Microsoft Releases IIS 7.5 Express

Thanks to a new move on Microsoft’s part, ASP.NET development may get cheaper and easier (again).  This week, Microsoft released Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 Express, a tool that’s supposed to help developers build and run ASP.NET sites and applications.
Here’s part of the official overview highlighting its advantages: “IIS 7.5 Express enhances your ability to develop and test web applications on Windows by combining the power of IIS 7.5 with the convenience of a lightweight web server like the ASP.NET Development Server (also known as Cassini).”
Then, to be more specific, benefits are supposed to include the fact that “[t]he same web server that runs on your production server is now available on your development computer,” and “[m]ost tasks can be done without the need for administrative privileges.”
Plus, “IIS 7.5 Express runs on Windows XP and all later versions of Windows,” and “[m]any users can work independently on the same computer.”
That’s a pretty nice list of perks.  It looks even nicer, too, when you factor in this tidbit: IIS 7.5 Express is free.
So IIS 7.5 Express is definitely likely to see some use in the ASP.NET community.  If you’re interested, you can download it here in any of ten languages, and the transfer should take no more than ten minutes even for dial-up users.