Free Ride is Over for Desktop Developers in Visual Studio 11

Is free ride over for students and developers who have been using Visual Studio Express products from Microsoft to build Windows applications using Windows Forms and WPF? Does this mean that Microsoft is abandoning Windows Forms and WPF? OR at least Windows Forms? How about ASP.NET?

In a recent announcement about Visual Studio 11 Express product line, Microsoft has four express versions available for free to build Windows 8, Web, TFS, and Windows Phone/Azure applications. MSDN website says,

“To create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher.”

So, if you want to build Windows Forms or WPF applications using Visual Studio 11, you have no choice but to buy the Profession edition.  Or alternatively, you could still use Visual Studio 2010 but then you are stuck with the older version of .NET.

Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8

This edition supports development and deployment of Windows 8 Metro style applications.

Visual Studio 11 Express for Web

This edition provides the tools and resources to build and test HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript code, and to deploy on web servers or to the cloud with Windows Azure. So where is ASP.NET?

Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server Express

Even small teams deserve great results. Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server Express Beta provides small teams of up to five developers with source code control, work item tracking, and build automation for their software projects so that they can deliver predictable results.

Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Phone

This edition provides new capabilities for creating cloud services and Windows Phone apps.

Desktop application development

To create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher. In addition, Visual Studio 2010 Express products - Visual Basic 2010 Express, Visual C++ 2010 Express, and Visual C# 2010 Express - will remain available for free download.

Learn more about Visual Studio 11 Express products here

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