.NET Web Product Roadmap (ASP.NET, Silverlight, IIS7)

96 Comments

• Hi Scott!
  
  Kudos to you and your great team - you guys are just great!! Looking forward to seeing the next article on MVC.
  
  Indy
  

• Keep up the great work guys! What you are doing is border-line magical.
  

• awesome can't wait for your next posts :)
  

• 
  You mentioned that ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions “first public preview of this will be available for download next week on the web”. And that “will be releasing a Beta of Silverlight 2.0 in Q1 of 2008”.
  Is Silverlight 2.0 included on the extensions? If not, is there going to be an alfa before the 2008 beta?
  Best regards,
  
  Jesús Garza
  

• Scott,
  I'm already running into limitations with VS2008's Javascript support (debugging limitations, Intellisense issues with major Javascript frameworks). Any plans for a service pack or hotfixes to address these issues?
  

• I think its a good plan to call it(Silverlight) 2.0 anyway as there are just so many differences and your using a real programming language (i.e. C#). Yesterday they were still calling 1.1 on campus too.
  

• It's very appropriate to call it SL 2.0, leaves room for 1.0 to grow a bit more.
  
  Excellent news Scott; SL team is the best (after ASP team) ;-)
  
  Thank you Scott for giving us the Road Map. Have you thought about running for Presidency? We can use someone like you!
  

• Wow, Silverlight 2.0, Let's forget 1.1. 2.0 looks awesome. I will develop new SL content for my site by 2.0 after the first preview beta is released.
  

• In the Silverlight 2.0 Release when we create custom Silverlight Controls will we be able to fetch embedded resources like images back out of the assembly? I noticed right now you have the option to wrap them in but not get them back out.
  
  

• I like alot of the new features. One thing particular nested Master Page - Design Time.
  
  I would have really liked seeing Design Time Nested Repeater Rendering. Just to allow us to get an idea about what our nested repeaters look like without having to go to a runtime view.
  
  Any chance something like this can be included in a service pack? :)
  

• Great news on the Silverlight features. But you mention that it will be a subset of WPF 3.5 and then say it includes a DataGrid?
  Does that mean there will be a WPF 3.6 update or some new downloadable components?
  Any word on taking Silverlight out of the Browser - an AIR competitor?
  Here's hoping that the beta will be before MIX 08.
  

• To Jesus:
  >>Is Silverlight 2.0 included on the extensions? If not, is there going to be an alfa before the 2008 beta?<<
  
  I think the SL Extension in ASP 3.5 is to support integration with SL 1.0. Since SL 2.0 is due later on, but that's my guess!
  
  ..Ben
  

• Very glad to hear about the Go Live license for Silverlight 2.0 in Q1.
  
  Thanks so much for publishing a roadmap that's available to everyone to see - it's very much appreciated.
  

• Is Microsoft going to support Script#? I have been using this for a while and really love it.
  

• Scott,
  
  Thank you for the update. You mention in this post how you will be "starting a new blog tutorial series in a few weeks that discusses how to build Silverlight 2.0 applications" My question is, how will this be useful to those of us that cannot get our hands on a Silverlight build that has these features? From my understanding it sounds like the next public release will not occur until the MIX '08 conference. Is there going to be another alpha between now and then?
  

• Give me silverlight 2.0 or give me death!
  

• Has there been any word on an update for Web Deployment Projects for VS 2008 ?
  

• Hi Scott,
  
  You and your team are doing phenomenal work and should win an award for this.
  
  I CANNOT wait till next week.
  
  Again, Thank you for making our lives more enjoyable.
  

• >>(the above list is only a subset - there are many more we aren't sharing yet),
  Curse you Guthrie and your tantalizing hints as to how great this next release will be! Can’t you see you already have the lot of us drooling in anticipation!
  
  Hehehe, seriously though. I have looked around for any info on Silverlight mobile but I can’t find anything other than the demonstration back in May. How is this coming along and do the Silverlight Mobile devs have a web-log going?
  

• Any idea when we can expect an updated version of the Web Deployment Project?
  

• Do you have a roadmap for Silverlight that covers the various platforms and when they will get the new version(s), or will 2.0 be released simultaneously on all supported platforms?
  

• I always thought labeling it v1.1 was an understatement. :)
  
  I do have a question about IIS 7.0. Windows Vista has already shipped with this. What are the differences between this release and the one in Windows Server 2008?
  
  Also, do you guys get any information from Novell on the development status of Moonlight? Mono's page on the subject doesn't appear to get updated often. Will the release dates be far apart? Will this release contain all of the functionality of the Windows and Mac versions?
  
  Thanks.
  

• Small correction: history is not managed through a history control but through the ScriptManager and new properties and events defined on it.
  

• Is it fair to say that Microsoft is not playing the mobile web game? There seems to be little investment in the area of the mobile web. With the number of devices exceeding PCs it seems like a big miss.
  

• Scott, I really admire your work but I have to complain about Microsofts strategy with Silverlight 1.1. I am very disapointed that I have to continue waiting for a Beta until Q1 of 2008.
  
  I started building a Silverlight 1.1 Application in August this year expecting the Beta to come soon. In fact I read in your blog that the Beta will be released in 2007. If I had known that it will take until 2008 I would have planed my work differently.
  
  Radu
  

• Hi Scott, the web product roadmap looks very cool! But last I heard, focusing exclusively on the web product roadmap was your old job. You have said "Although my blog is heavy on ASP.NET content, that is actually only one of the technologies I spend time on." Despite this acknowledgement, I am becoming increasingly concerned about the allocation of resources within DevDiv based on what your blog focuses on, the feature set of 3.5, and this product roadmap. You probably don't intend for it to come across this way, but it really seems like Silverlight is becoming the new WPF, just like WPF was the new WinForms. Yes, we can tell the story that Microsoft loves and supports all its children forever, each one is unique and special in its own way, and you don't kill off all the previous children when the new one arrives, but it seems like the focus right now is on making Silverlight an 80% or 90% rich client solution, and once you flip the stand-alone out-of-browser bit, people will need to seriously think twice about using WPF for any new development. And if that's the future, why should Microsoft invest any further in the WPF Classic feature set?
  

• I would say half our files are in aspx and half are in classic ASP. Any thoughts on wheter the vbscript colorization/intellisense support that was in VS2005 will be put back in for VS2008? Does the community need to use the Visual Studio SDK and write something similar to what was done for IRON Python? I understand you want to keep moving forward, intellisense was probably difficult for vbscript, but ripping out colorization too? - ugh! Having two editors open for files in the same project isn't fun. Please provide your thoughts on this problem. Classic ASP syntax coloring is done in half a dozen controls on the web available from 3rd party vendors - if they can do it, I don't see why VS had to stop. Please provide your thoughts on this.
  

• Extra points for saying "pretty gnarly" in a public blog post viewed by just about every ASP.NET developer out there...
  

• Great! I have done quite some talks on Silverlight already, and I have heard people wondering if the change between Siverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 1.1 is significant. Now with a full upgrade of the number to 2.0, the BIG difference will be more obvious.
  I fully support this change!
  

• Hi, Scott. Could you tell us whether the clipboard support for text as well as image data will get into the Silverlight 2.0 train?
  
  And thanks for the great news regarding the roadmap!
  

• Most importantly will we be getting raw sockets network access?
  

• Cant wait for it.
  

• Scott,
  
  Fantastic news on Silverlight 2.0. Been working with 1.1 for a while and just having the CLR and a retained graphics mode canvas was already such a pleasure to work with. The more parity we can get with WPF the better.
  
  Question on the networking. It looked like everything you mentioned was stateless http based protcols. Is there any plan for socket support planned so that stateful protocols could be implemented?
  

• Dang, Scott, what're you all trying to do? Make us beat our deadlines and get raises or something!!?!?! sheesh.
  
  ;)
  

• Pingback from Ctrl-Alt-Die Silverlight V1.0 has been going for a short time now...
  

• Thanks for the roadmap Scott and all the great stuff you and your team have been doing! It's always good to have an idea of what's coming down the road, I wish all Microsoft teams offered transparent roadmaps like this.
  

• Thanks for the update Scott. You didn't mention anything about Web Deployment projects. Are they going to be updated for VS2008? My company uses these things tremendously and I understand the current add-in is not compatible with VS2008.
  

• Way to go Scott and team!
  

• Any plans for Linq to SQL in Silverlight 2.0? Or at least a way to easily consume common .NET data models at the Silverlight tier?
  

• Good work... thank you for sharing this. If only.... sniff...sockets...are you teasing us and still forcing us to use Flash? ;-)
  

• Well all that fuss must have hurt the silverlight developer's adoption big time.
  First knowing about 1.1 that early and second not knowing about its release date....
  We postponned all the development on our site until 2.0 is released because of the steep tooling development involved with 1.0(lack of controls, lack of containers...) and being so close (Alpha) we preferred to wait.
  You should have announced the 1.1(2.0) release earlier, that would have changed a lot of decisions.
  

• Looking forward to MVC articles. Thanks.
  

• I see nothing mentioned about increased browser support in Silverlight 2.0. Something like... Opera perhaps?! :(
  
  Opera fan,
  
  Andrei Rinea.
  

• What about a url rewriting module for IIS 7?
  

• Dude! C'mon! All the tease and none of the squeeze?! I simply can't wait for next week now. :)
  

• Great!
  I'm really looking forward for all of this!
  

• Thanks Scott,
  
  Pl. share some news about the latest happenings in " DLR ". You haven't blogged much on it yet, though its the most wanted support.
  
  Pl. blog upcoming informative news on IronRuby, IronPython and Dynamic VB.
  

• Kudos! Great work guys! Keeps me drawn to code each day.
  

• Really kewl stuff, Scott! WPF UI Framework, Rich COntrols and Rich networking..really got my eyes bigger! :)
  

• Dear Scott,
  
  We are waiting for the Great "MVC CTP" next week.
  
  Please make sure, we can easily " UNINSTALL CTP " without leaving any traces behind. This will save us for errors as well as help us to INSTALL New version of CTP's, when they arrive.
  
  We believe, there must be aleast one CTP every 2 months. Do blog something on DLR support with MVC.
  
  Thanks
  
  James
  

• Will SL 1.0 continue to be available? If yes, will the new features (like databinding, control templates etc) be available in the Javascript version of SL?
  

• Any update on project jasper and its integration with ASP.Net?
  

• It would be rocking if there was a Silverlight Mobile release around the same timeframe as 2.0 on the desktop.
  

• Hi Jesus,
  
  >>>>>>> You mentioned that ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions “first public preview of this will be available for download next week on the web”. And that “will be releasing a Beta of Silverlight 2.0 in Q1 of 2008”. Is Silverlight 2.0 included on the extensions?
  
  Silverlight 2.0 will ship separately from the ASP.NET Extensions. They'll be two different releases that you can download.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Ian,
  
  >>>>>>> In the Silverlight 2.0 Release when we create custom Silverlight Controls will we be able to fetch embedded resources like images back out of the assembly? I noticed right now you have the option to wrap them in but not get them back out.
  
  Yes - you'll be able to retrieve assets like images from compiled assemblies as well as our application package format (more details on this later).
  
  All image and mediaelement controls also now support being set to point to a URL, as well as having an in-memory byte stream set to them.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Joe,
  
  >>>>>>> Great news on the Silverlight features. But you mention that it will be a subset of WPF 3.5 and then say it includes a DataGrid? Does that mean there will be a WPF 3.6 update or some new downloadable components?
  
  Yes - we are working on a WPF Windows datagrid in addition to a WPF Silverlight one. They will be compatible with each other (one will be a super set of the other). Our hope is to ship the WPF Windows Datagrid next year, and then also role it into a future service pack of the .NET Framework.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Chad,
  
  >>>>>> Thank you for the update. You mention in this post how you will be "starting a new blog tutorial series in a few weeks that discusses how to build Silverlight 2.0 applications" My question is, how will this be useful to those of us that cannot get our hands on a Silverlight build that has these features?
  
  My hope is that the tutorial series will help people come up to speed on the feature-set and get a good mental picture of how the different pieces fit together.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Mcbeev,
  
  >>>>>> Has there been any word on an update for Web Deployment Projects for VS 2008 ?
  
  We will be shipping a VS 2008 Web Deployment Project update either tomorrow or early next week.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Doctor,
  
  >>>>>>> Hehehe, seriously though. I have looked around for any info on Silverlight mobile but I can’t find anything other than the demonstration back in May. How is this coming along and do the Silverlight Mobile devs have a web-log going?
  
  We are making some good progress on this. We don't have any announcements just yet to make - but things are progressing there....
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Simon,
  
  >>>>>>> Awesome post, and it seems to include every suggestion i´ve seen for silverlight. Databinding, cross domain networking, similiar set of controls as wpf, but how about sockets? Anyhow, the big question for me is, will there be another ctp before the beta release? I truly, madly, deeply hope so :)
  
  We are working on adding socket support as well. We haven't finalized exactly which preview this will show up in - but it is definitely on our roadmap.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Steven,
  
  >>>>>>> Any idea when we can expect an updated version of the Web Deployment Project?
  
  The VS 2008 version will ship either tomorrow or early next week.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Todd,
  
  >>>>>>> Do you have a roadmap for Silverlight that covers the various platforms and when they will get the new version(s), or will 2.0 be released simultaneously on all supported platforms?
  
  We'll release Silverlight 2.0 on all the platforms we build ourselves simultaneously (Mac + Windows - including Windows 2000, XP, Vista, WS03, WS08, etc).
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi bill,
  
  >>>>>>> Good job! I am also wondering the progress of dynamic language support like IronPython.
  
  We are making good progress on the DLR and our dynamic languages implementation in general.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Gary,
  
  >>>>>>> I do have a question about IIS 7.0. Windows Vista has already shipped with this. What are the differences between this release and the one in Windows Server 2008?
  
  I should do a blog post in the future on this. There are actually a lot of nice new IIS7 features in Windows Server 2008. These will also show up in Vista with SP1.
  
  >>>>>>> Also, do you guys get any information from Novell on the development status of Moonlight? Mono's page on the subject doesn't appear to get updated often. Will the release dates be far apart? Will this release contain all of the functionality of the Windows and Mac versions?
  
  We are working closely with them and they are making progress. I don't think we have an exact ETA on when the final version will ship - but hopefully as soon as is possible.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Colin,
  
  >>>>>>>> Is it fair to say that Microsoft is not playing the mobile web game? There seems to be little investment in the area of the mobile web. With the number of devices exceeding PCs it seems like a big miss.
  
  We'll be making some announcements about mobile devices in the future. We definitely intend to play in this space.
  
  Hope this helps,
  
  Scott
  

• Hi Scott.
  thanks for awesome job you guys doing. quick question...
  
  is there any way, downloader object in new release will not trancate the byte data for responseText property?
  if there is byte data supplied to downloader, the responseText supplies the string of that data to the first 0 (thiking it is the end of the string??)
  
  thanks,
  HF
  

• Oh, how I love competition! Adobe is a grat company, but in some respects it was too great, in that it ate most of its competitors. The same is true for Microsoft, only more so. I own a company that specializes in licensing, and Microsoft is by far our largest vendor. At parties, I hear very often talk about a "Microsoft monopoli". Since I am in business of selling computer software solutions for business, I assure them that if something better came along, our clients would shift very very quickly, and therefore naturally so woulde we. Before basically specializing in Microsoft licensing, we were IBM resellers (anyone here old enough to remember OS/2?). The point here is that if this technology push is successful, there witll be squaks about the mythical "Microsoft monopoli". But it will be false again, any gain (and I believe that there will be some)will be the result of competitive dynamics. Adobe will then provide us with better product to regain market share, and so on .... . We developers will gain because we will be able to produce better software, the clients will gain on their competition if we perform, and .... Viva Competition!
  Paolo
  

• ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support: The ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions release will deliver new features that enable faster creation of data driven web sites. It provides a rich scaffolding framework, and enables rapid data driven site development using both ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC.
  
  I once got my hand on the asp.net future dynamic data bits, know that you will use MVC for the release really rocks!
  

• Scott - This is great!!
  

• Scott,
  
  Great job! Quick question: will Silverlight 2.0 support the System.Drawing namespace? I have needs to manipulate bitmap data.
  

• Please release the sockets :o)
  
  Silverlight is useless to our project (as well as many other) without :(
  

• Will you add 3D graphics support to Silverlight?
  Flash has Papervision3D...
  

• What will be the size of the installation?
  

• An excellent and much needed Roadmap.
  

• Thanks for this (and other :) posts!
  Your information is always very helpful !
  

• Any plans on including the JpegEncoder/JpegDecoder classes? One of the most common things for websites is to allow users to upload photos. Currently you have to upload the 3-6megabyte original and resize at the server, or write an active x plugin to do it client side. I'd really like to be able to use Silverlight to resize and crop images client side and then upload them to the server to reduce upload time and bandwith usage.
  

• Great news, I would like to have support for rich text(being able to render html in silverlight would be great!) and xsl support in silverlight.
  

• Any additional information on these would be most helpful:
  
  a) What level of .NET winForms controls will be included in Silverlight?
  
  b) What level of .NET framework base classes will be included in Silverlight? (a diagram with a 'S' tag of the framework classes would be nice - like is done for the compact framework)
  
  c) Will a Silverlight application be able to be shipped as a stand alone application as well as being embedded in a web page?
  
  d) Will Silverlight provide nearly all of the current user interaction support that JavaScript does? This is quite important to us because we want to avoid splitting the code between C# server size and javascript client side. We want to use a Winforms like environment. We've found in the long run that production quality applications are much much more costly to maintain and keep working if they rely extensively on javascript. Therefore, we try to include almost no javascript in our production applications.
  
  e) What support will there be for a security module or security token server? This is a big issue for us because for auditing needs we need to centralize user security and permission management.
  
  We try to get 5+ years out a production application before undertaking a major upgrade.
  
  Our general goal from the technology aspect is to simplify our supported platforms. This includes eliminating all VB6 code, applications that depend on VB6 com components and eliminate all windows 2000 systems.
  
  Many commercial applications rely on vb6 com components. Smaller software companies often have no upgrade roadmap to move away from VB6 code or VB6 based com components.
  
  It would be nice to have system tools to help us identify all VB6 code be it in an application, com component, dll, etc.
  

• Is the .NET symbol server ready yet?
  

• We're excited about this, but really can't justify spending more time on it until we know more about accessibility support and see some well crafted examples on how to build stuff that is accessible. Please? :)
  

• Thanks for the article.I am looking forward to the beta release of Silverlight 2.0.
  

• is ado.net data services the same as the entity framework beta 3?
  

• Hi Scott I have question.
  Will have IIS7/ASP.NET comet technology support?
  

• ok man it's been a week! Where's the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions download link?!! :)
  

• Silverlight looks awesome ...
  
  BUT ...
  
  Blend simply HAS to be a Mac application too for designers to use ALONGSIDE their existing tools.
  
  The fact is that DESIGNERS work on Macs..
  

• Hi Scott,
  
  I can't get any VS2008 asp.net apps to work with iis5.1 on XP Pro SP2.
  I have a standard setup of .net 3.5 etc.
  
  Is there anything to tweak?
  
  Thanks,
  Tim
  

• G'day
  
  Fantastic news on silverlight. Just one question will 2.0 have any out of the box support for XPS ? Since XPS is one of the many components of WPF, it would be good if silverlight could support this natively rather than building a custom parser to allow XPS to be displayed within silverlight.
  
  cheers
  Veeral
  

• Hi Scott,
  
  I wonder if you could tell me if the Silverlight 2.0 Beta + tools release in Q1 2008 will support the Express editions of VS2008 or will I have to wait until a later release?
  
  I also wonder if the current Silverlight 1.1 Alpha release can be used in Express WITHOUT the templates available for other versions of VS2008. I mean is it possible to create XAML code behind files by hand just by including the correct dll's and inheriting from Canvas (this seems to be all that the templates do automatically for you) or am I missing something else?
  
  Cheers for the great blog and keeping us informed!
  

• What's about the reuse of the WPF's code?
  What changdes need to be done to make it Silverlight code?
  
  Thanks
  Jack
  

• Is Silverlight 2 going to support WCF or parts of it?
  

• Hi Koger,
  
  >>>>>> Is Silverlight 2 going to support WCF or parts of it?
  
  Yes - Silverlight 2.0 will include a WCF API.
  
  Thanks,
  
  Scott
  

• This is all fantastic news! This post right here and all the stuff it talks about, that is my Christmas gift from Microsoft.
  

• This is a great news to hear, i'm looking forward to start using Silverlight
  

• Silverlight 2.0 is gonna be wicked the badazz!
  

• Hi there!
  
  I've observed Silverlight since 1.0 and I have to admit at the moment it uses almost all CPU power on average samples while the production isn't fast at all. It's a great technology though, but is there any solution or plan to speed up the whole framework?
  
  p.s. Performance and sockets are real obstacles for my company to create brand new software :)))
  

• Hi Scott,
  sorry for misusing this post abit, but we are having a big problem with IIS 7 and ASP NET 20 validation controls and I didn't find a better place for it.
  
  It would seem that there is no way to have a web project that contains validation controls unless the app pool is run in classic .net compatability mode.
  
  That seems strange, since the validation controls are still up to date in VS 2008. It would seem no one has an answer to this.
  
  See ASP.NET thread http://forums.asp.net/t/1155043.aspx
  
  I would appreciate any help you can give us. It's kind of hard to sell IIS 7 (W2K8 Server) when several normal ASP 2.0 sites won't run without "hacks".