Just saw this @ our good friends from neowin.net.
This is going to be a long Article and all quotes are from NeoWin.Net.
Neowin has been emailed anoymously, and exclusivly about Microsofts secret project, code named "saturn". It appears to be a free (microsoft- free???!!) asp editor that microsoft is developing that will allow developers to to run and test code on 95 upwards. Heres a snippet for you.
While application developers have long enjoyed development tools like Microsoft?s Visual Studio suite, development tools targeted to Web developers have been few and far between. Sure, there have been development tools targeted to HTML designers such as Microsoft?s FrontPage and Macromedia?s Dreamweaver, but Web developers creating the backend code for data-driven Web applications have had to use tools not quite fit for the job. We?ve either been forced into using glorified text editors like Visual InterDev or Homesite, or are using tools like Visual Studio .NET to create our ASP.NET Web pages, which, in many cases, is akin to killing a flea with a cannonball. Not to mention Visual Studio .NET?s imposing price tag. If it is your job to do application or Web development, the one thousand to twenty-five hundred dollar price tag of Visual Studio .NET is reasonable, but if you do ASP.NET development for pay or for fun on your spare time, purchasing Visual Studio .NET might not be an option.
Several months prior to the public ASP.NET Beta 2 release, the ASP.NET team at Microsoft took it upon themselves to create a tool that would be specifically designed for ASP.NET developers and ASP.NET developers alone, and carry with it a very sensible price tag ? free! Furthermore, the ASP.NET team did not want to restrict this tool or the ability to test ASP.NET Web pages to only those developers using Windows 2000 or Windows XP Pro. That is, their goal was to make this free, ASP.NET-specific editor able to run and to ?execute? ASP.NET Web pages on any version of Windows 95 or higher. Such a product, reasoned the ASP.NET team, would not only help the existing ASP.NET developer community, but also provide the motivation for those interested in jumping into ASP.NET.
This ASP.NET-specific product is called Project Saturn (or Saturn for short), and is currently in beta release, freely downloadable from Microsoft?s ASP.NET Web site, http://www.asp.net.( ed. - i couldnt find it here- but users who download the file will be able to see that it is still being edited - as if this document is soon to be published to allowed to people to download it). In this article I will be examining the ins and outs of Project Saturn, some of its most impressive features, and show how to start building ASP.NET Web applications using this new, awesome tool. That was the first post.
Updated : Microsoft "SATURN" - no, not satan
Well- after a few people downloading and trying out the program, heres some reviews and thoughts.
Anon: tried out Saturn for a while this afternoon. It is essentially a stripped-down version of VS.NET that just allows you do to ASP.NET. It has all the components from VS.NET and even has a form for downloading new components from Microsoft's online component gallery.
There are many additions that are improvements over VS.NET. There are more templates (reporting pages, logon pages, etc). There is also the ability to have templated code. Currently there is only a "Send Email Message" code template. It allows you to fill out all the information about email address and subject and it automaticly generates the VB or C# code for it. I assume they will create more "code builders" before the complete release.
It also has a built-in webserver for serving the pages it creates, and can integrate with IIS, also. I have not found WebDAV support for connecting to remote servers. Overall, it's a nice looking product and if it will truely be released for free, it may make people wish thay had not shelled out the money for VS.NET just to do ASP.NET.
Thunder hood: Downloaded and tested the beta program from the Saturn site - it's very cool indeed. The UI is a mix of Office XP and Visual Studio.NET (more the latter than the former), and it has a very cool bag of tricks to make ASP.NET developer's lives easier. It uses VBScript and C# interchangeably, and has pretty incredible XML support.
Project Saturn : Updated again!
and finally this:Ok... funs over kiddies. Microsoft has sent us an email to take down the links etc- so as requested we have. Never mind... im sure they'll leak some more stuff another day.
Hi Tom, Saturn is an unreleased project ? but still retains full copyright ownership. Please remove the download from your site immediately. We appreciate the enthusiasm for the project ? but it is not right (or legal) to distribute it off of your site.
But before Microsoft pull the files from Neowin I got the Release Notes if you want a read!LOL so be quick.
This is going to be a long Article and all quotes are from NeoWin.Net.
Neowin has been emailed anoymously, and exclusivly about Microsofts secret project, code named "saturn". It appears to be a free (microsoft- free???!!) asp editor that microsoft is developing that will allow developers to to run and test code on 95 upwards. Heres a snippet for you.
While application developers have long enjoyed development tools like Microsoft?s Visual Studio suite, development tools targeted to Web developers have been few and far between. Sure, there have been development tools targeted to HTML designers such as Microsoft?s FrontPage and Macromedia?s Dreamweaver, but Web developers creating the backend code for data-driven Web applications have had to use tools not quite fit for the job. We?ve either been forced into using glorified text editors like Visual InterDev or Homesite, or are using tools like Visual Studio .NET to create our ASP.NET Web pages, which, in many cases, is akin to killing a flea with a cannonball. Not to mention Visual Studio .NET?s imposing price tag. If it is your job to do application or Web development, the one thousand to twenty-five hundred dollar price tag of Visual Studio .NET is reasonable, but if you do ASP.NET development for pay or for fun on your spare time, purchasing Visual Studio .NET might not be an option.
Several months prior to the public ASP.NET Beta 2 release, the ASP.NET team at Microsoft took it upon themselves to create a tool that would be specifically designed for ASP.NET developers and ASP.NET developers alone, and carry with it a very sensible price tag ? free! Furthermore, the ASP.NET team did not want to restrict this tool or the ability to test ASP.NET Web pages to only those developers using Windows 2000 or Windows XP Pro. That is, their goal was to make this free, ASP.NET-specific editor able to run and to ?execute? ASP.NET Web pages on any version of Windows 95 or higher. Such a product, reasoned the ASP.NET team, would not only help the existing ASP.NET developer community, but also provide the motivation for those interested in jumping into ASP.NET.
This ASP.NET-specific product is called Project Saturn (or Saturn for short), and is currently in beta release, freely downloadable from Microsoft?s ASP.NET Web site, http://www.asp.net.( ed. - i couldnt find it here- but users who download the file will be able to see that it is still being edited - as if this document is soon to be published to allowed to people to download it). In this article I will be examining the ins and outs of Project Saturn, some of its most impressive features, and show how to start building ASP.NET Web applications using this new, awesome tool. That was the first post.
Updated : Microsoft "SATURN" - no, not satan
Well- after a few people downloading and trying out the program, heres some reviews and thoughts.
Anon: tried out Saturn for a while this afternoon. It is essentially a stripped-down version of VS.NET that just allows you do to ASP.NET. It has all the components from VS.NET and even has a form for downloading new components from Microsoft's online component gallery.
There are many additions that are improvements over VS.NET. There are more templates (reporting pages, logon pages, etc). There is also the ability to have templated code. Currently there is only a "Send Email Message" code template. It allows you to fill out all the information about email address and subject and it automaticly generates the VB or C# code for it. I assume they will create more "code builders" before the complete release.
It also has a built-in webserver for serving the pages it creates, and can integrate with IIS, also. I have not found WebDAV support for connecting to remote servers. Overall, it's a nice looking product and if it will truely be released for free, it may make people wish thay had not shelled out the money for VS.NET just to do ASP.NET.
Thunder hood: Downloaded and tested the beta program from the Saturn site - it's very cool indeed. The UI is a mix of Office XP and Visual Studio.NET (more the latter than the former), and it has a very cool bag of tricks to make ASP.NET developer's lives easier. It uses VBScript and C# interchangeably, and has pretty incredible XML support.
Project Saturn : Updated again!
and finally this:Ok... funs over kiddies. Microsoft has sent us an email to take down the links etc- so as requested we have. Never mind... im sure they'll leak some more stuff another day.
Hi Tom, Saturn is an unreleased project ? but still retains full copyright ownership. Please remove the download from your site immediately. We appreciate the enthusiasm for the project ? but it is not right (or legal) to distribute it off of your site.
But before Microsoft pull the files from Neowin I got the Release Notes if you want a read!LOL so be quick.
