Introducing WebMatrix Beta

Over the last year or so I have had the opportunity to help develop and shape a brand new framework that is, as of today, in its first ever public beta. I’d like to introduce you all to WebMatrix! WebMatrix is actually a group of products and frameworks all with the common goal of making web development simple and easy. A few of the pieces of WebMatrix have already been announced and some are never before seen until now. What are they all you ask, well let’s jump right in and review the pieces.

• SQL CE 4: A New Embedded Database for ASP.NET
• IIS Express: A Lightweight web server
• WebMatrix: A simple easy to use editor (The whole stack takes its’ name from this product)
• ASP.NET WebPages: A new framework for creating websites built on ASP.NET Core
• Razor: A new syntax used by both ASP.NET WebPages and a new ASP.NET view Engine
• A Collection of “helpers” that make difficult and mundane tasks easy.

The best part about all of this is that it all comes in a 15MB download (50MB if .NET 4 is not already installed on the machine) and that’s everything that you need to get developing awesome websites! We have really worked hard to reduce the amount of work you have to do before you can start doing real work. You can run WebMatrix side-by-side with any of the Visual Studio 2010 SKUs including Express.

Over the next few blog posts my focus is going to be primarily on ASP.NET WebPages and the Razor syntax as this is the area of the stack that I spent most of the time working on. Below is a list of posts that I plan on making in the next few weeks but if you would like to hear about something not on the list please let me know I’d be more than happy to add it.

• The ASP.NET WebPages Page Model
• Security and Membership
• An overview of some helper features
  • Introduction to WebImage

If you would like to know more about the other products and features that make up WebMatrix, here are some great links to get you started. Please, I encourage you to play around and see what you think. Also I have some exciting news coming in the next day or so regarding what happens if you find an interesting/good WebMatrix bug.

• ScottGu’s blog has lots of great posts on WebMatrix
• Investigate the top 10 features of WebMatrix
• Channel 9 Video about WebMatrix and the new Razor syntax

The most important of them all: Download WebMatrix