A Blog for Graymad

Improved Project System

• No need for FrontPage
• Supports file system webs, allowing ASP.NET development even when IIS is not installed locally (Whidbey ships with its own lightweight Web server)
• Build and debug without being an Admin
• Directory-based project system (reduces contention for project files)
• Makes it easy to do single-file editing, with complete IntelliSense support.
• When you create a project, very few files or folders are created automatically. When the IDE needs to add something (such as a web.config to enable debugging), the user is provided with a notification before the file is added.
• Debugger visualizers allow you to hover over an object at debug time and get an expanded view of the state of that object.

Remote Site Publishing

• Support for UNC, FTP, SharePoint, IIS (IntelliSense works for all of these scenarios)
• Publish all files or individual files, and keep local and remote sites in sync easily
• Logging is built into the Remote Publishing Wizard

Source Editor Improvements

• Intellisense Everywhere - in inline code and codebehind, in script blocks, in CSS styles, in web.config (yay!), and in XML files.
• Added tools to navigate your code - view at a glance the hierarchy of tag relationships.
• Outlining is available to allow you to expand or collapse on a tag-by-tag basis
• Code formatting (which can be turned off completely...really completely) can be customized based on tag categories (server vs. client) and even on a per-tag basis, allowing you to format upper/lower case, self-closing or paired tags, line breaks, etc. Formatting options for the client also determine what the server controls render to the client, making it very easy to write XHTML-compliant code.
• Cleaner code-behind. Based on partial classes, removes the requirement for separate control declarations in code-behind, and other "generated goop".
• If you select text in Source view, then switch to Design view (or vice versa) your selection is preserved, so selecting an element in Design view makes it easy to locate the tags for that control.
• Drag and drop is supported in Source view.
• Formatting us supported at the page level, as well as at the selection level, and does not automatically introduce whitespace when formatting.
• The formatter also supports automatic word-wrapping of tags.
• Tag formatting can be customized based on whether the tag contains content or is a self-contained tag, in addition to the parameters discussed above.
• The IDE supports exporting and importing of your desired formatting settings, so it's easy to share formatting across a development team to enforce a standardized format.
• Everything built in the design surface is validated to XHTML 1.1, and can optionally be validated against various browsers, and even accessibility standards.
• IntelliSense is now even supported in the @ Page directive, as well as in all inline code, including in <% %>blocks.

Whidbey Design Surface

• Never, ever, EVER, modify your code (without your asking)
• 100% XHTML 1.1 compliant and uses styles for formatting.
• Master pages provide shared layout, and provides visual representation of both the master page, and the customized content
• User Controls are rendered on the design surface
• Added smart tags to expose common control tasks (databinding, autoformatting, etc.)
• Improved table editor, with both pre-existing table templates, and/or editable table attributes.
• Added visual feedback for resizing templates, including display of the changes in pixel measurements (or percent, depending on how you defined the table) as you resize.

Faster Web Development

• No builds, save and refresh and see your changes.
• Faster project open time.
• Build Page feature - Allows you to locate compilation errors and validation problems on a page-by-page basis.
• New Code directory that provides dynamic compilation and linking for class files, including Intellisense support.
• Easier for teams to develop together since a compiler error on a single page doesn't prevent others from working on different pages.
• Pre-compiler allows you to compile your entire application (including HTML and other tags) into a single assembly, which runs just like an app deployed with source code.

Seamless Upgrades

• Allows you to upgrade a v1.1 application to Whidbey seamlessly.
• You can choose in-place upgrade, or make a copy to modify to the new version.

IMPORTANT! Not all of these features are in the PDC bits...about 2/3rds are there, and the rest will be in the beta coming in the spring.