Installing vs .NET

VS .NET's installation process is self-explanatory. Please note that all existing IIS applications are mapped to new Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI) extension during installation of the current Alpha. As far as I know, this will be fixed in the Beta. Existing installations of an older framework, VS .NET 2002, or VS .NET 2003 don't cause any problems. Currently I use all three versions on one machine.

After you install VS .NET, a new group, Microsoft Visual Studio Whidbey, is available in your Start menu. Start it by clicking the Microsoft Visual Studio codename Whidbey link. The IDE's documentation is accessible via the Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 Documentation link. The IDE's documentation describes the improvements in ASP.NET and introduces the new VS .NET version. If you've installed the new .NET Framework SDK, you're able to start the voluminous reference separately via a link in the newly created Microsoft .NET Framework SDK v1.2 group.

As you can see in the group description and in the file system, the .NET Framework version is 1.2. There are historical reasons for using this version number, but the next version number will be 2.0 in the RTM version (it's probably 2.0 already in the Beta version).

Note

If you're using Windows Server 2003, you'll need to enable the ASP.NET 1.2 (2.0) ISAPI extension manually. Start the Internet Service Manager, choose Web Service Extensions, activate ASP.NET v1.2 ISAPI, and click Enable.