Visual Web Developer Content Map

This content map lists topics that show you how to use Visual Web Developer, which is the Web development environment in Visual Studio and in Visual Web Developer Express.

Visual Web Developer is a full-featured development environment that helps you create ASP.NET Web applications. It provides a powerful Web page editor that includes WYSIWYG editing and an HTML editing mode with IntelliSense and validation. You can create and design a consistent site layout with master pages and consistent page appearance with themes and skins. Visual Web Developer also includes a code editor that enables you to write code for your dynamic Web pages in Visual Basic or Visual C#. You can use the debugger to help you find errors in your code, and you can test your application using a local Web server. Visual Web Developer also includes tools for publishing your Web applications to a hosting site.

ASP.NET is the unified Web development model that you commonly use within the Visual Web Development environment. For more information about ASP.NET, see ASP.NET Overview.

Note

If you want to try ASP.NET, you can install Visual Web Developer Express using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer, which is a free tool that makes it simple to download, install, and service components of the Microsoft Web Platform. These components include Visual Web Developer Express, Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, and the .NET Framework. These are all tools that you use to create ASP.NET Web applications. You can also use the Microsoft Web Platform Installer to install open-source ASP.NET and PHP Web applications.

We suggest the following progression of documentation to help you learn about Visual Web Developer.