumID=175

 

I’m very much looking forward to hearing your comments.

 

Cheers,

 

Omar Khan

Lead Program Manager

Web Platform and Tools Team

Published Tuesday, June 29, 2004 2:21 PM by VSExpress

Comments

 

zwetan said:

when navigating here
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/

I cna not help but say:
where is Visual JScript express ?

ECMAscript is standard, supported by the .NET framework, tons of people use it everyday but there is not a single microsoft IDE tool supporting it.
ok, why ?

just curious, why something as VB.NET or J# made it to the visual express new set of tools, but why not JScript.NET ???
June 29, 2004 3:01 PM
 

David said:

I don't really understand the packaging. C#, VB and Web development don't really seem to be MECE (mutually exculsive and all the other McK jargon ;). I would much prefer if I had the asp.net abilities in my C# Express edition, instead of having an extra edition for that...
June 29, 2004 4:48 PM
 

Lars Olofsson said:

Santa is early this year. I'm so exited about trying out this new stuff that I'm having trouble sitting down!

/Lars.
June 29, 2004 6:07 PM
 

Prashant Sridharan said:

Far be it from me to contradict anything McKinsey says!

Regardless, remember the purpose of the Express products is not to give away tools at low cost. The purpose is to build single scenario products that are super targeted at the "low-end" (not to be perjorative) audiences.

In the case of all of these products, the goal is to strictly limit the ways in which a hobbyist, enthusiast, or student could get lost in the product. One of the guiding principles we laid out early is that the "File->New" experience had to be as streamlined as possible. Were we to introduce a choice there, we were afraid that we would confuse the end user target for these products (read: people who are either afraid of programming or people who have never programmed before).

Above all, keep in mind that the end goal of these products is not to litter the world with low cost developer tools. The purpose is to excite the non-programmer into customizing their Windows experience.

On that front, there are a number of things we must do to be successful:

1. Deliver these Express products with super high quality and with a strong, strong focus on a streamlined user experience.

2. Excite the professional developer community into delivering fun content for this new segment. The Summer of Express contest is a good start there, but we want you (the community) to take this over and do more. I would love to hear your thoughts on how we do this.

3. Build strong content partnerships with third-parties. Programming in and of itself is a goal for a very small segment of the population. I want to draw in those people AS WELL AS the folks who never thought they wanted to program. We can do this by doing innovative partnerships with content partners. We announced this week such partnerships with Amazon, eBay, and PayPal. Expect LOTS MORE as we get closer to shipping.

4. Build a strong tutorial and learning ecosystem around the product. Recently, to put myself in the frame of mind of a novice, I started learning Photoshop. I am by no means a Photoshop jock, yet, but I am having a ton of fun (so much fun that I upgraded to the entire Adobe Creative Suite). The thing that really helped me were the numerous online tutorials, books (the Kelby book is amazing, by the way), and video tutorials. I want to duplicate that phenomenon with Express. Wiley, Sams, and O'Reilly announced this week their intent to help us with not only books but online content as well. Remember, the hobbyist isn't going to spend $500 to go to a class. But, like me with Photoshop, they may be $10 for an online video tutorial.

5. Generate an organic ecosystem for hobbyists where they help each other learn and build off one another's skills. This is our biggest challenge because in many ways we can't start it from Microsoft...the community of hobbyists needs to do it themselves. We need to prod it along, without seeming like overbearing parents.

Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts. :-)
June 29, 2004 11:52 PM
 

Swede said:

The C# express installer fails and crashes instantly when trying to download the .NET framework 2.0 beta before starting the C# express installation. I've restarted it numerous times with no better results. Could it have something to do with the fact that I'm running a Swedish XP, and that it's trying to download a localized .NET framework that doesn't yet exist?
June 30, 2004 3:58 AM
 

Gheorghe Marius said:

"The C# express installer fails and crashes instantly when trying to download the .NET framework 2.0 beta before starting the C# express installation. I've restarted it numerous times with no better results. Could it have something to do with the fact that I'm running a Swedish XP, and that it's trying to download a localized .NET framework that doesn't yet exist? "


The same happens to me :(. It seems is somehow related to BITS. Why the heck MS doesn't provide a downloadable version ?!!!!!!!



June 30, 2004 4:26 AM
 

Vaibhav Kamath said:

When I add a data source in C# Express (without installing SQL Server Express) I get 3 options one is a mdf file (the other two are I think XML and object). I have SQL Server installed on my machine, how do I access tables from existing SQL Server?
June 30, 2004 7:28 AM
 

Omar Khan said:

The VB, C#, and J# Express SKUs only support creating applications with local database files - in other words Access and SQL Server Express only.
June 30, 2004 9:27 AM
 

TDavid said:

I like the concept of these Express versions, but I haven't had a good time trying to get the programs installed :(

I was able to successfully install Visual Basic Express on a machine that didn't have any previous version of Visual Studio, but I have not yet been successful to date installing VB Express on a machine that has a working version of Visual Studio (Professional) 2003 installed. I have submitted a bug report and emailed logs to the proper party. Another user responded that he got it installed to co-exist with Visual Studio Enterprise edition.

Could be just an isolated circumstance, but for something "express" it is not expressly easy to get up and running if it won't even install. Current Visual Studio users who don't have a spare machine it's download beware ...

It is beta though, so this has to be taken into account.
June 30, 2004 11:05 AM
 

Kannan said:

I understand the motive behind creating these different product suits, but IMO it would be very useful what are the limitations and possibilities of these tools when compared to the full fledged,I'm sure those will follow eventually but even at this early stage it makes sense to have them over the web somewhere.
July 1, 2004 10:17 AM
 

David said:

But surely right now the user has to make a choice whenever he clicks File->New as well: In C# whether he wants to start console, window or class library project and with Web Developer even two choices: language and project type. So, quite frankly, if you wanted to not confuse user when starting a new project with choices, that was surely not accomplished :) And at the same time you just "pushed" the decision to an even earlier point, when the user (when in doubt) has even less knowledge, namely when he has to decide what version to download.

I agree on the other hand that the way you pick between web projects and other project types in the 2005 Professional versions is a bit weird. Why do you have to make that choice in the menu, and then pick the exact project type in the modal dialog that comes afterwards? Why not have only one decision point in the modal dialog box? I think that is an extremly easy and streamlined way to do things and wouldn't confuse anybody.
July 2, 2004 8:32 AM
 

David said:

By the way: Might the real reason just be that there are two groups within Microsoft responsible for the C# and the Web Development part of Visual Studio, and each wants its own Express SKU out? That wouldn't be the best way to analyse a market ;)
July 2, 2004 8:37 AM
 

David said:

Sorry to spam your blog, but the more I think about the seperation, the more reasons I find why it doesn't make sense. Here is another one:

The Web Edition has the ability to create web services. Now, these are normally consumed by something, probably most often by some winform client. Now, with two seperate products for this you completely break the integrated experience: Debugging will be clumsy, because I will have to open each IDE seperately etc. What is the point of offering web services in Web Development, when you then break the development experience for that sort of scenario?
July 2, 2004 9:17 AM
 

Don Newman said:

David, I think what you are missing is that these are a new line of product targeted towards hobbyists and students at a low cost.
I don't think this means that it is replacing the standard editions (vb.net standard, etc). which will be a little more costly, but hopefully an upgrade path will also be provided.

For me at work I use VS Pro but I only code in one language. I went for the next product up because of the extra features. The same will go for the 2005 version once launched.

So, for yourself who may be working on a solution involving web services, a client app, and maybe even a web app you would likely go the next step up for C# Standard which includes those abilities.

Think of the Express line as more of a taster to entice you to buy a bigger product. We still have a year before these tools are launched which should give plenty of time for people to figure out how to best use the product.
July 2, 2004 10:24 AM
 

Omar Khan said:

Don you are exactly right. The Express SKUs have a very specific audience and scenarios that each one targets. They are all about adoption and enabling enthusiasts to build .NET applications. It wasn't a goal with these tools to provide an all-inclusive feature.

The full Visual Studio 2005 product continues to remain the product that existing pro developers would use and it has a much more integrated and richer feature set.
July 3, 2004 8:28 AM
 

Daniel Allen said:

Will one-click deployment eventually be in the Express versions?
July 3, 2004 10:59 AM
 

Amitav Kanungo said:

yahaaa ,,,,,,,,,,,

This will be great achievement from microsoft
end......
but I have some doubt about it ......
wheather It is superior than C# & Java Visual script or not? If it is superior then tell me whether it is portability in nature or not ?

Thanks,
Amitav
July 7, 2004 9:54 PM
 

Pradeep Kumar said:

How can I debug a Webservice using the visual web developer express? If i start debugging it says a debugger is already attached and cannot start in debug mode. samething happened when I opened the IDE and tried to attach to the ASPnet worker process.

I have actually created a webservice in visual web developer express and need to consume it in .NET 1.1(VS .NET 2003), another issue I faced I was not able to add a web reference from VS.NET 2003 to web services created with express products(has the WSDL that is being generated by express changed its format?). Please help
August 3, 2004 3:58 AM
 

Omar Khan (VS) said:

Pradeep - can you provide more information on how you built the webservice? Is it on a filesystem website, or on Local IIS?
August 3, 2004 10:26 AM
 

music said:

August 5, 2004 4:53 AM
 

Visual Studio Express Team WebLog Introducing Microsoft s latest web | Uniform Stores said:

June 1, 2009 8:44 AM
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