Latest Microsoft Blogs

Lot’s of new software for IIS, ASP.NET, AJAX and PHP this week

BillS IIS Blog : ASP.NET — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:13:44 GMT

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...(read more)

ASP.NET MVC 2 Custom Validation

you've been HAACKED — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:14:25 GMT

This is the third post in my series ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta and its new features. ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta Released (Release Announcement) Html.RenderAction and Html.Action ASP.NET MVC 2 Custom Validation In this post I will cover validation. No, not that kind of validation, though I do think you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you. Rather, I want to cover building a custom validation attribute using the base classes available in System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations . ASP.NET MVC 2 has built-in support for data annotation validation attributes for doing validation on a server. For details on how data annotations work with ASP.NET MVC 2, check out Brad’s blog post. But I won’t stop there. I’ll then cover how to hook into...(read more)

PDC09 Talk: Building Amazing Business Applications with Silverlight 4, RIA Services and Visual Studio 2010

Brad Abrams — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:30:00 GMT

I had a great time at my talk today at PDC2009 . I was able to spend much of the time in a demo… Here is a summary of that demo so you can walk through it on your own machine: What you need to get started: Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 Silverlight 4 Beta (now includes RIA Services ) Completed Solution (starting step and demo files ) Check out the slides Starting Off I am starting off with the new Business Application Template that gets installed with RIA Services. This new template includes: Pattern for page navigation Log\Logout and new user registration support Localizable User settings Shared Code For this demo, I am going to used a customized version of the template.. After you create the project,...(read more)

RIA Services: Jumpstarting RIA Development

Nikhil Kothari's Weblog — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:03:31 GMT

In my post on RIA Services: From Vision to Architecture , a while back (right after MIX09), I mentioned that I like to think of RIA Services as RAD for RIA. At that point we had a very early preview of framework bits with little tools support. A large part of jumpstarting your development actually centers around good tooling. VS2010 brings tooling for RIA Services (now: WCF RIA Services). Scott Hanselman demonstrated some key features used in building a Contacts application (as shown on the right) during the keynote at PDC09 . The latest version of RIA Services is now available for download. It works on .NET 4 and VS2010 as well. You can also check out a video tutorial on using RIA Services and Visual Studio 2010. In this post, I want to highlight...(read more)

HTML 5 intellisense and validation schema for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer

Visual Web Developer Team Blog — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:06:00 GMT

You all probably know that new HTML 5 standard is coming. We made a new intellisense schema that you can add to VS 2008 or VWD Express 2008 and get intellisense and validation on HTML 5 elements. Note that schema is for markup only, we do not have DOM2 update for jscript intellisense yet. How to install the schema: Download attached ZIP file. Place html_5.xsd in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Packages\schemas\html Run either x86 or x64 reg file depending on the OS and VS/VWD flavors installed. For example, for VWD Express installed on 64-bit OS run HTML-5-Schema-Reg-x64-VWD.reg and for VS 2008 installed on 32-bit OS run HTML-5-Schema-Reg-x86.reg. Restart VS You can select HTML 5 in the schema dropdown and HTML 5 element...(read more)

Silverlight 4 Debuts with Killer Demos at PDC09

Nikhil Kothari's Weblog — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:35:44 GMT

Lots of wow from this morning with Silverlight 4 (and RIA Services) taking center stage in the keynote, here at PDC09. [ Full post continued here... ] Read More......(read more)

Html.RenderAction and Html.Action

you've been HAACKED — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:22:24 GMT

One of the upcoming new features being added to ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta is a little helper method called Html.RenderAction and its counterpart, Html.Action . This has been a part of our ASP.NET MVC Futures library for a while, but is now being added to the core product. Both of these methods allow you to call into an action method from a view and output the results of the action in place within the view. The difference between the two is that Html.RenderAction will render the result directly to the Response (which is more efficient if the action returns a large amount of HTML) whereas Html.Action returns a string with the result. For the sake of brevity, I’ll use the term RenderAction to refer to both of these methods. Here’s a quick look at how...(read more)

Welcome to WCF RIA Services Beta!

Brad Abrams — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:57:43 GMT

Today at PDC09 , Scott Guthrie Announced the beta of WCF RIA Services . As you may know RIA Services is a set of end-to-end experiences that makes it as easy to build Silverlight based n-tier applications as it is to build traditional 2 tier apps. I am very excited about this release as it represents a lot of great feedback we have heard from many of you. A few goodies in this release based on your feedback You told us you wanted to get up and running with the UI quicker, so we enabled the “DataSources” window that allows you to drag and drop “tables” exposed by your Domain Service onto the form and get meaningful UI to start with. No more guessing about the Xaml syntax for databinding, or incantation...(read more)

News on the ASP.NET Ajax Library Beta

Microsoft's Social Web Guy - ASP.NET — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:31:24 GMT

The ASP.NET Ajax Library Beta was released today! The five big things I’m going to talk about in this post are: The ASP.NET Ajax Library is now in Beta Contributing the ASP.NET Ajax Library to the CodePlex Foundation Merging the Ajax Control Toolkit with the ASP.NET Ajax Library Plans to provide support for the ASP.NET Ajax Library ASP.NET Ajax Library features that provide: Powerful developer libraries and tooling support Performance – build high performance websites Interoperability – use it with any server platform and alongside jQuery Extensible – build on top of the library and inherit from controls like DataView Since July last year the team has been cranking out new features in 6 previews, each with exciting innovations including powerful...(read more)

PDC09 - A Call to Dream

Nikhil Kothari's Weblog — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:15:12 GMT

Immediate thoughts after Ray Ozzie's keynote at PDC09 [ Full post continued here... ] Read More......(read more)

ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta Released

you've been HAACKED — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:21:00 GMT

Today at PDC09 (the keynote was streaming live ), Bob Muglia announced the release of ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta . Feel free to download it right away! While you do that I want to present this public service message. The Beta release includes tooling for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. We did not ship updated tooling for Visual Studio 2010 because ASP.NET MVC 2 is now included as a part of VS10, which is on its own schedule. Unfortunately, because Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta share components which are currently not in sync, running ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta on VS10 Beta 2 is not supported . Here are some highlights of what’s new in ASP.NET MVC 2. RenderAction (and Action) AsyncController Expression Based Helpers (TextBoxFor, TextAreaFor, etc....(read more)

30 “Quick Hit” Videos for folks that couldn’t join us at PDC

Misfit Geek: msft — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:50:01 GMT

Hi folks! I’m posting this from the PDC09 keynote where I’m listening to Don Box show off Azure ! For web developers, I prepared 30 “Quick Hit” videos on stuff that’s new in the latest wave for ASP.NET Develoeprs. It’s far from a complete list, and they are not meant to be real tutorials (They are NOT How-Do-I videos). Think of them as “feature previews” with more learning based material coming in the near fututr. Here is a partial list. Have fun www.asp.net/learn ASP.NET 4 ASP.NET 4 "Quick Hit" – New Rendering Option for Check Box Lists and Radio Button Lists ASP.NET 4 "Quick Hit" – Persistent GridView Row Selection ASP.NET 4 "Quick Hit" – Table Free Templated Controls ASP.NET 4 "Quick Hit" – Easy State...(read more)

T4MVC 2.5.00 update: multiple output files and minified javascript support

Angle Bracket Percent : ASP.NET — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:41:15 GMT

To get the latest build of T4MVC: Go to download page on CodePlex T4MVC build 2.5.00 brings a couple of fun new features that I’ll describe in this post. I can’t take too much credit for them as they came from users who suggested them to me, and helped out getting the code going. Support for multiple output files Up until now, T4MVC.tt has always generated a single file, which is the T4MVC.cs that you see get nested under it in VS. And normally, this is the way T4 templates work: they just generate one file. But last week I got an email from Stuart Leeks who pointed me to a new blog post from Damien Guard that describes a nice way to get around this description. All of Damien’s logic is very nicely encapsulated...(read more)

November is conference month…

PeteL's Blog : share — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:50:49 GMT

Every November comes around and I’m always reminded how many conference seem to take place about now, it’s kind of crazy – in a good way. I’m on to week three of travel, and haven’t seen my own bed in more nights than I care to count – but ah well! Where I’ve Been Last week was TechEd Europe in Berlin. A great conference with lots of good materials! Coincidentally it took place during the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, and the celebrations were pretty spectacular! While I was there, I recorded a couple of TechTalks with my good pal Matt, they’re worth checking out! Windows Internet Explorer Web Slices and Accelerator Analytics Do you have an Accelerator or Web Slice on your website? This talk will cover...(read more)