ASP.NET Web Matrix
From Free net encyclopedia
ASP.Net Web Matrix is a free tool released by Microsoft for the rapid development of web applications (also known as Weblications) running on servers which support ASP.NET. It is a managed application written in C#.
Overview
Web Matrix grew out of a pet project started by Nikhil Kothari. Since its initial release, a lot of the concepts first seen in this tool have been incorporated into the mainline development tool, Visual Studio, and the new web-focused version called Visual Studio Web Developer. The concepts that first appeared in the ASP.NET Web Matrix that are now available in the Visual Studio product line include:
- Rendering of User Controls in the WYSIWYG Designer. (Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003 shows User Controls in the Designer as gray boxes. With Visual Studio 2005, User Controls are rendered in the Design view.)
- FTP support. (To work with remote websites, Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003 only provide FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE) support. Visual Studio 2005 offers FTP support in addition to FPSE.)
- The move away from web project files. (ASP.NET Web Matrix allows page developers to edit one ASP.NET page at a time, whereas Visual Studio .NET 2002/2003 requires that developers work in terms of projects. A project is composed of a number of files, defined in an XML-formatted .vbproj or .csproj file. Visual Studio 2005 moves away from web project files for a variety of reasons. See Scott Guthrie's blog entry VS 2005 Web Project System: What is it and why did we do it? for more information.)
While ASP.NET Web Matrix provided a number of firsts and innovations that made their way into the Visual Studio product line, it lacked vital features required by professional web developers, such as IntelliSense, integration with the debugger, and support for the code-behind model.