Beginners - Learn ASP.NET Free!

[Staff: Warren Ashcroft]

Hello There,
I just wanted to post this becuse alot of people out there are "scared" of ASP.NET as such and stick to "safe" languages such as PHP or ASP.

ASP.NET (well, .NET) as a whole is a huge lurning curve to master which therefore may not appeal to the hobbyist or non-fulltime delveloper; not only that the pricing of the development tools (Visual Studio) can be quite high.

Enter Visual Web Developer 2005

Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition is a lightweight, easy-to-use and easy-to-learn development tool focused exclusively on Web development. Inside, you will find everything you need to begin building exciting, dynamic Web applications with ASP.NET v2 and best of all - its free to use!

If you interested in trying something new, check it out!
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/vwd/

[DavidJenkins]

Registration of VWD is FREE. You will then be sent an email with a list of links to .net and VWD resources. The videos link is especially good if you are just learning .net 2.0

[CS New Media]

I never recieved any email

[DavidJenkins]

Here you go

[RFH Reseller: Sol]

Actually, there are several options for developing applications running on the .Net Framework.

For those that are only starting out and developing ASP.Net based applications then the Visual Web Designer (VWD) from Microsoft is definately worth a look at, especially as it is currently free. Microsoft had announced that it was going to be free for a limited period, but they may change their stance given the interest the product has received.

For those that want to get into writing more code and using advanced features then Visual Studio .Net is Microsoft's solution. This also allows the development of client-side applications and provides integration with SourceSafe or Microsoft Team Foundation server.

An alternative to Microsoft's development environment is SharpDevelop (http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Default.aspx). Whilst the name indicates use for C# development it will allow development in both C# and VB.Net. This application is OpenSource a similar experience to using Visual Stuido.

Finally for those that really want to stay away from any software investment they can look at Mono (http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page). This is basically a port of the .Net Framework over to Unix, however it will run on most platforms. There is also a MonoDevelp project providing another free IDE.

Theoretically ASP.Net applications developed under Mono should run fine on Windows based servers, however you need to be a liitle bit aware of the difference in platform and ensure you have not used anything that is platform specific.

Hopefully this info will entice a few more of you to try out the .Net Framework as it could be a good way to support multiple platforms from a single code base.

Note: for those that are writing platform specific code look you could look at using the provider model to implement the platform specific rountines. This allows a plug-in style architecture to choose a different provider depending on platform.