Latest Microsoft Blogs

Wow, what a week of innovation for the Microsoft Web Platform.  This week we released a ton of new software which, if you haven’t already, you’ve got to check out.  Here is a quick overview:   IIS Search Engine Optimization v1 final release! The IIS team shipped the final release of IIS SEO toolkit which makes it easier to optimize your Website for search engines .  It acts like a mini-search engine on your computer, scans your site and then provides useful tips for how to improve the relevance of your site to search engines.  This tool is now out of beta and available for download through Web PI .    ASP.NET MVC 2 beta! The ASP.NET team has been hard at work on the second release of MVC, which is now available...

The ASP.NET and Web tools for Visual Studio teams have been cranking away on this release all year long and we’re excited to launch Beta 2 today!  MSDN subscribers can download it today …it will be available for everyone on Wednesday.  There are a ton of new features in this release, this MSDN page gives a good overview.  Here are some highlights for Web developers: Numerous improvements to Web Forms including more control over viewstate, meta tag control, new browser support, routing support for clean URLs , more control over HTML with FormView and ListView controls, filtering support in data source controls, better Web standards support and accessibility New Dynamic Data features including a RAD experience for quickly building...

The ASP.NET team has been cranking away on more AJAX goodness…this time with a significant update to the Microsoft Ajax Library – Preview 6.  This update includes updates to our client-side AJAX library that can be used with any type of Web application as well as deep support within ASP.NET for AJAX across ASP.NET 2.0, 3.5 and 4.0…for both Web Forms and MVC style projects.  In addition to the updated AJAX support, the team is shipping a cool new AJAX minifier tool which reduces the size of your JavaScript files to improve performance.  You can download the release from the CodePlex project and read more information on the team blogs below: Scott – Announcing Microsoft Ajax Library… Bertrand – Entirely unobtrusive and imperative...

Just ran into this and thought I’d share.  If you are trying to connect to SQL Server from your Web application running on Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 and you’re getting a message that looks like this: Failed to generate a user instance of SQL Server due to failure in retrieving the user's local application data path. Please make sure the user has a local user profile on the computer. The connection will be closed. I can probably help you out.  The IIS team made a change to the default identity of the worker process.   Starting with IIS 7.5, Application Pools run with a unique identity based on the Application Pool name, rather than NetworkService – the default identity for IIS6 and IIS7.  The primary reason for...

Today we’re launching a number of really cool things for Web developers.   WebsiteSpark WebsiteSpark is a program designed to jumpstart Web development for individuals or small companies who make a living on the Web.  The program is free to join and runs for three years with no cost obligations other than a $100 program fee, payable on exit.  What is in it for you? Windows Web Server 2008 R2 – 4 processor licenses for production use! SQL Server 2008 – 4 processor licenses for production use! Expression Studio 3 – 1 license including Expression Web, Blend and Sketchflow Expression Web – 2 licenses Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition – 3 licenses DotNetPanel control panel (to manage your servers, and allow your customers to...

The ASP.NET team just released the near-final build of ASP.NET MVC!  Download it today!  The tools team added a ton of new features in this release that you’ll want to check out – ScottGu outlines all of the new features and improvements in his gigantic post http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/01/27/asp-net-mvc-1-0-release-candidate-now-available.aspx Working with the ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer tools team is a new adventure for me and I’ve been super impressed with the people and the products they are cranking out.  MVC in particular is a very impressive project that offers a powerful alternative to the traditional ASP.NET webforms model of development.  If you haven’t checked out ASP.NET before, or haven’t...

I’m excited to announce the immediate availability of the Microsoft Web Platform Installer v 1.0 .  The Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a simple tool that makes it very easy to download and install Microsoft's entire Web Platform in one step, including IIS, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installer’s user interface, you can choose to install either specific products or the entire Microsoft Web Platform onto your computer. The Web PI also helps keep your products up to date by always offering the latest additions to the Web Platform. Web PI 1.0 supports Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista and of course Windows 2008.    Auto-update...

If you’ve ever tried to find information on how to install a particular IIS7 feature, or how to configure it using the IIS Manager tool, AppCmd.exe, the new Microsoft.Web.Administration interface or WMI provider, this post is for you.  Every IIS7 feature is now comprehensively documented on http://www.iis.net/ConfigReference/   This IIS7 Technical Reference provides a list of all the built-in IIS7 features, alphabetized for quick access.  If you know the configuration name you are interested in, just type it into the URL…for example if you’re looking for information on the system.webServer <caching> setting, type: http://www.iis.net/ConfigReference/system.webServer/caching and whoila, you now have a complete set of reference...

Choices abound for those looking for a place to run Web applications on Windows.  The purpose of this blog post is to show a quick walkthrough of how to setup your first Windows computer in the cloud on Amazon EC2.  If you’re already familiar with hosting and the cloud, skip the next few paragraphs.  The traditional approach is to use a Windows hosting provider, like DiscountASP.NET , MaximumASP.com , CrystalTech.com , etc.  These long-time Windows hosting providers offer a flat monthly fee for shared (Web site) and dedicated server (full server) offerings ranging from a few dollars a month to a few hundred dollars a month.  This works great for anyone who wants to set up everything from a simple family or community...

Starting up a Web business, especially in this economy, isn’t easy.  Microsoft wants to make it easier.  A few weeks ago we announced Microsoft BizSpark , a new program specifically for Web start-ups which makes it very easy to get access to the latest versions of Windows, SQL, Visual Studio – with full Microsoft support – very easy and absolutely free to get started!  What do I get with BizSpark? Software All the software included in the Visual Studio Team System Team Suite (VSTS) with MSDN Premium subscription Expression Studio (Version 2), plus VSTS Team Foundation Server Standard Edition - for the entire development team Production license use rights, to deploy, host and support Startup’s "software as a service"...