Microsoft has released a preview of WebMatrix -- a free, lightweight Web tool for building ASP.NET and PHP apps outside of Visual Studio.

One person familiar with WebMatrix is Telerik's Todd Anglin, who sees the tool as a "bridge" to Visual Studio for traditional open-source developers.

Obviously, there is an upgrade story in WebMatrix and it reaches out to people who are taking the low friction path toward PHP today and gives them a Microsoft ASP.NET-oriented solution. I think it will be interesting to see how it affects the existing Microsoft .NET community. Certainly, as you build tools that are easier and low barrier, reaching out to communities that don't use .NET today, it is bound to have some impact on your existing community."

Hopefully for Microsoft it won't be a bridge to nowhere.

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