WebMatrix is a stack of tools designed to make web development easy. The stack contains IIS Developer Express web server, SQL Server Compact Edition web database and the ASP.NET “Razor”. Razor is Microsoft’s new view engine for ASP.NET.
WebMatrix was developed to be easy and focus on getting results for your website. It has integrated the code editor, database editor, web server manager, all while focusing on SEO. And as your needs grow, you can seamlessly move to Visual Studio.
There are two ways to get started using WebMatrix once you have it installed (download here). You can start with a your own project from scratch or start with one of the web popular Open Source web applications such as DotNetNuke, Umbraco, WordPress and Joomla!.
After you’ve begun working, because WebMatrix integrates with IIS Developer Express and is tightly linked with the Web server components that your site runs on, you can directly monitor real-time Web requests and responses to track down problems right at the source. You can even resolve the little peeves like images that are missing.
SEO tools, much like those available in IIS 7.5 , make optimizing your web application easy and will even take you to your weak spots with suggested solutions.
WebMatrix is the easiest way to learn standards-based Web development and makes it simple to build and publish Web sites on the internet. Start with HTML, CSS and JavaScript and then seamlessly connect to a database or add in dynamic server code using the new ‘Razor’ syntax for ASP.NET Web pages. Your code is easy to read, simple to learn, short to write and works with any text editor. Use built-in helper functions to connect to a database, display a Twitter feed, or embed a video. And with a seamless path to ASP.NET MVC it is now easier than ever to create powerful ASP.NET Web applications.
I’ll provide some feedback as soon as I’ve had the time to fully “kick the tires.” Stay tuned.
