Aiming to reach a larger audience of software developers, Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced slimmed-down “Express” editions of its Visual Studio developer tool for specific programming languages.

Microsoft will ship a version of its Visual Studio Express 2012 for building Windows desktop applications, reversing an earlier decision to limit the Express version of the toolkit to building ...

Microsoft began offering this week Beta 2 releases of its free Visual Studio 2010 Express products, which are intended to enable students, hobbyists, and novices to build Windows and Web applications.

Previously, these packages were limited to Metro, Azure, Windows Phone, and the Web, but developer pressure has led to Microsoft offering a desktop version After hearing objections from developers, ...

Microsoft Wednesday said that an entry-level edition of its Visual Studio tools will remain free and available for use without restrictions for developers. Microsoft initially offered Visual Studio ...