Web Matrix is completely free low-end web development tool from Microsoft. It’s designed to make it easy for novice developers to incorporate open-source web applications like Word Press, Druple and nopCommerce into their new sites by providing built-in templates for these applications. Web Matric also introduces a new Razor syntax for generating HTML web pages.
WebMatrix has support for connecting to both SQL Server and MySQL databases. In addition, it ships with the self contained SQL Compact edition.
A key tenant of Web Matrix is simplicity and as such its doesn’t offer advanced development features like visual editing or code behind. Building dynamic web pages with Web Matrix reminded me a lot of early ASP.
Personally, I wonder if a code-based development tool that’s geared toward novice developers will really succeed. Even so, web matrix has a couple of very nice built-in tool. It’s built-in twitter feed makes it a snap to integrate twitter posts on your site. Plus, its built SEO tool can analyze you site for things that will hinder its placement by search engines like Google and Bing.
You can check out Web Matrix at:http://www.asp.net/webmatrix or http://www.microsoft.com/web/
