Freedom Creations

Posts Tagged ‘Dreamweaver replacement’

Another great Web Development IDE, however for the Windows platform only, is Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. Why am I mentioning it? Because it’s FREE. You just have to register here to get a registration number and after that you’re all set.  Here, I must say, bravo Microsoft! Job well done.

If you ask me, what’s the best free replacement of Adobe Dreamweaver on the Windows platform?  My answer is, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express.  If you are a Web Developer starting out, honestly, I don’t see any reason why you would dish out $399 to get Dreamweaver.  Actually, reading this blog, you’ll find out that you never have to purchase any expensive software to do web development.

Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express

Anyways, here are some highlights of Visual Web Developer (VWD).  I encourage you to install it to see all the features of VWD.  It is easy to install.  Just download the setup program and run it.

VWD has a Design, Split and Source View to edit your pages.  These views work very well just like in Dreamweaver.  My favorite feature is the code autocompletion or intellisense (as Microsoft likes to call it).   When you preview (Start Debugging) a page in the browser, VWD creates a virtual instance of a web server using ASP.NET.  This works well especially when you want to preview .aspx pages and you have not setup a website under IIS.   VWD allows you to create websites/web applications directly on IIS, FTP or a local folder.

Although Visual Web Developer is geared more for Web Development such as ASP.NET, it is a great IDE for Web Design as well.  If you are primarily a Windows user and on a budget,  I cannot recommend more other than Visual Web Developer 2008 Express.