Microsoft Relents On Metro-Only Visual Studio Express

snydeq writes "After hearing objections from developers, Microsoft will offer a version of its Visual Studio Express 2012 package for desktop application development after all. The company had previously announced that Express 2012 editions, which are free, platform-specific versions of the Visual Studio 2012 IDE, would be limited to Windows 8 Metro-style development as well as development for the Windows Azure cloud platform, Windows Phone, and Web applications. 'We heard from our community that developers want to have for Windows desktop development the same great experience and access to the latest Visual Studio 2012 features at the Express level. ... And it will enable developers working on open source applications to target existing and previous versions of Windows.'"

azure community development edition experience express ide metro-only metro-style microsoft objections relents web applications windows