Announcing the Release of WebMatrix 3

I’m excited to announce the release of WebMatrix 3.  WebMatrix is a free, lightweight web development tool we first introduced in 2010, and which provides a great, focused web development experience for ASP.NET, PHP, and Node.js.  

Today’s release includes a ton of great new features.  You can easily get started by downloading it, and watching an introduction video:

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Some of the highlights of today’s release include deep Windows Azure integration, source control tooling for Git and TFS, and a new remote editing experience. 

Windows Azure Integration

With WebMatrix 3, we are making it really easy to move to the cloud. 

The first time you launch WebMatrix 3, there’s an option to sign into Windows Azure.  You can sign in using the same credentials you use with the Windows Azure Management Portal:

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Once you are signed-in your Windows Azure account and subscriptions are integrated directly within WebMatrix.  You have the option to create up to 10 free sites on Windows Azure: 

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You can use the My Sites”button to browse and edit the web sites you already have hosted on Windows Azure.  You can also use the New button to directly create and host new web sites on Windows Azure – and create either a blank new site, or a site created from the Windows Azure Web App Gallery (which lets you start with templates like Umbraco, WordPress, Drupal, etc):

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In this case we’ll create a new web site using the popular Umbraco CMS solution – one of the templates in the Windows Azure Web Site Gallery:

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When you select this template, WebMatrix can help you create a new Web Site to host it on Windows Azure, and associate all of the publishing information you need to publish it and keep it in sync with your editing environment within WebMatrix:

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Once created you get a tailored experience within WebMatrix that provides integrated Umbraco (or WordPress or Drupal, etc) editing functionality inside the tool:

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And WebMatrix provides the ability to open/edit any appropriate files in it with editing/ and code intellisense support:

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And when you are done you can one-click publish the site to Windows Azure using the Publish command in top left of the tool.  WebMatrix will provide real-time feedback as it uploads and publishes the site:

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The end result is a simple, fast and super effective way to edit your sites locally and host and manage them in Windows Azure. 

Watch this great video as Eric build a site with WebMatrix 3 and deploys it to Windows Azure.

Source Control with Git and TFS

One of the most requested features in WebMatrix 2 was support for version control.  WebMatrix 3 now supports both Git and TFS.  The source control experience is extensible, and we’ve worked with several partners to include rich support for Team Foundation Service, CodePlex and GitHub:

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The Git tooling works with your current source repositories, configuration, and existing tools.  The experience includes support for commits, branching, multiple remotes, and works great for publishing Web Sites to Windows Azure:

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The TFS experience is focused on making common source control tasks easy.  It matches up well with Team Foundation Service, our hosted TFS solution that provides free private Git and TFS repositories.

Watch these great videos of Justin giving a tour of the Git and TFS integration in WebMatrix 3

Remote Editing

In WebMatrix 2, we added the ability to open your Web Site directly from the Windows Azure Management Portal.  With WebMatrix 3, we’ve rounded out that experience by providing an amazing developer experience for live remote editing of your sites.   The new My Sites gallery now allows you to open existing web sites on your local machine, or to remotely edit sites that are hosted in Windows Azure:

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While working with the remote site, IntelliSense and the other tools work as though the site was on your local machine.  But when you save changes it pushes them directly to the remote hosted site.  This makes it ideal for when you want to make quick changes in a hurry.

If you want to work with the site locally, you can click the ‘download’ button to install and configure any runtime dependencies, and work with the site on your machine:

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Watch this video of Thao showing you how to edit your live site on Windows Azure using WebMatrix 3

Summary

WebMatrix 3 includes a seamless experience for working with sites in Windows Azure, source control support for working with Git and TFS, and a vastly improved remote editing experience.  These are just a few of the hundreds of improvements throughout the application, including an extension for PHP validation and Typescript support. 

You can easily get started with WebMatrix by downloading it for free, and watching an introduction video about it:

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We look forward to seeing what you build with the new release!

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

29 Comments

  • I'm sure this is a great product, but I wish MS would stop muddying the development waters with all these various overlapping dev tools; Visual Studio, Lightswitch, Access, WebMatrix, Blend, even SmallBasic.

    Is anyone actually using WebMatrix/Lightswitch in the real world? I would prefer MS to focus on ridding Visual Studio of its (many) bugs than constantly churning out new products (most of which will be dead and forgotten in a couple of years, if history is anything to go by).

    My 2c

  • Error when signed in with a new azure accout.
    subscription '3-month free trial' does not have windows zure website enabled

  • The free site offering is actually very great. However are there more details? For example is it available for existing Azure users? What about database? and so on...

  • You should use DotNetNuke in your samples.

  • Both source control and remote editing are great features! I think something to focus in the future probably should be the nodejs experience, I could never actually debug a nodejs app in webmatrix for instance, even with the plugins, never actually worked. Great job on these new things!

  • That's great. WebMatrix is one of my favorite IDEs. I still run into an issue that people in the asp.net forums found. When trying to add data to an SQL CE database when you have a primary key and identity. It says the ID cannot be modified.

  • Hello,

    Is this 'just' a wbematrix upgrade?
    The IDE.
    Or is there anything new in the code 'asp.net web pages' or 'razor'?

    To summarize, this new IDE still works with the latest version of 'ASP.NET Web Pages 2'. Nothing new over there?

    Thanks!

  • I agree with LMK. Node.js is starting to catch my interest and I'm surprised that Web Matrix supports it out of the box while Visual Studio ignores it completely. Are we doing the "VB.NET / C# divergence" from Visual Studio 2005 era again? What are the plans for Node with Visual Studio?

  • I'm leaning towards going this route (publishing to Azure), but have a few concerns:

    1) Can I publish my web *site* (I don't know if you would call it a web *app* - what is the strict definition? It is a Razor 2 web site I created jointly with WebMatrix and Visual Studio 2012)
    2) Is the $15 substantially more than I would pay elsewhere to host my site?
    3) I don't care for the ".azurewebsites.net" suffix (as opposed to the simple and well-known ".com")
    4) Would amazon accept domains from "azurewebsites.net" (as opposed to ".com" sites) when I sign up as an amazon affiliate (I will be "advertising" a few books of mine and family members on the "Contact" page of the site)? I don't know why they wouldn't, but sometimes companies are picky about such things.

  • To answer an earlier commenter's question; I use WebMatrix nearly daily. It does what I need it to do and it does it well. I am not so worried about the Azure portion since I don't need it right now. I'm sure if I ever need it, whomever I will be working for at the time will foot that bill.

  • WebMatrix is really nice. With Azure and Git/TFS integration I think it's one of the best all around IDEs available. It's really good if you want to go from development with source control to deployment.

    I think Microsoft needs to do a better job promoting WebMatrix and WebPages to developers. I find that not many developers know about WebMatrix and WebPages and many of the ones that do seem to look down on it as only for beginners or unnecessary without really knowing much about it. I think that attitude is unfortunate since WebMatrix is a really good tool for beginners, intermediate developers and even veteran web developers. It could be even better if there were a strong community behind it.

  • This is really nice improvements, thanks!

  • I really like how well you guys integrated this with Windows Azure. Will test later today, but looks really neat!

  • How is this tool lightweight when is asking to install 85 MB of components, none of them optional.

  • I think the new realease of Webmatrix 3 is a breath of fresh air! Bravo to MS!

  • How does webmatrix relate to appfabric? Dependency on one another, not at all, completly ortogonal, etc?

  • @Rafael Luna: MB is the new KB - don't sweat the small stuff!

  • I fully agree to what Wednesday, May 01, 2013 4:14 PM by LMK wrote. All these developing tools just make me confused...

  • Why wasn't support for SVN added in WebMatrix inspite of users requesting it on webmatrix.uservoice.com? WebMatrix is a great IDE for developing nodejs stuff on Windows and we use it quite a lot. The only thing lacking for us in it is support for SVN.

  • WebMatrix is grate, better if microsoft focus on a developing tool for distinct purposes. As we have Visual studio, WebMatrix, Blend from microsoft only to develope similar type of applications

  • I am working on a offline mode for a project in C#.

    After disconnecting from internet also VPN Client is being alive for sometime for reconnecting attempt. In this situation all c# method says "Internet Connectivity State as True".

    I am using the below method to detect whether i am offline or not.

    bool isConnected = System.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.GetIsNetworkAvailable();

    The above method is giving status as True when I disconnect from internet and vpn client try to re-connect the server. Normally VPN Connectivity is not going to offline immediately after internet disconnects. VPN Client is taking extra 1 minute to change it status to fully offline. It tries to reconnect to establish a new connection in this time. In between, this 1 minute the above method gives InterConnectivity value as true. But this should give status as false. What is the best method or property to get the correct internet state on this situation?

  • I do like webmatrix, and use it in parrallel with Visual Studio while developping a site, as well as to maintain my Wordpress site. What I am not sure to understand is why the Webmatrix MVC templates are different from Visual Studio templates? It's more or less a mess to start a site with WebMatrix, then continue developpement with VS, as Webmatrix MVC is not really MVC....

    Or did I totally misunderstand something?

  • Scott, its really commendable effort from you and your team to keep releasing new tools and updates at such a pace. But I have a genuine question, are we going to see future versions of ASP.NET [both webforms and mvc] and WEB API? It would be helpful to know about it from the long term perspective.
    Please answer.

  • @Amit

    >>>>>Scott, its really commendable effort from you and your team to keep releasing new tools and updates at such a pace. But I have a genuine question, are we going to see future versions of ASP.NET [both webforms and mvc] and WEB API? It would be helpful to know about it from the long term perspective.

    We just shipped an update of ASP.NET + Web API in February: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2013/02/18/announcing-release-of-asp-net-and-web-tools-2012-2-update.aspx

    Next month at the Build conference you'll learn even more about ASP.NET vNext - lots of great things coming.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • Hi Scott,

    I am having trouble with the db when trying to complete Mike Pope's tutorial here:

    http://www.asp.net/web-pages/tutorials/introducing-aspnet-web-pages-2/displaying-data




    Here is the error I am receiving.

    Your change could not be committed to the database.... The column cannot be modified. [Column name = ID]"



    It looks like quite a few people are experiencing the same problem. I tried uninstalling-reinstalling WM3 and all Compact SQL db. But the error persists. I am seeing that this is a WM3 issue. I tried looking for WM2 but it no longer exists. Any idea when this will be fixed?


  • There is a mission critical bug in WebMatrix3 related to saving publish settings with connection string info. The connection string info is not saving properly and publishes fail because of it. This makes it so that you cannot publish using web deploy method.

    This bug is being discussed on the web and I was wondering if there was a work around or a fix on the way?

  • Love the Integration of SignalR in Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 and WebMatrix, Nuget.

    Check out this SignalR Tutorial on my Blog:
    http://webapps-in-action.com/post/Telerik-Kendo-UI-Grid-Updating-Stock-Data-with-SignalR-in-ASPNET-MVC4

  • Several folks have complained of problems entering new rows into a database, using the GUI in WebMatrix 3.

    The typical case is when the user is entering a new row into a table that has an integer primary key with identity enabled. The user can enter the non-primary-key columns OK, but when it comes to the actual INSErt being executed, the GUI throws an error (cannot modify the ID column). This is a known bug.

    This is made worse by the fact that WebMatrix is touted as the solution for non-techies who want to get into data-driven website development. They typically start out with one or more of the tutorialsm each of which inevitably leads them to this error case, Then they are presented with a typically obtuse and unhelpful MS error message and a user quandry. No telling how many just throw up their hands and walk away from WebMatrix.

    The true solution is for MS to get off their collective duffs and test the entire produc against all the tutorials, identifying AND FIXING all the bugs so discovered!

    In the interim, tutorials should be modified to alert the user to this issue.

    Several work-arounds exist to using the GUI. One of the Best is Erik's SQL Server Compact Toolbox (sqlcetoolbox.codeplex.com). He pays more attention to QA issues than MS apparently does.

  • So I downloaded WebMatrix3 and thought I would give it a try to redo my ancient Dreamweaver pages. Everytime I try to create a new site from a template (tried about 4) I get an error that the site does not exist. On the server it says it is created successfully, but there is no content. Has anyone tried this on a raw machine (no IIS, etc. installed). It just doesn't work.

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