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.

The team building the next release of Visual Studio has responded to developer criticism and is adding support for building Windows 8 Desktop apps to VS 2012 Express. Last month, there was quite a bit ...

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, ...