Geeky Bob

Earlier today the IIS Express team released the IIS 8.0 Express Beta, and there are some great new features in this release! Here are just a few of the highlights:

64-bit Support

IIS 8.0 Express now fully supports 64-bit application development. When you install IIS Express on a 64-bit system, you actually get both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of IIS 8.0 Express installed, which allows you to use the version that matches your project's needs.

Customizable Home Directory

The default home directory for IIS Express is "%UserProfile%\Documents\IISExpress", but with IIS 8.0 Express you can start the iisexpress.exe process with the "/userhome" parameter to specify the home directory for your projects; this makes it easier for you to use IIS 8.0 Express with multiple development applications.

AppCmd Support for Multiple ApplicationHost.config Files

As a complement to allowing users to customize their IIS Express home directory, IIS 8.0 Express contains a new version of AppCmd.exe that supports a new "/AppHostConfig" parameter, which makes it possible to use AppCmd.exe to edit multiple ApplicationHost.config files. By default AppCmd.exe for IIS 7 or IIS 7.5 Express will only edit the ApplicationHost.config file in your "%WinDir%\System32\InetSrv\Config" or "%UserProfile%\Documents\IISExpress" folder, but the AppCmd.exe command-line utility that ships with IIS 8.0 Express allows you to edit ApplicationHost.config files anywhere on your system.

You can read more about this release at the following URL:

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/1266/iis-80-express-beta-readme/

Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/