Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects

Web Application Projects provide a companion web project model that can be used as an alternative to the built-in Web Site Project in Visual Studio 2005. This new model is ideal for web site developers who are converting a Visual Studio .Net 2003 web project to Visual Studio 2005. (Released May 8, 2006)

Support for Web Application Projects is now a feature of Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1.  A separate add-on and update to Visual Studio is no longer needed.  If you did install the Web Application Projects Add-on you must first uninstall it before installing Visual Studio Service Pack 1. Steps for installing support for Web Application Projects: If you have the “Microsoft Visual Studio Web Application Projects” add-on installed, uninstall it. Install Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team Suite Service Pack 1 If you need the deprecated “Microsoft Visual Studio Web Application Projects” installer you can find it here.

Overview

The Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project model uses the same project, build and compilation semantics as the Visual Studio .NET 2003 web project model:

• All files contained within the project are defined within a project file (as well as the assembly references and other project meta-data settings). Files under the web's file-system root that are not defined in the project file are not considered part of the web project.
• All code files within the project are compiled into a single assembly that is built and persisted in the \bin directory on each compile.
• The compilation system uses a standard MSBuild based compilation process. This can be extended and customized using standard MSBuild extensibility rules. You can control the build through the property pages, for example, name the output assembly or add pre- and post-build actions.

Because the Web Application Project model uses the same conceptual semantics as the Visual Studio .NET 2003 web project model, it can make migrating projects much easier—minimizing code changes. The key changes in this release from the previous release are:

• Team Build Support with VSTS
• Strongly-typed access to resources defined within the App_GlobalResources directory
• Custom Build Tool Action support
• Edit and Continue support

To fully enable Web Application Projects in Visual Studio 2005, you will need to first install Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 – Update to Support Web Application Projects, then this add-in. Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects are not supported in Visual Web Developer Express Edition.

Support

Support lifecycle for the Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Projects mirrors the Visual Studio 2005 product.  For support,  http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=en-us&prid=9511&gprid=344272.

Operating Systems

Windows 2000; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP

Supported Products

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Testers