Microsoft began offering this week Beta 2 releases of its free Visual Studio 2010 Express products, which are intended to enable students, hobbyists, and novices to build Windows and Web applications.
The Visual Studio Express Beta 2 features a new IDE, a new editor built in Windows Presentation Foundation, and support for .Net Framework 4. Also featured is multi-monitor support. Products are available on the Visual Studio Express Web site.
[ Earlier this week, Microsoft laid out plans for Visual Studio 2010. ]
The tools "offer an easy-to-acquire and easy-to-learn experience in a simple package and they are free," said Noah Coad, Microsoft Visual Studio program manager, in a blog post.
"Express now starts up with a streamlined user experience that focuses on the most common commands by hiding some of the more advanced menus and toolbars," Coad said.
Specific Beta 2 downloads including Visual C++ 2010 Express, Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, Visual C# 2010 Express and Visual Basic 2010 Express.
The company this week also released the second beta versions of its primary Visual Studio 2010 platform.
This story, "Microsoft offers second beta for Visual Studio Express," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in Microsoft at InfoWorld.com.