I have a few years of experience with ASP.NET, but until now I have only used the web server of my hosting provider, so I have no experience with installing ASP.NET. For some reasons (mainly testing) I consider installing on my own system, but I'm afraid I get lost as a beginner.
I had my computer purchased with Windows already installed, so I don't have a Windows installation cd with IIS. Also I use Dreamweaver 8 for my coding, so I don't have Visual Studio. Somewhere I read, with ASP.NET version 3+ you don't even have to install a web server to test things locally. My question is: will I get somewhere?
Just before posting this, I read the FAQ of this forum and came across this link of the Web Platform Installer (http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9730538). I am not sure what is going to happen when I choose to install. Does it install both IIS and the .NET framework?