ASPInsider Public Overview via Scott Guthrie

The ASPInsiders Summit began today with Scott Guthrie's overview of what's happening. Steve Smith already has a good summary of his presentation, so I won't try to repeat it. Instead, let me just say that working with .NET just keeps getting more and more exciting. Its truly amazing to see how agile some of the teams at Microsoft have become recently. We've already seen Web Application and Deployment Projects and CSS Control Adapters, and now we see Expression Web Designer, PowerShell, and VS 2005 for Data Professionals. But expect to see more very soon, like ASP.NET Ajax, Data Publishing, and VS 2005 SP1, and later on the things still in CTP, like Orcas, IronPython, WPF/E, and IIS 7.0 Server.

I've already installed some things, including the final release version of .NET v3.0, but I really need to go install Expression Web, PowerShell, and VS 2005 Data Pro too. Expression Web will give you today the CSS friendly design surface that Orcas will have, and VS 2005 Data Pro will give you Schema Compare, Data Compare, Data Generator, and more. Speaking of data, the Data Publishing Tool that is coming very soon will not only generate the sql to build your database schema, but it will also finally build sql to populate it. And note that VS 2005 SP1 will not only include bug fixes (and there are more than 2200), but it will also automatically finally include Web Application Projects (no addin needed).

Of course no matter how much we get today, we also are still very much wanting Orcas. I have no clue what the target release date is, but I'm guessing very late 2007 or early 2008. But it will be cool when it does come, and it will support all of v2.0, v3.0, and vNext. That means it will finally add Linq, and make AJAX built-in as opposed to being an addin, but it will also include the Expression Web Designer and JavaScript Intellisense/Debugging. I'm assuming it will also include full support for WPF/E, which is looking really cool. But don't wait until then to start getting the various pieces that are out now or soon. And that was really what I got out of Scott's talk the most -- a lot of this is available today or is coming soon.

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