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...

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...

Microsoft’s strategy with open source has evolved over the past several years as we strive to make Windows the platform of choice for customers.  My team has participated in that process first hand, we’ve worked hard with the PHP community to ensure PHP runs great on Windows , integrated PHP installation into the Microsoft Web Platform Installer , and engaged some of the most popular PHP applications like WordPress , Drupal , and SugarCRM to ensure customers have a great experience running these applications on Windows and IIS.  We’ve also worked closely with the jQuery project to make it a natural part of building applications with ASP.NET.  Today I am happy to be a part of the announcement that Microsoft is sponsoring an open...

Today is a BIG day for the Microsoft Web Platform and a BIG day for the WEB.  I’m down in Las Vegas at MIX and I just got off stage from the keynote where I demo’d just one of the many exciting and cool new things that make the Microsoft Web Platform better than ever.  For example: Using the new Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta , you can now download and install all of the technologies that make up the Microsoft Web Platform, and some of the world’s most popular Web applications, in one simple tool. With the new Windows Web App Gallery , you can now discover world-class ASP.NET and PHP applications, read reviews from the community, and submit your own comments, as well as launch installation of an application in one click right from...

The Application Request Router (ARR) has reached final release and is now available as a free, fully-supported download for IIS7!  ARR enables Web server administrators and hosting providers and to increase Web application reliability and scalability through rule-based routing and load balancing of HTTP server requests. With ARR, administrators can optimize resource utilization for application servers to reduce management costs for Web farms and shared hosting environments.  Read more about the key scenarios and features of ARR on the IIS.net/extension site. For more information on the ARR release, including new features just added as well as links to documentation and how-to get started, see Won’s blog post (Won ran the ARR project...

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...