The Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project model uses the same project, build and compilation semantics as the Visual Studio .NET 2003 web project model:

• All files contained within the project are defined within a project file (as well as the assembly references and other project meta-data settings). Files under the web's file-system root that are not defined in the project file are not considered part of the web project.
• All code files within the project are compiled into a single assembly that is built and persisted in the \bin directory on each compile.
• The compilation system uses a standard MSBuild based compilation process. This can be extended and customized using standard MSBuild extensibility rules. You can control the build through the property pages, for example, name the output assembly or add pre- and post-build actions.

Because the Web Application Project model uses the same conceptual semantics as the Visual Studio .NET 2003 web project model, it can make migrating projects much easier—minimizing code changes. The key changes in this release from the previous release are:

• Team Build Support with VSTS
• Strongly-typed access to resources defined within the App_GlobalResources directory
• Custom Build Tool Action support
• Edit and Continue support