With the Visual Studio 2008 product line being released I wanted to check out the new improvements I have heard so much about from Microsoft. Visual Studio is a software development platform for Windows-based as well as Web-based applications. While the Visual Studio product encompasses features for both it costs between $300 and $800 depending on the version and where you buy it.
In this era of Open Source, free is always an attractive alternative to expensive products, ex. OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office. With the growing pressure on Microsoft’s Windows platform from Linux and Apple’s revitalized OS X, one of Microsoft’s strategies is to continue to have the vast majority of applications available for Windows. Ever notice there is no Microsoft Office for Linux? The easiest way to accomplish this is to have the majority of developers writing programs for your platform. Developers require some sort of environment to write these programs in. Enter Visual Studio. Many believe Visual Studio to be the best environment for developing applications, which is how Microsoft wants it. This makes developing Windows applications convenient and preferable. To help push Visual Studio Microsoft has wisely released various free Express versions.
Visual Studio Express Editions come in flavors for Visual Basic, C++, C#, as well as Web Developer, so you can use your language of choice. The main issue is that each product cannot do what the other does. For example, you can not use the C++ edition to create a Web site and Web Developer cannot write a Visual Basic program. Aside from some other things we won’t get into here the Express Editions are pretty full featured. Microsoft must really be feeling pressure to give away such quality products for free.
Needless to say I was excited to try them out and save my wallet from the pain of buying more software. After downloading and installing the Visual Web Developer Edition (VWD) and using it on AspIr’s main website I was both pleased and dismayed.
The product is fully featured and handles a lot of the tasks a web developer would need. For example, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) support has been vastly improved and database connectivity is easy to implement. When typing code IntelliSense brings up a list of what you might be typing as you type which can help make coding faster and also helps if you can’t exactly remember a tag’s syntax. For “Web 2.0″ capabilities JavaScript support has also been improved. Combining with the JavaScript support AJAX extensions have been added to allow for using AJAX controls. AJAX can, among other things, allow pages to be partially refreshed and provide for numerous visual elements. A lot of Web 2.0 concepts are AJAX based.
It is a very capable and powerful program to be sure. Having used Macromedia’s DreamWeaver for years I have been customized to these necessary features, which Microsoft’s weak FrontPage did not have. Therefore, Macromedia (now owned by Adobe) has enjoyed the lion’s share of web developers. Well, they have some real competition now. Especially at the Free price range, it is hard not to at least try out this program.
Overall, Web Developer 2008 Express Edition is easy to use and familiarize yourself with. The design is well laid out and intuitive with features being easy to find. I effortlessly connected to our Web server and was able to edit the site files live, of course this is not recommended in a production environment. Changing the style sheets to modify fonts and colors was easy to do and changes were immediately visible. Paragraph formatting and editing was as easy as using Word. Modifying the source code directly was necessary at times to get exactly what I wanted, which is not optimal, but probably expected.
A positive experience was muddled by a couple of annoying issues though. Running Visual Web Developer on Windows Vista it is difficult to know with certainty what caused the problem of the program periodically not responding. Being in the middle of an edit and having the program turn light grey with the hourglass spinning and (Not Responding) in the title bar is frustrating to say the least. This happened a number of times, but the program always came back except once when I had to end the task. Fortunately, I save my work frequently so loss was minimal.
One issue of real concern was that the program corrupted the page’s code a number of times and completely changed the page layout in seemingly random ways. Column information suddenly appeared on the opposite side or even top of the page, footers disappeared, and cells expanded. I only noticed these problems when I viewed the pages via a web browser. In the design window the pages looked fine and I could not get it to correct the problems. Only after examining the underlying code directly was I able to identify and correct them.
This alone would make me leery of using VWD on a project with a tight timeline. Issues like that not only waste time, but they reduce confidence and break focus.
If you are looking for a good, not to mention free, product for developing web pages, this one is definitely worth a try.
Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition can be downloaded from Microsoft at: http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/
As with all of the other Micro$oft products now, there is a plethora of versions available for VS ‘08. They act like a pusher where the first taste is free; but when you want more, you have to pay. VS is a great environment though. It is amazing what tools programmers have nowadays and Micro$oft certainly keeps pushing development. I will try to have a review of the full VS edition in the near future.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article First take on Micorosft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.