Thursday, November 03, 2011

WebMatrix 2 Beta

Soon after starting work on WebMatrix engineering, I got an opportunity to launch WebMatrix 2 Beta at //build.  For those who are not familiar with WebMatrix it is all in one web development tool which is inspirational as well as functional at the same time.  It is lightweight enough that you get a web development tool, framework, db, web server and more under 50MB and based on our testing it installs in around 2 mins on a 2GB RAM, Windows 7 machine with .NET Framework pre-installed.  Typically such tools cost $50-100 but WebMatrix is yours for free Smile

I was involved with WebMatrix 1 project which we launched on Jan 13th 2011 and it has only been few months since release of WebMatrix 1 that we have WebMatrix 2 Beta out.

If you have not installed WebMatrix 2, you should install it now:

image

imageThere are bunch of NEW features in WebMatrix 2 Beta on top of WebMatrix 1, but I wanted to just call out few top items:

  • Even more seamless and awesome integration with Application Gallery where now you will not have to fill in the standard application installation parameters
  • OSS Application specific code completion which means users of popular apps like WordPress can get help customized to their applications
  • Custom look and feel for each Web Application which means if you are editing Umbraco you will feel like WebMatrix is designed for Umbraco with specific contextual actions called out by application authors.
  • Intlellisense for HTML, CSS, JS, C#, VB, ASP.NET Razor as well as PHP.
  • Support for HTML5, CSS3 as well as jQuery constructs.
  • New awesome tools like color picker.
  • Completely revamped Database workspace where you can now execute multiple queries.
  • Extensibility support by which you can write your own extension for WebMatrix.  And trust me it is so easy that you can whip out a ribbon button to do something cool just within minutes.
  • NuGet integration to allow you to build your app with community by your side.
  • Remote tools which will allow you to see the server files and even edit them within seconds.
  • Integrated learning experience with learnable, pluralsight and appendto
  • And more and more…

You can read all about it at http://webmatrix.com/next

BUILD

  As I mentioned earlier I gave the WebMatrix 2 launch talk at //build/ in September 2011.  This talk was recorded and is now available for you to view below.  Hope you will enjoy it.

 

-Vishal

5 comments:

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Thanks for sharing about your project with us, i alos like web matrix and many times try to work on it it was so help ful in browsing work.thanks for giving more about this.

Anonymous said...

Webmatrix 2 beta is awesome. It crashes on Ctrl-Z. It crashes when a file reaches some length, it just crashes without any warning. Intellisense is so helpful - it won't show up when you need it and requires two (sometimes four) escapes just to get rid of it when you want to see the screen in places where inellisense is not needed at al. I like WM. Hope one day it won't impede my work and make it non-productive.

Vishal R Joshi said...

Hi Anonymous,
I am sorry that your experience was not so great. We have been working on fixing a bunch of crashes in Beta and pretty shortly (can't tell the exact date but soon) will release an update for WebMatrix 2. I really do hope you will give it a try and it alleviates the pains that you called out.
If not then I will be more than happy to get on a phone call with you to see what we can do. My number is +1-425-7-05-2031 and email is Vishal.Joshi@Microsoft.com, please do not hesitate to reach out anytime.
Thanks much for the feedback and we really do appreciate you trying out the Beta.
-Vishal