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Visual Studio Express was a set of integrated development environments that Microsoft created and released for free. They were function-limited versions of the paid Visual Studio and required mandatory registration. Express editions started with Visual Studio 2005.^[1]

In 2013, Microsoft began supplanting Visual Studio Express with more feature-rich Community editions of Visual Studio, which are available free of charge with a different license that disallows some scenarios in enterprise settings.

The last version of Visual Studio Express was released in 2017 for desktops only.

2005-2010: Language-centric editions

History

Visual Studio Express 2005, the first of the Express editions, was released in October 2005.^{[citation needed]} It ran on Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 and later. The first service pack for Express 2005 was released in December 2006. This version was free and required no registration.

In November 2007, Visual Studio Express 2008 reached general availability, with its first service pack being released in August 2008.^{[citation needed]} Although it can develop apps compatible with Windows 2000, it requires Windows XP Service Pack 3. Mandatory registration was introduced with this version.

Express 2010 was released in April 2010, alongside Visual Studio 2010. Although most of its components ran on Windows XP, its Windows Phone component needed Windows Vista.

Characteristics

The 2005, 2008, and 2010 versions of Visual Studio Express consist of several standalone IDEs, each of which is focused on a single programming language:

• Visual Basic Express (the Visual Basic .NET language)
• Visual C++ Express (the Visual C++ language)
• Visual C# Express (the C# language)
• Visual J# Express (the J# language, 2005 only)
• Visual Web Developer Express (ASP.NET)
• Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone (2010 only)

References

External links

• Visual Studio Express at Microsoft
• Microsoft Visual Studio Express at Wikipedia