Download ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1

Microsoft is cooking the next major release of ASP.NET MVC, and baking time for the first preview is already done. ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 is now live on the Microsoft Download Center, and available to developers for testing. According to Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform, the Redmond company’s goal with the release of ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 is to get as much feedback as possible. Developers leveraging the technology are invited to offer the software giant their input, both positive and negative, related to the future of ASP.NET MVC.

“ASP.NET MVC 3 is compatible with ASP.NET MVC 2 – which means it will be easy to update projects you are writing with MVC 2 to MVC 3 when it finally releases. The new features in MVC 3 build on top of the foundational work we’ve already done with the MVC 1 and MVC 2 releases – which means that the skills, knowledge, libraries, and books you’ve acquired are all directly applicable with the MVC 3 release. MVC 3 adds new features and capabilities – it doesn’t obsolete existing ones,” Guthrie said.

Early adopters that will jump at the chance of testing ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1, will be able to notice a range of enhancements compared to the previous version of ASP.NET MVC. Guthrie emphasized a few changes, including view-specific improvements, the new “Razor” View Engine, Controller improvements, JavaScript and AJAX improvements, etc.

“ASP.NET MVC 3 can be installed side-by-side with ASP.NET MVC 2, and you can install today’s “Preview 1” release on your machine without it impacting existing MVC 2 projects you are working on (they will continue to use MVC 2 unless you explicitly modify the projects to retarget them to MVC 3). When you install “Preview 1” you will have a new set of ASP.NET MVC 3 project templates show up within Visual Studio 2010’s “New Project” dialog – choosing one of those when you create a new project will cause it to use MVC 3,” Guthrie added.

The promise from Microsoft is that additional features will be introduced into the next generation of ASP.NET MVC, as the development of version 3 moves forward.

ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 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.