IIS Express Here

Wha?

Get an IIS Express process running in the current or selected directory, and open a browser to that site. This is mainly useful when you're playing with frontend stuff and want to browse a site in a directory. It's necessary to run most sites off a server rather than file:// urls, since you don't need to specify a directory specific <base> tag in your pages.

Tested on Windows 7 with IIS Express 8.0

Install

• Save serve.bat somewhere.
• Update serve.reg, changing the paths in the command keys to the location where you saved serve.bat
• Apply serve.reg to your registry.

Use

Right click on either a folder or directory background and select "IIS Express Here"

You'll end up with a nifty cmd window with request logging, and your browser will open to the site you just started serving. Press 'Q' to stop IIS Express when you're finished.

Notes

1. You'll need to have IIS Express installed.
2. IIS Express will return nothing but 500 errors if you try to browse a folder without an index.html file in it, rather than 403s or whatever.

Future

1. Colored log output?
2. IIS Express can host Node.JS apps - could we get that working?
3. You should be able to get things like Cassette to work to compile assests via a custom applcationhost.config in the directory that's being served.