Visual Web Developer 2005 is a new tool developed by Microsoft to write Web applications using ASP.NET 2.0. This article is a simple step by step tutorial shows you how to write your first Web application using Visual Web Developer 2005.

You create a new web site using File -> New and select a ASP.NET Web Site. On this templates page, you can even select an ASP.NET Web Service or an Empty Web site.

The Language drop down let you select the language you want to use. I select Visual C# from the list. See Figure 1.

Image 1. Create a New Project

By clicking OK creates the Web site and adds a Default.aspx page with a source file Default.aspx.cs. This must look familiar to existing ASP.NET developers. However, if you see in Figure 2, you will notice class definition as "partial class". Now C# 2.0 introduces partial classes  and ASP.NET 2.0 takes advantage of it. C# Language section of C# Corner has several articles on Partial classes: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/language.asp.

Figure 2. Default class

Now if you look at Default.aspx code, you will see "CodeBehind" is missing ;-). The new keyword you will notice is CodeFile, which is the name of the file, stores the codebehind code for the UI.  See Figure 3. 

Figure 3. Default.aspx

I add a Button and a TextBox control to the page by dragging controls from Toolbox. See Figure 5. There is no magic there. See Figure 4. However, when you resize the controls, you will see the designer tells you the size of the controls. Neat. Huh?

Figure 4. Button click event handler

Figure 5. UI page

Clicking on button does what it was supposed to. Changes the text of the TextBox. See Figure 6.

Figure 6. Button clicked

Summary

This was my first application written using VWD 2005. I am moving forward and will bring more exciting stuff soon.