Mabaloo - Web Matrix - An alternative ASP.NET development platform

Web Matrix - An alternative ASP.NET development platform

Written by Aarti Kalra

Web Matrix is a community-supported, easy-to-use development tool for building ASP.NET Web applications that can be uploaded to your ASP.NET Hosting account. It is a managed application written in C#.

When it loads it looks like:

There were few inhibiting factors of Visual Studio that resulted in the development of WEB MATRIX. These are:

Its size
Its cost
Its “do everything” nature

Visual Studio has an imposing memory footprint, file size, and price tag. The Enterprise edition, for example, costs several thousand dollars and spans multiple CDs

The ASP.NET Web Matrix Project is small, agile, and inexpensive. The tool, in its compressed, downloadable form, is a mere 1.2 MB - small enough to fit on a floppy! When installed, it consumes only 2.5 MB of disk space.

Web Matrix though containing a lot of new features, also has some features common to Visual Studio such as:

RAD Designer view like Visual Studio .NET
allowing you to drag and drop Web controls onto a Web page
allowing you to set properties of Web controls through a property page

Web Matrix included a number of features that made it an appealing alternative to Visual Studio:

It is a comparatively small download and is fast and easy to install.
It is specific to Web applications, thus avoiding some of the complexities required in Visual Studio to support the different tools, languages, and application types in Visual Studio.
It uses a folder-based model, rather than the project model used in Visual Studio.
It includes a small Web-server tool ("Cassini") that runs on the local computer and enables the developer to test ASP.NET Web pages without requiring Internet Information Services.
It included FTP support, rather than requiring FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE). This feature made it a practical development tool for hobbyists and students who could develop and test on their own computer, and then deploy their files to a hosted server.
Web Matrix provides support for developers to easily expose a SOAP-based XML Web Service, as well as call and consume a XML Web Service hosted on another server.
Create new databases, add/edit/delete tables and stored procedures, and edit data content all directly within theWeb Matrix tool. Auto-generate ADO.NET code to execute SQL statements and stored procedures using built-in code builders.
Matrix also contains Code Wizards which, when selected, prompt you to fill in a few form fields and then automatically produce code based on the information you entered. For example, the Send Email Code Wizard prompts you for information like the To, From, Subject, Body, and Mail Server fields, and then automatically generates the needed source code upon completion.

VISUAL STUDIO vs. WEB MATRIX

Web matrix lacks the important feature of INTELLISENSE which is required by most professional developers.
Matrix does not support integrated debugging of ASP.NET web pages whereas Visual Studio does.
Visual Studio includes class designer and library component compilation support.
Visual Studio supports building Windows Client and NT Service applications
Visual Studio also enterprises Data, Class, XML Schema and Business Process Modelling designers.

So obviously Matrix is not a replacement for Visual Studio though it contains additional features.

WEB MATRIX RELOADED

The latest version of the Web Matrix has been dubbed the Web Matrix Reloaded, and is Version 0.6. The Web Matrix Reloaded works with both ASP.NET version 1.0 and version 1.1.

In addition to fixing a number of bugs, the following enhancements and additions have been made:
Enhanced GUI
The toolbar icons and overall look and feel of the Web Matrix Reloaded have a much more Windows XPish-look than the Windows 2000 look of the earlier version.

J# Support Now Included
Version 0.5 provided support for creating ASP.NET Web pages using either VB.NET or C#. Version 0.6 includes both of these languages as options, as well as adding Microsoft's latest .NET language choice: J#.
Dynamic User Control Rendering in Design View
For ASP.NET Web pages that contain user controls, the user controls are dynamically rendered and their HTML displayed in the Web page designer. For example, imagine that you create a user control whose content is the simple HTML output "Hello, world!", in a bold font. Now, when this user control is added to a Web page in the Web Matrix Reloaded, you'll see the following output when viewing the ASP.NET Web page through the Design tab:

DOWNLOADING AND INSTALLING WEB MATRIX

To download a free copy of Web Matrix use the following link:

http://www.asp.net/downloads/archived/web-matrix/

PREREQUISITES

You must have a PC running any version of Microsoft Windows since Windows 98. You download the .NET Framework 1.1 and install it on you machine. Then download the Web Matrix Software and install it on your machine. You will now have everything you need to develop for the .NET framework.

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE SHOWING THE VARIOUS STEPS FOR MAKING A SIMPLE APPLICATION IN WEB MATRIX

The User Interface

First Page in WebMatrix

Code Window

The above code is written in VB.NET, as many of us are comfortable with that .

The form will load and will ask the user and ask them to enter his/her name. Once the name is entered, a Message Box will be displayed.

The output will be…..

CONCLUSION

With the release of Matrix ASP.NET development has gotten easier and cheaper, especially if you are not using Visual Studio .NET for development.