Latest Microsoft Blogs

There's a treasure trove of interesting stuff over at http://www.codeplex.com/aspnet . It's a bunch of potential future stuff that the ASP.NET team is working on. That's where you can get builds of ASP.NET MVC, Dynamic Data Futures, and new AJAX stuff. Two days ago a new CodePlex release snuck up on the site. It's a potential new feature , so it could go nowhere, or we could make T-shirts and sing its praises. Could go either way. No promises. Justin Beck, an ASP.NET intern, prototyped and design it, then Marcin Dobosz, an ASP.NET Developer tidied it up nicely. Right now it's called ASP.NET Generated Image and you can get a release today . Why should you care? I've done a lot of HttpHandlers that generate images. It's...

I wanted to clear up a bit of confusion I’ve seen around the web about ASP.NET MVC and the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. ASP.NET MVC was not released as part of SP1. I repeat, ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 does not include ASP.NET MVC. What was released with SP1 was the ASP.NET Routing feature, which is in use by both ASP.NET MVC and Dynamic Data. The Routing feature is my first Framework RTM feature to ship at Microsoft! We also shipped a bunch of other features such as Dynamic Data , and this short list of breaking changes . I hope that clears things up and I apologize for the confusion. And for my next feat, I’m going to try and read your mind, oooooh! Right now, you’re thinking something along the lines of, Ok, so ASP.NET MVC didn’t ship as part...

In Preview 2 or Preview 3 of ASP.NET (I forget which), we introduced the concept of Action Filters . Sounds much more exciting than your run-of-the-mill LayOnTheCouchMunchingChipsWatchingInfomercialsFilter , that I originally proposed to the team. Thankfully, that was rejected. An action filter is an attribute you can slap on an action method in order to run some code before and after the action method executes. Typically, an action filter represents a cross-cutting concern to your action method. Output caching is a good example of a cross-cutting concern. In CodePlex Preview 4 of ASP.NET MVC , we split out our action filters into four types of filters, each of which is an interface. IAuthorizationFilter IActionFilter IResultFilter IExceptionFilter...

The Gu has announced another regular drop of ASP.NET MVC . This one is Preview 3 and the goodness can be found at the http://www.asp.net/mvc/ landing page. How does this relate to Visual Studio 2008/.NET 3.5 SP1 Beta It doesn't. For now ASP.NET MVC is an out-of-band Web downloadable thing. It's bin deployable (meaning you don't HAVE to put them in the GAC) and you don't even need to tell your hosting/ISP. They are what they are - three DLLs in a folder. Bam. Phil has more details on his blog from last week with regard to MVC Preview 2 , but the idea still holds. He says: "MVC Preview 3 will not be affected by having SP1 installed. Preview 3 will include newer privately versioned bin deployable builds of the Routing and Abstractions...

In a recent post I expressed a few thoughts on using a DSL instead of an XML config file. I followed that up with a technical look at monkey patching CLR objects using IronRuby , which explores a tiny bit of interop. These posts were precursors to this post in which I apply these ideas to an implementation that allows me to define ASP.NET MVC Routes using IronRuby. Also included in this download is an incomplete implementation of an IronRuby view engine. I haven't yet implemented layouts. IronRubyMvcDemo.zip Download (4.93 MB) This implementation works with the latest CodePlex drop of MVC . To use routes written in Ruby, reference the IronRubyMvcLibrary from your MVC Web Application and import the IronRubyMvcLibrary.Routing namespace into...

I just finished my session titled "Internet Explorer 7 From CSS to RSS: How To Take Full Advantage" here at Web Design World, and it went over pretty well. Cameron Moll is currently doing a session right now, so we did lose quite a few people to him, but he's an excellent speaker and is showing some really cool CSS and design stuff, so I understand why they're over there. I talked about some of the cool features around IE7, like what quirks mode is vs. standards mode; how to use RSS on your site, how to implement OpenSearch on your page, and then finally some of the cool CSS fixes that we made for IE7. I've uploaded my slides along with this post so that the info can be shared. I'm don't have the samples that I showed available, but much of...

I just finished my keynote for Web Design World in Boston. The topic was "Internet Explorer 7: The Route To Standards Compliance". It was the first "keynote" that I've ever given, and I think it went really well. I had several people come up afterwards and compliment me on the presentation. I was quite happy with it! I usually don't have a problem getting up and speaking in front of people, and the audience was great. I said I would post the keynote slides, and wanted to share a few URL that I mentioned in the presentation. MSDN IE Web Site: http://msdn.com/ie Create your own OpenSearch provider: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx IE Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie RSS Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com I'll post...

A few people have asked, but I figured I'd post a quick note about why I sign my emails "PEte" instead of "Pete". And yes, there is a good reason. Well, at least I think it's good. http://blogs.msdn.com/petel/pages/pete-vs-pete.aspx PEte ;) Read More...

IE6 VPC I can't believe how much of a success shipping the IE6 VPC image was! The fact that we got Slashdotted , picked up by TechMeme , Mary Jo Foley and several other big publications, and big blogs was fantastic. Beyond what I would have expected. And with few exceptions, the feedback has been positive. Without a doubt, we're going to be continuing this process. The images will stay relatively the same, we'll just push out the time bombing date each time. To date, we've had almost 60,000 downloads! Several of you have asked why the image doesn't pass WGA, preventing you from installing IE7 on it. In order to release a VPC like this, we to deactivate the product key we use to create the image. If we didn't, it would be possible to extract...

I think the biggest question people asked about the IE6 VPC image was when will it be available? How about right now! After a rather late night last night, and a bit of a false start, I uploaded the VPC image this morning, and it's gone live. The image contains Windows XP SP2, IE6 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit. It clocks in at a 496meg download, and unpacks to about 1.5 gigs. Internet Explorer 6 Application Compatibility VPC Image The image is set to expire on April 1, 2007 (it's not an April Fools Joke). If there is enough demand, we'll most likely release another one in March some time, and extend the expiry date. I'll make another post later today with a link to the IE Blog post about this with more info. Read More...