Express Editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server 2005 Free To Download today!
Great news for students, hobbyists, casual developers and curious newcomers!
The Express Editions of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 are now available to you in their RTM (Release-to-Manufacturer) format. And you can download them from the web free of charge, here on the Express Edition page of the MSDN Site.
These freely-downloadable versions of Visual Studio are streamlined to be ideal for learning and casual development. They come in five different flavours, including these four that are all for smart client (Windows Forms) application development:
If you want to write Web applications you'll want to get:
... which allows for C#, VB.Net and J# development of dynamic, data-driven web applications using ASP.NET 2.0. Visual Web Developer features tight integration with SQL Server in the development environment, which makes it a web developer's one-stop shop for building and skinning a professional-looking web application and working with data.
Once you've downloaded your Express Edition you'll want to register it. Why? Because:
- you need a free registration key to allow the product to continue working past 30 days
- you get a royalty-free image pack from Corbis with 250 images in it
- you get an icon suite - over 100 icons for no charge
- you get free components, ebooks and articles to help you improve your coding skills quickly
Full details about the registration benefits are here.
If you have questions about the downloading, installing and registering any of the Express products - see the FAQ for more details.