Re: I am confused about the differences between visual web
developer and visual studio 2005

You can find the differences here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700921.aspx

Express editions are free editions and are made for their specific purposes with
a few limitations. For example, the web developer is only for web development,
C# Express is only for windows applications development, while studio has
everything with multi-language support.

Are developers suppose to develop their asp.net/vb.net web applications in
visual web developer or through visual studio 2005.  Both offer to build web
sites so I am a little confused being new to this area.  Visual web developer
appears to only come as the express edition without the feature to copy over the
project files to the production side.  I could not find any info about the
differences(purposes) between the two.

Thankyou for the quick response.  In other words visual studio developer edition
will do most if not all that visual web developer can do? Are you saying that I
should as a professional developer concentrate on using visual studio instead of
visual web developer?

Have a look here
http://blogs.msdn.com/mikhailarkhipov/archive/2006/06/26/647516.aspx

Visual Studio will do everything that Express does plus much more. However,
Express is free.  So yes, I personally would invest in Visual Studio, even if it
is lowest edition - it will still be able to provide more. For example,
extensibility alone is worth it, there are many useful free add-in available.