What's your favourite editor for website development?

[Comotose]

Hi all.

I'm just kicking off with VB.NET so I only need simple, affordable tools.

So far I've just been using Windows Notepad, but I'm wondering if anyone could suggest an open source (or at least very cheap) editor that's particularly good for developing VB.NET websites.

I'm not interested at this stage in creating Windows applications, just dynamic websites for my own use.

All my past work has been with classic asp, and I've been quite happy with the ancient Dreamweaver UltraDev 1.0, but it doesn't know about aspx files and the best I've been able to do is get it to open them in Notepad.

I took a quick look at CKeditor but I didn't like the idea of having to install it on every website. I'd much rather have a locally installed application.

What about Visual Studio Express? Or is it more geared towards developing applications?

Any suggestions most welcome.

 

[jmcilhinney]

The logical choice would be VS. The paid-for versions combine all the languages and technologies into a single application, while the Express editions are separate. For web development you would use Visual Web Developer Express, which supports VB and C# as code-behind languages.

 

[Comotose]

Thanks very much for the advice. I will download Visual Web Developer Express.

If I prefer to use MySQL for database integration, do I need to download the SQL Server component of Visual Web Developer Express?

 

[jmcilhinney]

There is no SQL Server component of VWD Express. There's SQL Server Express, which is a cut-down version of SQL Server just as VWD Express, etc, are cut-down versions of Visual Studio. SQL Server is itself an RDBMS. They aren't related in any way other than the fact that they are competitors.

If you want to connect to MySQL then you should download the Connector/Net component from the MySQL web site and use it to connect using standard ADO.NET, just like every other database. VWD Express provides additional visual support for connecting to SQL Server and Access, but for other databases you'll have to do it all in code, which is how many people do it anyway.

 

[Comotose]

Thanks again.

I have downloaded and installed both Visual Web Developer Express and Connector-Net 6.2.2.

Now to get a grip on it...