14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has delivered a major update to version 3 of its ASP.NET framework that allows developers to leverage the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern in order to build web applications. The first Beta development milestone of ASP.NET MVC 3 is now available through the Microsoft Download Center, offered free of charge as was the case with the previous version.
ASP.NET MVC 3 is designed to enable devs to take advantage of a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework on top of ASP.NET 4.
Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform revealed that the Beta delivers significant improvements compared to the previous release of version 3, a Preview Build which was offered to early adopters in July 2010.
Developers that have been testing ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview for the past couple of months can now make the jump to the Beta Build, and enjoy the improvements delivered by the software giant.
It is critical to note that with the advent of the Beta development milestone, Microsoft is allowing devs to share their projects with the world.
This is possible because ASP.NET MVC 3 Beta comes with support for “go-live” deployments.
Essentially, Microsoft is allowing developers to not only build applications with ASP.NET MVC 3 Beta, but also deploy their projects for end users to enjoy.
Guthrie enumerated some of the enhancements delivered to ASP.NET MVC 3 with the evolution from the Preview Build to the Beta release:
“•Razor Enhancements: ASP.NET MVC 3 supports the new Razor view-engine option. In addition to the functionality enabled with the ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview, today’s Beta adds a bunch of additional capabilities: Cleaner MVC integration – including the ability to use a new @model syntax to more cleanly specify the type being passed to the view.
A new @helper syntax for declaring re-usable HTML helpers (really slick). A new @* *@ comment syntax. The ability to specify defaults (like layout page) once for the entire site - keeping your views DRY. Support for using both C# and VB flavors of Razor.
•New View Helpers: New view helper methods are now supported.
This includes a new Chart() helper method for dynamically creating charts (same features as the < asp:chart > control in ASP.NET 4 – except now using view helper methods), as well as a new WebGrid() helper method that can be used to create data-grid style UI (including paging and sorting).
•Unobtrusive JavaScript and HTML 5: The AJAX and Validation helpers in ASP.NET MVC now both use an unobtrusive JavaScript approach by default.
Unobtrusive JavaScript avoid injecting inline JavaScript into HTML, and instead enables cleaner separation of behavior using the new HTML 5 data- convention (which conveniently works on older browsers as well).
This makes your HTML smaller and cleaner, and makes it easier to optionally swap out or customize JS libraries. The Validation helpers in ASP.NET MVC 3 also now use the jQueryValidate plugin by default.
•Dependency Injection: The initial ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview added better support for Dependency Injection (DI) with Controllers, Views and Action Filters. Today’s Beta extends this with better dependency injection support for Model Binders, Model Validation Providers, Model Metadata Providers, and Value Providers.
It also supports a new IDependencyResolver interface that makes it easier to integrate Dependency Injection Frameworks.
•NuPack Integration: ASP.NET MVC 3 automatically installs and enables NuPack as part of its setup. This makes it trivial to take advantage of NuPack to find and add lots of MVC extensions and libraries to your projects.
•Other Goodness: The initial ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview added lots of additional helpers and classes to make every-day coding better.
Today’s beta includes a bunch of additional improvements: more granular XSS HTML input validation, HTML helper improvements to support HTML 5, Crypto helpers for salting and hashing passwords, easier Email APIs, improved “New Project” dialog, etc.”
ASP.NET MVC 3 Beta and ASP.NET MVC 2 are available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Premium is available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Professional is available for download here.
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate is available for download here.
Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 is available for download here.
.NET Framework 4 RTM is available for download here.