I am trying to decde on which rroduct to buy. I build database driven websites using Dreamweaver and asp. I would like to switch to asp.net and a friend told me I need Visual Studio. I work alone and mostly produce just websites on a windows machine. I see that there is a Visual Studo Standard and a Visual Studio Professional. Which one should I buy or is there a better program for me?

 Thanks! 

Ben

Hi,

maybe before buying you might be interested to know there's also a free, and function rich, product by Microsoft to create ASP.NET 2.0 sites with: Visual Web Developer Express.

Grz, Kris.

Thank you very much for the reply. I saw that free express program. Does it have all the web development functionality of Visual Studio?

Ben

Not "all", but a hell of a lot. If nothing else, while using it, you'll see which features you want or not. But if we're talking purely web site functions, it has like, 90-95%. If something is missing, it means you'll want Visual studio Standard, but to give you an idea, I did a lot of consulting/contractual work using nothing but Express until I eventually made the move to higher versions, for reasons that were totally unrelated to the web aspect of my projects.

Besides, its free, so give it a try. Worse that can happen is it won't be enough :) but it really has most of it.

Thanks! That's just what I needed to know. I'm going to give it a try.

 Ben