When you have finished making edits to your web site in the Visual Web Developer Express IDE, you will need to run your application so that you can verify that it works as expected.  To run the application click the green play button at the top of the IDE.  The button looks similar to a play button on a CD player and if you put your cursor over it, it will say “Start Debugging” in the tooltip.  **The first time you run the web site, you will be asked if you want to enable debugging.  Choose the Modify the Web.config file to enable debugging option and click OK.

Visual Web Developer will launch your web browser to the following URL: http://localhost:1833/YourApplication/Default.aspx.  The port number 1833 may be different on your computer and the application name YourApplication will be different as well, depending on what you named your web site.  Default.aspx is the name of the default web form that is set as the Start Page for the web site.  We will learn how to change the default start page later.

Once the web form comes up, you should be able to begin interacting with your web site, by clicking buttons and whatever other controls your web forms contain.  At this point you can perform unit tests to make sure that your code is behaving as expected.

When you run your web site in Visual Web Developer you will notice that a new small icon gets created in your task bar and if you position your cursor over it the tooltip says “ASP.NET Development Server”.  That application is a mini version of Internet Information Server (IIS) that Visual Web Developer and Visual Studio contain to allow you to unit test your web site without having to install IIS on your computer.  This feature makes programming and testing ASP.NET web applications easier than ever.  Click here to watch the sample video for this lesson.