A Web application can be almost anything, from an Active Server Pages (ASP) file that returns different information depending on how a user fills out a form to a multi-tiered application that queries a database and returns information, such as the Island Hopper News sample. Visual Studio makes it possible for you to use the development skills you already have to create powerful Web solutions using the latest Web technologies.
The Visual Studio tools work together to help you create integrated Web applications. You can leverage Visual Basic and Visual C++ to build server-side Web components, and then use Visual InterDev to integrate these components into a thin-client, HTML-based application. Also, many of the Visual Studio tools are enhanced this release to make it easier to build data-centric Web applications.
This section looks at what each Visual Studio tool offers to support Web applications. For more information see any of the following topics.