MSDN is Live, go get Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta 2!!

Using a previous version of VS 2005? Beta 1? A CTP – YOU MUST READ BELOW 

 

IMPORTANT – please please please please follow these instructions on how to uninstall Beta1 or a CTP (if you have one installed) before installing Beta2.  You MUST uninstall in the exact correct order or bad things could happen.  

 

Express uninstall instructions: https://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/uninstall
Other
versions (VSTS, PRO, STD): https://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/uninstall

 

Uninstall in the wrong order?  Try to save yourself: https://blogs.msdn.com/hgao/archive/2005/04/15/408763.aspx
For
lots of details and other uninstall tips/tricks check out these blogs by Hong Gao and Aaron Stebner:
https://blogs.msdn.com/hgao
https://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/

They provide detailed instructions on whys, how’s and more.
Now onto the fun part!  Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta 2, the other express SKU’s, and the other versions of Visual Studio are now officially in Beta 2 with an associated go-live license – meaning you can build applications take them into production immediately.
Things to do:
1) Download VWD Express Beta 2 (https://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/vwd/)
2) Explore our learning functions:
a. Guided Tour (https://beta.asp.net/guidedtour2/) – it is supposed to be at https://beta.asp.net/guidedtour/ eventually, but make sure you are using the Beta2 version ( you can tell it is the B2 version because you can set which language you want examples in as a drop down in the top left corner)
b. Starter Kits!  Yes, 3 of them to explore (https://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/vwd/starterkit)

Try the Starter kits out live as well –

https://beta.asp.net/vwd/live/pws/default.aspx (Personal Web Site Starter Kit)
https://beta.asp.net/vwd/live/pws/default.aspx (Club Site Starter Kit)
https://beta.asp.net/vwd/live/tt/default.aspx (Timetracker Starter Kit)
and I have more Starter Kits in the pipeline to release over the coming months, but these should get you started!

c. New ASP.NET 2.0 Quickstarts (completely re-designed to make them more usable and attractive) (https://beta.asp.net/quickstart)

3) Give us your feedback on https://forums.asp.net/

4) Go Live!  Click https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=45257 and find hosters World Wide that are supporting the Beta 2 Go-Live so you can get your sites hosted for everyone to see!

And if all this wasn’t enough, we are about to roll out a complete overhaul to www.asp.net, with a new look and feel, completely built on top of ASP.NET 2.0 – over the coming months we will continue to expand the features of the site be leveraging lots of the ASP.NET 2.0 infrastructure around personalization, webparts, and more!  So keep your eye out – for a preview hit https://beta.asp.net/ directly – it isn’t 100% there, but you can see the awesome new look and feel (using master pages and themes/skins).

Also check out https://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/getgwd/ for tons of other resources.   I’ll post more about GetVWD and what that is all about soon.
PS there is a huge story about the launch of B2 – maybe I’ll write up pieces of it … or point you to someone else who has! J
Let me know what you think!  This is a huge milestone for us and I am SOOOO excited I can’t even begin to tell you.