Getting Started with ASP.NET Web Matrix

ASP.NET Web Matrix is a development tool by Microsoft to create sophisticated web applications. Visual Studio.Net, another development tool, has lots of features such as creating windows applications, web services, and mobile application. But these very features of Visual Studio.Net make it bigger in size. Moreover, installing Visual Studio.Net needs 512MB of RAM. This, in contrast, ASP.NET Web Matrix is meant only to create ASP.NET web applications. Moreover, ASP.NET Web Matrix is “lightweight” and can be easily downloadable. The download size of ASP.NET Web Matrix is only 1.1 MB.

In ASP.NET Web Matrix you do not need to install Internet Information Server (IIS). It comes with built-in web server. ASP.NET Web Matrix can be divided into three components such as Class Browser, Web Matrix Editor, and Web Server. The Class Browser displays all the classes in the Base Class Library with their methods, properties and events. The Web Matrix Editor is the visual interface where you can drag and drop controls to build web applications. The Web Server is used to test and run your web applications.

ASP.NET Web Matrix allows you to add online components to your web applications. The biggest disadvantage of ASP.NET Web Matrix is the absence of IntelliSense, which makes writing the code a little tough. ASP.NET Web Matrix, like Visual Studio.Net, supports multiple languages such as VB, C#, and J#. ASP.NET Web Matrix also supports both FTP-based and file-based workspaces. Workspaces are saved across sessions for allowing you to quickly work on your application. This allows developers to easily organize and edit their ASP.NET applications. They just have to double-click the file within the workspace tree to open it for editing.

ASP.NET Web Matrix provides a built-in access to the ASP.NET community right from within its IDE. This allows you to browse through community web sites and search the ASP.NET Forums and Newsgroups, in case you need help. ASP.NET Web Matrix Project allows you to easily develop ASP.NET database applications because it has built-in support for Microsoft SQL Server and MSDE.