Product Reviews

Microsoft's free Visual Studio 2005 is an attempt to encourage hobbyists and even professional non-enterprise developers to adopt the .NET Framework 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0 and related technologies. There are no licensing restrictions (you can use them for commercial purposes) and they are free for a year. Visual Studio Express 2005 comes in a range of versions, which is split into three categories: Windows development, database development and web development.

There are four editions for Windows developers and all are based on a different .NET language: Visual Basic, C#, C++ and J#. First-time .NET developers may be more comfortable with the Visual Basic version as syntactically it's similar in style to previous versions of Visual Basic.

Then there is the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition for database development, which is a powerful and easy-to-use database that complements each Express edition. It offers a substantial range of features that are available in the full SQL Server 2005, along with a few limitations that constrain the size of the databases you can build with it.

For web developers there is Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition, which we'll focus on in this review. This is an extremely powerful development environment that allows hobbyists to create professional-looking and slickly written websites and web services easily in Visual Basic .NET or C#.

A clear sign that Microsoft is aiming the Express version of Visual Web Developer 2005 at the enthusiast is the fact that you don't need Windows' own web server, Internet Information Services (IIS). It isn't even included in Windows XP Home Edition. To allow for this, Visual Web Developer ships with its own built-in development web server, which allows pages in your web application to be browsed and debugged from the local computer, although not from remote computers. When you're ready to go live with your creation, you'll need an ASP.NET service provider to host it for you.

There's a lot to take in, particularly if you've never programmed before, so Microsoft has included some sample applications, called Starter Kits, and ASP.NET QuickStarts. Starter Kits are websites that are ready to run, which you can tailor to your personal requirements. One example is the Personal Web Site Starter Kit, which provides a typical personal site including a photo album system and static pages for your CV or links to other sites. If nothing else, they let you see the elements that make

ADVERTISEMENT

up a website and how they fit together. The ASP.NET QuickStarts are a series of ASP.NET samples so you can get used to the syntax and architecture. They can be selected and saved on your hard disk during installation, or you can access them online later.

If you're not an HTML expert, the Integrated Development Environment has several features to help you design sites visually. First, there's the visual design interface, which allows you to design your web pages as you would a page in a word-processing document. All the common formatting controls such as font selection and size, bullets, numbering, text aligning and more are available. You can also use the rich array of controls provided in the Toolbox to add HTML elements such as tables and hyperlinks, as well as more complex controls such as login, validation and data controls. The designer automatically generates the HTML for you behind the scenes, which you can see at any time by switching to Source mode. While you may still prefer to use other, more dedicated commercial web page layout tools such as Dreamweaver, these will not help you integrate Server Controls (such as the Login control) easily into your web pages in the way Visual Web Developer 2005 Express is designed to do.

There are a couple of new features to help you achieve a consistent look and feel for your website. The Table Designer makes it easier to design web page layouts by using pre-designed templates to achieve a consistent page style. You can also create a Master Page, which defines the look, feel and behaviour for all the pages in your website or just a group. When you create a new page, you simply tell it to inherit the Master Page's style.

To make your website truly dynamic, you will need a data source. SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is available as a separate, free download and ships with its own wizard for creating new databases. However, for convenience you may prefer to use the database creation and management wizards that are available directly in Visual Web Developer 2005 Express. These provide a time-saving interface for designing SQL Server 2005 Express databases, and allow you to connect to your data from your web application by drag-and-drop instead of having to write code or open a separate instance of SQL Server.

If you prefer, you can connect your web applications to any data source, such as MySQL, provided you include the correct Connector in your application library. In the case of MySQL you could use the MySQL ODBC Connector or the MySQL .NET Connector.

Although Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition doesn't offer the full power of Enterprise Architect, it is packed with all the features the enthusiast needs to create exciting and dynamic websites. It's still a fairly complex tool to use, though. If you're new to programming, there's a lot to learn, so we recommend reading a book on the subject. You can find a feature on how to program with Visual Studio on page 142. There's little else against it and it's brilliant for anyone who wants to develop web applications.