IIS Express Offers the Features of IIS with the Ease of Use of ASP.NET Development Server

IIS Express is a free web server that works with Windows XP or higher and contains features familiar to users of IIS combined with the usability of the ASP.NET Development Server.

IIS Express was designed to be light, feature-rich and easy to use. It will work with both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 and can be used without making any changes to your code. Those developers in offices with particularly security-conscious IT departments will appreciate that it does not require an administrator account to run.

This opens a number of possibilities to ASP.NET developers and others interested in a web server that is feature-rich and can be up and running in no time. The installation package is less than 10 megs, and it installs in a snap. In addition, it doesn’t listen on any remote ports, which IT departments will appreciate.

IIS Express contains many web server features missing from ASP.NET Development Server, including: media support, SSL, URL rewrite and support for other IIS 7 modules. Even better, it supports the same extensibility model.

Configuring VS 2010 to use IIS Express instead of ASP.NET Development Server is easily accomplished. In addition, IIS Express can be installed alongside ASP.NET Development Server and IIS 7 with no conflicts.

One of the most popular elements of ASP.NET Development Server is the ability to quickly run a website from a directory on disk with the press of F5, and this has been included in IIS Express. Since sites are stored under user directories, developers won’t need an administrator account to run IIS Express.

If you’re developing a secure website and were frustrated by your inability to use ASP.NET Development Server to test it, you’ll be pleased to know that IIS Express automatically installs a self-signed certificate and allows you as the developer to use SSL without requiring a higher-level account. Since IIS Express uses the IIS 7 code base, web developers will be able to test their sites as if they were running on an IIS 7 web server.

A public beta of IIS Express will be available shortly.

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