Is free ride over for students and developers who have
been using Visual Studio Express products from Microsoft to build Windows
applications using Windows Forms and WPF? Does this mean that Microsoft is abandoning Windows Forms and WPF? OR at least Windows Forms? How about
ASP.NET?
In a recent announcement about Visual Studio 11 Express
product line, Microsoft has four express versions available for free to build
Windows 8, Web, TFS, and Windows Phone/Azure applications. MSDN website says,
“To
create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher.”
So, if you want to build Windows Forms or WPF
applications using Visual Studio 11, you have no choice but to buy the
Profession edition. Or alternatively,
you could still use Visual Studio 2010 but then you are stuck with the older
version of .NET.
Visual Studio
11 Express for Windows 8
This edition supports development and
deployment of Windows 8 Metro style applications.
Visual Studio
11 Express for Web
This edition provides the tools and
resources to build and test HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript code, and to deploy on
web servers or to the cloud with Windows Azure. So where is ASP.NET?
Visual Studio
11 Team Foundation Server Express
Even small teams deserve great results.
Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server Express Beta provides small teams of up
to five developers with source code control, work item tracking, and build
automation for their software projects so that they can deliver predictable
results.
Visual Studio
11 Express for Windows Phone
This edition provides new capabilities for
creating cloud services and Windows Phone apps.
Desktop application
development
To
create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher.
In addition, Visual Studio 2010 Express products - Visual Basic 2010 Express,
Visual C++ 2010 Express, and Visual C# 2010 Express - will remain available for
free download.
Learn more about Visual Studio 11 Express products here.