Microsoft Visual Studio Express is a set of integrated development environments (IDEs) that Microsoft developed and released free of charge. They are function-limited version of the non-free Visual Studio and require mandatory registration. Express editions started with Visual Studio 2005. In 2013, Microsoft began supplanting Visual Studio Express with the more feature-rich community edition of Visual Studio, which is available free of charge with a different license that disallow some scenarios in enterprise settings. The last version of the Express edition is the desktop-only 2017.

2005–2010: Language-centric editions

History

Visual Studio 2005 Express, the first version of the Express edition, was released in October 2005. It runs on Windows 2000 SP4 and later. The first service pack for 2005 Express was released in December 2006. This version is freeware and requires no registration. Visual Studio 2008 Express reached general availability in November 2007. Its first service pack was first publicly available in on 11 August 2008. This version requires

Windows XP SP3 Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

, although it can develop apps compatible with Windows 2000. Microsoft introduced mandatory registration in this version. Visual Studio 2010 Express was released in April 2010, alongside Visual Studio 2010. While most of its components (see below) ran on Windows XP, its

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design lan ...

component needed Windows Vista.

Characteristics

The 2005, 2008, and 2010 versions of Visual Studio Express consist of several standalone IDEs, each of which is focused on a single programming language: * Visual Basic Express (the Visual Basic .NET language) * Visual C++ Express (the Visual C++ language) * Visual C# Express (the C# language) * Visual J# Express (the ill-fated J# language, 2005 only) * Visual Web Developer Express (

ASP.NET ASP.NET is an open-source, server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name sta ...

) * Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone (2010 only)

Visual Basic Express

Visual Basic Express has the following limitations: * No IDE support for databases other than SQL Server Express and

Microsoft Access Microsoft Access is a database management system (DBMS) from Microsoft that combines the relational Access Database Engine (ACE) with a graphical user interface and software-development tools (not to be confused with the old Microsoft Access w ...

* No support for web applications with

(although, it is supported by Visual Web Developer Express) * No support for developing for mobile devices (no templates or emulators) * Absence of

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* Fewer project templates (e.g. Windows services template and Excel Workbook template are unavailable) * Limited options for debugging and

breakpoint In software development, a breakpoint is an intentional stopping or pausing place in a program, put in place for debugging purposes. It is also sometimes simply referred to as a pause. More generally, a breakpoint is a means of acquiring knowl ...

s * No support for creating

Windows Service In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manag ...

s (needs a separate project template) * No support for

OpenMP OpenMP (Open Multi-Processing) is an application programming interface (API) that supports multi-platform shared-memory multiprocessing programming in C, C++, and Fortran, on many platforms, instruction-set architectures and operating sy ...

* Limited deployment options for finished programs * No

code folding Code or text folding, or less commonly holophrasting, is a feature of some graphical user interfaces that allows the user to selectively hide ("fold") or display ("unfold") parts of a document. This allows the user to manage large amounts of text ...

Visual Basic 2008 Express includes the following improvements over 2005: * Includes the visual Windows Presentation Foundation designer codenamed "Cider" * Debugs at runtime * Better

IntelliSense Intelligent code completion is a context-aware code completion feature in some programming environments that speeds up the process of coding applications by reducing typos and other common mistakes. Attempts at this are usually done through auto-c ...

support **Fixes common spelling errors **Corrects most forms of invalid syntax **Provides suggestions to

class Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differently ...

names when specified classes are not found Visual Basic 2005 and Visual Basic 2008 Express feature a Visual Basic 6.0 converter that makes it possible to upgrade Visual Basic 6.0 projects to Visual Basic.NET. The converter is not included with the Visual Basic 2010 Express.

Visual Web Developer Express

Visual Web Developer Express is a freeware web development tool that allows developers to evaluate the web development and editing capabilities of the other Visual Studio editions at no charge. Its main function is to create

websites. It has a WYSIWYG interface, drag-and-drop user interface designer, enhanced HTML and code editors, a limited database explorer, support for

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...

, JavaScript and

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

, and integrated, design-time validation for standards including XHTML 1.0/1.1 and CSS 2.1. Visual Web Developer 2005 Express lacks certain features, such as the Accessibility Checker, the ability to create standalone class library projects, third-party add-ins and macros. Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1 supports both class library and web application projects. It also includes a new integrated HTML designer based on

Microsoft Expression Web Microsoft Expression Web is a discontinued HTML editor and general web design software product by Microsoft. It was discontinued on December 20, 2012, and subsequently made available free of charge from Microsoft. It was a component of the also ...

. However, this edition cannot publish self-developed websites.

Visual C++ Express

Visual C++ Express compiles .NET and Win32 applications in

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculati ...

only. It includes

Windows SDK Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

's compilers and core files, which developers can use to build Win32 applications. Limitations of Visual C++ Express: * No support for MFC or ATL. These libraries can, however, be installed from an older version of the Windows SDK and

Windows Driver Kit The Windows Driver Kit (WDK) is a software toolset from Microsoft that enables the development of device drivers for the Microsoft Windows platform. It includes documentation, samples, build environments, and tools for driver developers. A com ...

, or a Visual Studio Trial installation. * Lack of a

resource Resource refers to all the materials available in our environment which are technologically accessible, economically feasible and culturally sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and wants. Resources can broadly be classified upon their ...

editor, which is available in commercial editions of Visual Studio. * No profiling support * No support for add-ins or IDE macros * No option for crash dump generation * No "list of all breakpoints" window. * No support for cross-language debugging, for example, a C# application calling a C++ DLL. Limitations in earlier versions: * No out-of-box support for developing

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A comput ...

applications (prior to 2012). * No support for

(prior to 2012) * The debugger cannot be attached to a running process (prior to 2010) While Microsoft lists memory windows as unavailable in Visual Studio 2010 Express, third parties have reported that they are available when Expert Settings are enabled. Many open-source projects have started providing project files created with Visual C++ Express; noteworthy examples include the Ogre and

Irrlicht Irrlicht may refer to: * Irrlicht, the German name for will-o'-the-wisp, the ghostly light sometimes seen at night over bogs and swamps * "Irrlicht", the ninth song in the ''Winterreise'' cycle by Franz Schubert * ''Irrlicht'' (album), by Klaus ...

engines. Modding kits for commercial engines, such as Valve's Source engine, also support this development system.

Visual C# Express

Visual C# Express is a free, lightweight, integrated development environment (IDE) designed for novice developers, students and hobbyists to create applications and (when combined with the XNA Game Studio) video games for Windows,

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

and Zune. It can build

console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...

Windows Forms Windows Forms (WinForms) is a free and open-source graphical (GUI) class library included as a part of Microsoft .NET, .NET Framework or Mono Framework, providing a platform to write client applications for desktop, laptop, and tablet PCs. Whi ...

and Windows Presentation Foundation applications, and class libraries. Microsoft has found that a substantial community of game players are taking up C# programming. Visual C# Express does not have a breakpoint control panel; breakpoints can only be toggled. The following refactoring modes were also unavailable: * Encapsulate field * Promote local to parameter * Reorder parameters * Remove parameters * Extract interface The limitations effectively reduce the refactoring capabilities of Visual C# Express to renaming and extracting

methods Method ( grc, μέθοδος, methodos) literally means a pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting such inquiry, or system. In recent centuries it more often means a prescribed process for completing a task. It may refer to: *Scien ...

. According to Microsoft, the reason the listed features are absent is "to simplify the C# Express user experience". Some users remarked that the omission of refactoring capabilities removed useful functionality without actually simplifying use. The ability to attach the debugger to an already-running process is also unavailable, hindering scenarios such as writing Windows services and re-attaching a debugger under ASP.NET when errors under the original debugging session cause breakpoints to be ignored.

2012–2017: Ecosystem-centric

For the 2012 release of Visual Express, Microsoft changed its distribution of editions so that each version is geared toward an overall solution type, and can contain more than one project type. (This is unlike previous Express editions, each of which was geared around a single programming language.) For example, a web solution might consist of a web application project and a couple of C# class-library projects. This change was made to reflect the wide diversity of applications available for

the web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through we ...

and the new

WinRT Windows Runtime (WinRT) is a platform-agnostic component and application architecture first introduced in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 in 2012. It is implemented in C++ and officially supports development in C++ (via C++/WinRT, C++/CX or ...

platform used on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Microsoft has released five Visual Studio Express 2012 products: In October 2013, Microsoft released four new versions of its Visual Studio Express products. Like the 2012 Express edition, they are geared toward an overall solution type that may mix different types of projects. However, different IDEs are still offered for different destination platforms. They are: * Visual Studio Express 2013 for Web * Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows: ''Note: Works on Windows 8.1 only ( x86 and

x64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit version of the x86 instruction set, first released in 1999. It introduced two new modes of operation, 64-bit mode and compatibility mode, along with a new 4-level paging mod ...

).'' * Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop * Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express 2013 Note that Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone was not released in the set of 2013 products, but Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone is now merged with Visual Studio Express for Windows 2013.2. With this new release, Windows 8.1 x86 is now supported for

Windows Phone 8.1 Windows Phone 8.1 is the discontinued third generation of Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system, succeeding Windows Phone 8. Rolled out at Microsoft's Build Conference in San Francisco, California, on April 2, 2014, it was released ...

development, but not for

Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft. It was released on October 29, 2012, and, like its predecessor, it features a flat user interface based on the Metro design language. It was s ...

.0 development or the Windows Phone Emulator, the latter of which also requires a processor that supports Client Hyper-V and

Second Level Address Translation Second Level Address Translation (SLAT), also known as nested paging, is a hardware-assisted virtualization technology which makes it possible to avoid the overhead associated with software-managed shadow page tables. AMD has supported SLAT throug ...

(SLAT). The Visual Studio Express 2015 editions are: * Express for Desktop – for creating desktop Windows programs * Express for Web - for creating responsive websites, web APIs, or "real-time online experiences" * Express for Windows – core tools for creating

Universal Windows Platform apps Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps (formerly Windows Store apps and Metro-style apps) are applications that can be used across all compatible Microsoft Windows devices, including personal computers (PCs), tablets, smartphones, Xbox One, ...

. Requires Windows 10. * Team Foundation Server 2015 Express – platform for source code control, for project management, and for team collaboration Microsoft terminated the Visual Studio Express lineage with the release of Visual Studio Express 2017 for Windows Desktop. This last release has no siblings specialized in Web or UWP projects. Developers interested a free solution for those projects were instead directed towards Visual Studio Community Edition or

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, also commonly referred to as VS Code, is a source-code editor made by Microsoft with the Electron Framework, for Windows, Linux and macOS. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code complet ...

References

External links

*
Semi-official listing for Visual Studio Express 2013 downloads
{{JavaScript 2005 software Express