I had written earlier about the WebMatrix v2 Beta release that happened recently at the BUILD Conference
As I had mentioned earlier, WebMatrix is a light weight tool for Web Development, Profiling, Database management, Optimization and also deployment. Its an end to end tool for web developers. Web Matrix is different from Visual Studio in the sense, it doesn’t require web developers to master C#, ASP.NET and other programming techniques. Web Matrix uses a simple Razor syntax and HTML markup for most of the operations.
Also, the power of Web Matrix lies in the open source applications repository, accessible via the Gallery. The Gallery hosts a huge range of applications including hugely popular applications such as WordPress, DotNetNuke etc.,
Ok, these are things which you probably have seen already if you are working with Web Matrix.
What’s new in WebMatrix 2 Beta?
The start up screen has been much simplified with just 3 options now and the “Open Site” allows one to either open their site from their folder or a remote site or from a template with one click.
Opening a remote site is a cool new feature in WebMatrix. You can open a site that’s already running on a remote machine, make some quick changes and publish it. So this means you don’t need to have Web Matrix installed on those servers. All of this managed from within your Web Matrix IDE on Development machine.
The Database designer is redesigned for better work with Databases and also features the new query window where you can run queries.
But my favorite new feature is the gallery. The gallery is the place from where you can install the NuGet packages. Earlier installing them was a little tricky. Here, with one click you can install your favorite NuGet package
Also, the default UI of the site has been improved significantly when you use the Starter Site. When I clicked on “Templates” in the Start screen and selected “StarterSite” and gave it a name, as below
and clicked “Ok” I get a default site created. When I simply ran the site using the “Run” Icon
I get a default site with the following layout. This is the much improved layout.
It automatically has the Login screen and other Account setup required for Membership Authentication. So, is a truly powerful Starter Kit.
We will examine using some of the new features in subsequent posts.
In the meantime, if you want to install the new version of Web Matrix, Click Here
Cheers!!!