Visual Web Developer 2005 is a new Web development tool used to write Web applications based on ASP.NET 2.0. This article gives you the first glimpse of Microsoft's new Web development tool called Visual Web Developer 2005.
1. A Real Visual Look
As soon you open Visual Web Developer 2005 (VWD afterwards), you see a neat looking application. Unline previous versions of Visual tools, Visual Web Developer provides a professional Web look. This is how the Start Page of VWD looks like:
Figure 1. VWD Start Page
Look at roundish tab buttons ;-)
Figure 2. Roundish tab buttons
2. Online Resources Integration
When Microsoft says, they are working hard to help developers, they are really serious about it and you will find this using Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005 and related products including VWD.
Online Resources Integration is one of the coolest and greatest feature of VWD, where developers can see latest resources live in VWD itself. Hence, Microsoft is trying develoers not to use "Google". In case, Google start charging royalties for their service ;-). Any case, a less step for developers to look forlatest resources.
If you click in a link in Figure 1, you will see resources opened in VWD itself.
Figure 3. Viewing online resources in VWD
3. Online Communities Integration
One more cooleste feature of Visual 2005 tools is online communities integration. If you click on the Community menu item (See Figure 4), you see links to ask a question on community forums, send feedback, developer center, Codezone Community, and Community Search. All of these options allow the developers to get involve with online communities.
Figure 4. Online community option of VWD
4. Improved Extended Search
Visual Studio 2005 and related tools includes a much more powerful improved and extended search. Now using MSDN Documentation search, you can search Local Help, MSDN Online, and even Online Communities such as C# Corner, VB.NET Heaven, Code Project, and others. You can even select a language, technology, and topic type. See Figure 5.
Figure 5. Various search options
For example, if I search GDI+, I see the following results from online communities.
Figure 6. Search results
Summary
In this article, I showed some cool features of Visual Web Developer 2005 including online communities integration and improved extended search.