WebMatix Gets Azure, Version Control Support, Remote Editing and more... WebMatrix 3 RTW's

ScottGu's Blog - Announcing the Release of WebMatrix 3

I’m excited to announce the release of WebMatrix 3.  WebMatrix is a free, lightweight web development tool we first introduced in 2010, and which provides a great, focused web development experience for ASP.NET, PHP, and Node.js.  

Today’s release includes a ton of great new features.  You can easily get started by downloading it, and watching an introduction video:

Download

Demo Video

Some of the highlights of today’s release include deep Windows Azure integration, source control tooling for Git and TFS, and a new remote editing experience. 

Windows Azure Integration

With WebMatrix 3, we are making it really easy to move to the cloud. 

The first time you launch WebMatrix 3, there’s an option to sign into Windows Azure.  You can sign in using the same credentials you use with the Windows Azure Management Portal:

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The end result is a simple, fast and super effective way to edit your sites locally and host and manage them in Windows Azure. 

Watch this great video as Eric build a site with WebMatrix 3 and deploys it to Windows Azure.

Source Control with Git and TFS

One of the most requested features in WebMatrix 2 was support for version control.  WebMatrix 3 now supports both Git and TFS.  The source control experience is extensible, and we’ve worked with several partners to include rich support for Team Foundation Service, CodePlex and GitHub:

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The TFS experience is focused on making common source control tasks easy.  It matches up well with Team Foundation Service, our hosted TFS solution that provides free private Git and TFS repositories.

Watch these great videos of Justin giving a tour of the Git and TFS integration in WebMatrix 3

Remote Editing

In WebMatrix 2, we added the ability to open your Web Site directly from the Windows Azure Management Portal.  With WebMatrix 3, we’ve rounded out that experience by providing an amazing developer experience for live remote editing of your sites.   The new My Sites gallery now allows you to open existing web sites on your local machine, or to remotely edit sites that are hosted in Windows Azure:

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Watch this video of Thao showing you how to edit your live site on Windows Azure using WebMatrix 3

Summary

WebMatrix 3 includes a seamless experience for working with sites in Windows Azure, source control support for working with Git and TFS, and a vastly improved remote editing experience.  These are just a few of the hundreds of improvements throughout the application, including an extension for PHP validation and Typescript support. 

You can easily get started with WebMatrix by downloading it for free, and watching an introduction video about it:

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If you're jumping in the web or the cloud, this free tool is a great starting point. If you're already there, then it's STILL a great tool... :)