I wrote a blog item over on the O'Reilly Inside Port 25 site titled: Do We Need an Open Source Friendly Visual Studio Express? I had not tried the latest free Microsoft Visual Studio Express Edition(s). So, I went over to...

Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition

...to download the web developer version and test it on a simple HTML file I needed to work on this week. It needed .Net Framework 3.5 (not on my XP box) and installed it along with the Express Edition. This meant, of course, that a reboot was required before I could use it. Not a good start. After the reboot (which took a long time on my old XP box), I fired up Visual Web Developer and opened up what I had so far in my little HTML file. Turns out that Visual Web Developer really wants to control an entire site and seems to prefer an ASP project. It didn't want to let me do simple things like italicize a word using its toolbar. I could do that manually, of course. But, what is the point of having a smart editor that won't let me do simple things to get familiar with it? Am uninstalling Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition right after I click Save on this blog entry.