http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/

...and what about the prototyping/scaffolding features in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Dynamic Data?

What problem does WebMatrix solve, exactly? And why aren't its features available in VWD/VS?

The problem it solves is, people can easily start developing PHP/Rails website using pre-packaged LAMP server, and notepad/vi, while most of newcomers think they need the huge and expensive VS monster to start developing ASP.NET, even VWD express is a gigabytes download, plus a Windows Server to install IIS, so most of them start with the easy one, MS want to attract web startups to use ASP.NET or at least, MS tools, then lure them into the MS ecosystem.

2 hours ago, felix9 wrote

@W3bbo: it fis in the entry-level / low-end, think 'express express express editon', or Wordpad vs Word, its easy simple and lightweight, with some more feature for easier development like 'packages'.

The problem it solves is, people can easily start developing PHP/Rails website using pre-packaged LAMP server, and notepad/vi, while most of newcomers think they need the huge and expensive VS monster to start developing ASP.NET, even VWD express is a gigabytes download, plus a Windows Server to install IIS, so most of them start with the easy one, MS want to attract web startups to use ASP.NET or at least, MS tools, then lure them into the MS ecosystem.

Right. But at risk of being labelled an intellectual snob, why are we, as professional developers, interested?

Now IIS Express (also released today), that's something that's interesting to me.

40 minutes ago, Sven Groot wrote

I don't think professional devs with existing experience in ASP.NET are really the target of WebMatrix.

Now IIS Express (also released today), that's something that's interesting to me.

 

I installed IIS Express Beta on my Windows 7 Professional laptop a while ago, but it just ended up confusing me. I don't know how IIS is hosted, where it exists, how it runs, and how it interacts with the 'real' instance of IIS on my computer; things like shared configuration and whatnot.

For now, I think I'll stick with the IIS and SQL Server running within a VM combined with Remote Debugging.

22 minutes ago, W3bbo wrote

*snip*

I installed IIS Express Beta on my Windows 7 Professional laptop a while ago, but it just ended up confusing me. I don't know how IIS is hosted, where it exists, how it runs, and how it interacts with the 'real' instance of IIS on my computer; things like shared configuration and whatnot.
 

It's completely separate from the real instance of IIS, and until VS2010 SP1 adds support for it, I believe it must be launched from the command line and the debugger manually attached.

I am using Razor syntax and WebMatrix for awhile now, it is easier to code. And it has many helper classes that I find it useful. Still most of my stuff is in C# app_code, so, it is not like I did much with web part of the work.

10 hours ago, W3bbo wrote

*snip*

Right. But at risk of being labelled an intellectual snob, why are we, as professional developers, interested?

It is very worth while knowing what tools are avaiable.  Say for example one of your support tech needs to do something simple like query a database and write a list of outstanding calls to a web page, what you going to suggest?  Add it to our backlog, we'll get to it in two years.  Here's a copy of VS2010, good luck.  Or here is a simple tool, you can install in 5 that will pretty much guide you through the process and has a lot of template examples?

Just because your not going to use it, doesn't me you shouldn't know what exists.  Same goes for Lightswitch.

I am working on a WPF application, but the graphs are winforms because they are blazing fast. As yet there are no high performance WPF charts (apart from D3 which has stopped development). In fact in all but 1 WPF application I have worked on they have all been WPF/Winforms hybrids. Sometimes a better control is just that...better.

But, I don't get it. If there's no razor syntax or other .NET goodness when using PHP engines, why would one use WebMatrix for Wordpress and Drupal and such?

Also, Webmatrix is a pretty good editor itself. I've used notepad++ or editplus for most of my php development. And I think the WebMatrix editor feels more modern to code in.

Herbie

EDIT: just tested it. It does not have intellisence for php but does recognize the function names. It collors mysql_query and does not mysql_bla so that is nice. Intellisense must be bit harder than making a file summerizing all function.

Hebrie

I would say learn RAZOR first in Webmatrix and than and MVC3.

Herbie

28 minutes ago, Dr Herbie wrote

@CKurt: Thanks for that -- I keep meaning to learn PHP, but I want a good editor before I start making the time investment (as a good editor with intellisense would speed up my learning curve).

Hebrie

I use VS.php, it's a third-party add-in for VS (2005, 2008, and 2010) that supports PHP. For the most part it's good, but there are a few things which it does that aren't entirely consistent with VS (the intellisense window has slightly different behaviour, for example). Debugging's great though... if you can get it to work.

9 hours ago, Dr Herbie wrote

@CKurt: Thanks for that -- I keep meaning to learn PHP, but I want a good editor before I start making the time investment (as a good editor with intellisense would speed up my learning curve).

Hebrie

They compare a bunch of PHP IDEs here:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-php-ide/index.html

10 hours ago, CKurt wrote

@Bas: Because some of those Wordpress or Drupal stuff are hard to install (for novice users) and Webmatrix takes care of that and dependencies.

Also, Webmatrix is a pretty good editor itself. I've used notepad++ or editplus for most of my php development. And I think the WebMatrix editor feels more modern to code in.

I noticed though, WebMatrix did not install MySQL for me. Perhaps because it detected that I already had MySQL installed? Nevertheless, I had to go into services to run own MySQL manually, which is probably something a novice user wouldn't think of doing.

5 hours ago, Bass wrote

*snip*

I noticed though, WebMatrix did not install MySQL for me. Perhaps because it detected that I already had MySQL installed? Nevertheless, I had to go into services to run own MySQL manually, which is probably something a novice user wouldn't think of doing.

Hummm.... MySQL is not a MS product and WebMatrix is a MS product.

11 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

*snip*

Hummm.... MySQL is not a MS product and WebMatrix is a MS product.

Very observant.

5 hours ago, Bas wrote

@Bass: that's weird. You're right, with all the "figuring out what you need and making sure you have it" stuff going on it might as wel start the service too. Did you report this on Connect?

I did not see any way to submit a bug report on that website.

All, if you have any questions about ASP.NET Web Pages or Razor (or even WebMatrix), let me know.  I'm the PM for Web Pages and Razor.  Happy to answer Niners. 

I've been using Web Matrix for a pro bono project and for this kind of small web site that needs a little bit of dynamics it's very well suited. It's extremely fast to get a data-driven site up and running with beautiful razor syntax and layout templates.

The biggest downside I've seen so far is the very primitive database support; there are arbitrary restrictions that make the GUI management of the database schema very prohibitive and counter-productive. Simple things like renaming columns and deleting colums with relations or adding columns with non-nullability is often not possible.

The second downside is the lack of Intellisense.

But apart from that it's a very nice productive tool for light-weight tasks. It's taken a few hours to setup an existing site with a layout template and a few more hours to get a basic database schema and order management system going. So 1-2 days worth of work is not bad for a dynamic website I think. A weekend's worth of work and it's done.

The DB schema admin. is very annoyingly restrictive though. T-SQL is more useful here.

2 hours ago,exoteric wrote

The biggest downside I've seen so far is the very primitive database support; there are arbitrary restrictions that make the GUI management of the database schema very prohibitive and counter-productive. Simple things like renaming columns and deleting colums with relations or adding columns with non-nullability is often not possible.

There's a Visual Studio extension called SQL Server Compact Toolbox. This extension allows you to connect to SQL Server Compact 3.5 or 4.0 database files from VS2010. You can generate and run CREATE and DROP scripts as well as run SELECT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements. AFAIK, there is no visual table designer. You'd still have to use the one in WebMatrix, but if you wanted generate the entire schema from a script, you can run the script through the SSCT in Visual Studio instead of having to design the tables manually with the WebMatrix table designer.

thanks, I am also looking for something like that. It is hard to know what word to search until now.

The Tools for SSC 4.0  can be installed from the Web Platform Installer.

The SSC Toolbox can be installed from the Extension Manager in VS.

thanks. I am currently using the stand alone version. Strangely I cannot add more columns. But, since I can run the query scripts, I guess I can do it by hand using modified scripts.

Actually VS: Pro works quite well too, but, this toolbox has the Script generator, which is what I need during my table designs. I like to move the columns around before finalizing ti.