IIS 7.5 Express Official Release Highlights

The first official release of IIS Express was announced last week. It shipped as a part of the January Web Release, which also includes ASP.NET MVC3, WebMatrix, NuGet and Orchard.

IIS Express is a simple and lightweight version of IIS that is optimized for developers. It is free, supports the powerful features of IIS, and can run on Windows XP and above. I’ll describe the IIS Express official release below.

For information regarding the January Release, please look at ScottGu’s blog post.

Changes in IIS Express since Beta 3

Compared to Beta 3, there aren’t many new features. The official release does differ in the following respects.

- We’ve added support for 9 languages, besides English.

- The official release can be distributed (more details below).

- Numerous bug fixes have been made.

Installing IIS Express

You can install IIS Express using Web Platform Installer or directly using the download center. See the following link for additional details.

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/868/iis-express-overview/#Installation

Using IIS Express

You can use IIS Express using WebMatrix, Visual Studio, or using the command line.

WebMatrix seamlessly uses IIS Express as its web server.

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta adds support for using IIS Express for development instead of Cassini. See ScottGu’s related blog post for more information.

In order to use IIS Express with Visual Studio 2008, you will need to launch IIS Express from the command line and manually configure VS to use it via the custom web server option.

You can also run IIS Express from the command line.

Distributing IIS Express

The official release allows you to distribute the IIS Express MSIs as-is. Since this is enabled by the licensing agreement, you don’t need special approval.

Note that you can’t distribute the IIS Express official release in any other way. For example, you can’t copy a subset of the binaries that are included in the MSI and ship them as part of your product. Please review the IIS 7.5 Express EULA before you distribute IIS Express.

Additional Information

We hope you enjoy using IIS Express and will love to hear your feedback. Here are some additional links that you might find useful.

IIS 7.5 Express Readme

IIS Express Overview

IIS Express FAQ

IIS Express Area on IIS.net

8 Comments

  • IIS Express 7.5 is redistributable for production. Where can i get Bootstrapper manifest for this?

  • >zenhgjjh: IIS Express 7.5 is redistributable for production. Where can i get Bootstrapper manifest for this?
    To make sure I understand, how exactly are you looking to deploy your app? E.g. do you plan on using ClickOnce?
    The license only allows the MSI to be redistributed. You can download the appropriate MSI for your language from here:
    www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx
    Also, please review the EULA using the link in the blog post.

  • I am Deploying the App using MSI Package. I am looking for Bootstrapper manifest for IIS Express so that I can get an option in Prerequistes of SetUp Package.

  • >>zenhgjjh: I am Deploying the App using MSI Package. I am looking for Bootstrapper manifest for IIS Express so that I can get an option in Prerequistes of SetUp Package.

    I'll post a manifest this week that you can use. It might take a couple of days. FYI, there are some online resources that can help you generate one:

    code.msdn.microsoft.com/bmg
    msdn.microsoft.com/.../ee335701.aspx

  • >> Does IIS Express work with Azure tools?

    No, Azure tools aren't supported.


  • zenhgjjh, I have posted a sample Bootstrapper Manifest with instructions. Hopefully this gets you going.

    http://blogs.iis.net/vaidyg/archive/2011/01/21/iis-express-bootstrapper-package.aspx

  • Thanks a lot

Comments have been disabled for this content.