Tag: ASP.NET

Microsoft: ASP.NET 5 is Now ASP.NET Core 1.0

Microsoft recently declared ASP.NET 5 dead. In name at least.

They decided that naming the new “completely written from scratch” ASP.NET framework ASP.NET 5 was a bad idea because it makes it seem like it’s bigger, better, and replaces ASP.NET 4.6, which is not the case.

With this in mind, they’ve renamed ASP.NET 5 “ASP.NET Core 1.0”. .NET Core 5 is now .NET Core 1.0, and Entity Framework 7 is now Entity Framework Core1.0.

“Why 1.0? Because these are new,” Microsoft’s Jeffrey T. Fritz recently explained in a blog post. “The whole .NET Core concept is new. The .NET CLI is very new. Not only that, but .NET Core isn’t as complete as the full .NET Framework 4.6. We’re still exploring server-side graphics libraries. We’re still exploring gaps between ASP.NET 4.6 and ASP.NET Core 1.0.”

“To be clear, ASP.NET 4.6 is the more mature platform. It’s battle-tested and released and available today,” he added. “ASP.NET Core 1.0 is a 1.0 release that includes Web API and MVC but doesn’t yet have SignalR or Web Pages. It doesn’t yet support VB or F#. It will have these subsystems some day but not today.”

Microsoft basically wants to reiterate that ASP.NET 4.6 will continue to live on, fully supported.

Image via Microsoft

February 4, 2016
Microsoft Talks ASP.NET 5 and Web Tooling

Microsoft describes ASP.NET as re-imagined from the ground up to provide a faster development experience, best in class performance, full side-by-side support, and cross platform support for Linux and Mac.

The company recently put out this video of Scott Hunter giving an overview of what’s new in ASP.NET and giving a demo of all the new tooling in Visual Studio 2015.

InfoQ’s Pierre-Luc Maheu discusses ASP.NET 5 features in Visual Studio:

Visual Studio receives two features, both related to the UI part of ASP.NET. The first one is making Bootstrap Snippets a recommended extension for editing HTML or CSHTML pages in an ASP.NET 5 project. The extension provides a collection of about 40 HTML snippets, available from the Visual Studio toolbox.

Bower, a package manager for client side content such as CSS and JavaScript, receives a new UI. The user interface is similar to Nuget, but manages client side libraries instead.

You can learn more with these Visual Studio courses on Microsoft’s Virtual Academy site.

Image via Microsoft

December 2, 2015
Microsoft Showcases ‘Cool ASP.NET Web Forms Features’

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it was beginning a series of blog posts on its Microsoft Web Development blog to showcase “some of the really cool and mature features” available in ASP.NET Web Forms so developers can use them in their own projects.

When Jeffrey T. Fritz announced the blog series on June 11, he said that post was the first in a twice weekly series on the subject, though it doesn’t look like they’ve posted the second yet. By my count, they should be up at least five by now, but the first one is actually the most recent post on the .NET Web Development and Tools blog.

Anyhow, Web Forms is the development model that was deployed first with ASP.NET all the way back in 2001. As Fritz notes, it has been improved in every release since then.

In the initial post, he looks at the model binding feature to show how it has been improved to provide asynchronous operations in the new ASP.NET 4.6 framework in Visual Studio 2015.

“Many long-time ASP.NET developers are familiar with the various ways that you can deliver data to user interface components in web forms.,” he writes. “We call that databinding to a control, and there are two primary techniques you can use:Declarative data-binding with data controls; [and] Code-behind, or ‘manual’ data-binding on the server.”

“Declarative data-binding is where all of our database code is placed into a SqlDataSource object on the ASPX page and a grid or some other user interface control references the id of the SqlDataSource to know how to work with a data resource.”

From there, he gets into the first code sample and on into the meat and potatoes. If this is something that interests you, take a look at the post, and hopefully the subsequent posts are on the way.

According to Fritz, throughout the series, he’ll look at building a sample app to track travel information, and each one will link to source code so you can work with it as you go.

June 24, 2015
Microsoft Posts Tutorial On Running ASP.NET 5 Apps In Linux Containers With Docker

Last fall, Microsoft announced a Docker partnership and Windows Server and Azure integrations.

The company recently put up a blog post about running ASP.NET 5 apps in Linux containers with Docker. It says it’s actively working on making apps written in ASP.NET 5 easy to desploy and ship in Linux and Mac OS X.

Microsoft recently released its first official Docker image – the ASP.NET 5 Preview Docker Image, which you can use as a base image where bits are already installed to run on Linux. Just add your app to the image and ship it to have it run in an app container.

The company’s blog post serves as a tutorial for deploying an app to a Linux Virtual Machine running Azure cloud using Docker. Microsoft says:

The tutorial can be executed on a Linux or Mac OS X machine where Docker client is installed (or you can ssh into the Linux VM you will use). Once Windows client for Docker is available, you will be able to run these commands on Windows and once Windows Server container support comes out you will be able to use Docker to manage Windows Server containers.

NOTE: Both ASP.NET 5 (vNext) and the Docker image are in preview and the following instructions are subject to change in the future. Please refer to Docker Hub page and GitHub repository for latest documentation on how to use the Docker image for ASP.NET 5.

The post consists of four main steps: creating a Linux VM with Docker, Creating a container image for your app, building the container image, and running the container.

Microsoft says it will continue to invest in running ASP.NET 5 apps on Linux and Docker.

Image via Microsoft

January 28, 2015
Microsoft Open Sources, Expands .NET To Linux, Mac

Microsoft announced that it is open sourcing the full server-side .NET stack, and expanding .NET to run on Linux and Mac OS. The company also released Visual Studio Community 2013, which is a free edition of Visual Studio that provides access to the core toolset.

“With billions of devices in the market today, developers need tools that target many different form factors and platforms,” said S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division. “Through Visual Studio and .NET we are committed to delivering a comprehensive end-to-end solution for developers to build and manage applications across multiple devices and platforms.”

Included in the .NET server stack open sourcing are: ASP.NET, the .NET compiler, the .NET Core Runtime, Framework and Libraries.

The company says it will work closely with the open source community, taking contributions for future improvements to .NET, and will work through the .NET Foundation.

Non-enterprise application developers who wish to get started with VIsual Studio Community can do so here. Microsoft is also previewing Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 2015.

Finally, the company announced the preview of ASP.NET 5.0, which it describes as a “streamlined framework and runtime optimized for cloud and server workloads.”

Image via .NET Foundation

November 12, 2014
Here’s What’s In ASP.NET vNext, The Next ASP.NET
At the TechEd event in Houston earlier this week, Microsoft unveiled ASP.NET vNext, once known as Project K. It’s the next version of ASP.NET, which has been redesigned from the ground up.

Microsoft says the goal is to create a “lean and composable” .NET stack for building modern cloud-based apps. Here’s the presentation:

Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman talks more about ASP.NET vNext here:

“ASP.NET vNext, and this is very, very early, we’re releasing a 0.1 release – alpha release,” says Hanselman. Microsoft lists the following features of this version:

vNext includes new cloud-optimized versions of MVC, Web API, Web Pages, SignalR, and Entity Framework.

MVC, Web API, and Web Pages will be merged into one framework, called MVC 6. The new framework removes a lot of overlap between the existing MVC and Web API frameworks. It uses a common set of abstractions for routing, action selection, filters, model binding, and so on. You can use the framework to create both UI (HTML) and web APIs.

ASP.NET vNext apps can use a cloud-optimized subset of .NET vNext. This subset is factored for server and web workloads, has a smaller footprint than the full .NET vNext, and supports side-by-side deployment.

MVC 6 has no dependency on System.Web. The result is a leaner framework, with faster startup time and lower memory consumption.

vNext will support true side-by-side deployment. If your app uses the cloud-optimized subset of .NET vNext, you can bin deploy all of your dependencies, including the .NET vNext (cloud optimized) packages. That means you can update your app without affecting other applications on the same server.

vNext is host agnostic. You can host your app in IIS, or self-host in a custom process. (Web API 2 and SignalR 2 already support self-hosting; ASP.NET vNext brings this same capability to MVC.)

Dependency injection is built into the framework. Use your preferred IoC container to register dependencies.

vNext uses the Rosyln compiler to compile code dynamically. You will be able to edit a code file, refresh the browser, and see the changes without rebuilding the project.
vNext is open source and cross platform.

You can get the full overview here.

Image via Microsoft
May 15, 2014
Windows Azure Gets New Features, PCI DSS Compliance

It’s a new year and Microsoft’s cloud computing platform has gotten another update, complete with new features that asp.net developers can take advantage of. Microsoft Developer VP Scott Guthrie this week detailed all the latest Windows Azure updates in a new blog post.

The biggest rollout in the latest Azure update is support for staged publishing. Developers can now enable the feature for Azure sites, allowing them to use a staged version of their sites for testing updates before immediately rolling them out to the real site. The feature also allows site managers to roll out their changes all at once, rather than updating files in order.

Other updates to Azure include an “Always On” feature, which will regularly ping websites to ensure they are active, and support for SenchaTouch on Azure Mobile Services. Monitoring for sites and SQL databases has also been improved, with site metrics now updated every minute and alerts expanded further for SQL databases.

The Hyper-V Recovery Manager for Windows Azure has also now been made generally available. The software is fully supported by Microsoft Support and is backed by an enterprise service-level agreement (SLA).

In addition to the updates, Azure has now been compliance validated for meeting Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS). Azure developers can now receive PCI DSS certification for their own applications through Azure.

January 17, 2014
ASP.NET Sees Further Enhancement In Visual Studio 2013 Preview

For a while now, developers have been able to test drive the latest Visual Studio as part of the Visual Studio 2013 Preview. Like any good preview, Microsoft has been constantly improving it as developers give them feedback, including some enhancements to ASP.NET.

Microsoft recently announced that it was bringing a number of ASP.NET and Web Tools enhancements to its Visual Studio 2013 Preview. The enhancements include a new UI, new authentications and updates for MVC 5 and SignalR.

To start off, Microsoft notes that it’s added a “simple UI for creating projects that offer support for multiple ASP.NET frameworks.” Developers will be able to use different authentication configurations, including individual user accounts, organizational accounts and Windows authentication. They note that all configurations work the same across all ASP.NET frameworks.

Speaking of authentication, ASP.NET authentication is now based on the OWIN middleware. It’s part of what Microsoft calls Project Katana – an effort on the part of Microsoft to make ASP.NET more flexible to the meet the demands of the open Web. In the latest update, Project Katana added “an HttpListener-based sever, a self-host API and OwinHost executable for running OWIN applications without having to create a custom host.”

Microsoft also notes that ASP.NET now supports claims-based authentication. This type of authentication allows developers to “authorize requests from client applications to your Web APIs using OAuth2 2.0 bearer tokens.”

On a final note, Microsoft has updated ASP.NET MVC 5, Web API 2, Scaffolding and SignalR. There’s nothing all that notable from these updates except for a small change that sees MVC projects being standard Web applications now instead of using their own custom project GUID.

If you want to check out the new Visual Studio 2013 Preview alongside the enhancements being made to ASP.NET, you can grab the install here.

July 24, 2013
Microsoft Releases Windows Azure SDK 2.0 For .NET

In its latest earnings report, Microsoft said Windows Azure and related products hit $1 billion in sales. It shows that Microsoft’s cloud platform is starting to really take off. In its efforts to get more developers to use Azure, Microsoft has released some new tools for its Azure SDK.

Microsoft announced in early May that version 2.0 of its Windows Azure SDK for .NET was finally available to all. The SDK brings with it a number of new features that are sure to delight those who host .NET Web sites on the Azure platform.
Web Sites: Visual Studio Tooling updates for Publishing, Management, and for Diagnostics
Cloud Services: Support for new high memory VM sizes, Faster Cloud Service publishing & Visual Studio Tooling for configuring and viewing diagnostics data
Storage: Storage Client 2.0 is now included in new projects & Visual Studio Server Explorer now supports working with Storage Tables
Service Bus: Updated client library with message pump programming model support, support for browsing messages, and auto-deleting idle messaging entities
PowerShell Automation: Updated support for PowerShell 3.0, and lots of new PowerShell commands for automating Web Sites, Cloud Services, VMs and more.

You should check out the full blog post for more details as Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie explains all of the new features in full detail.

As for availability, you can grab the Windows Azure SDK 2.0 for .NET over at the Windows Azure .NET Developer Center. It’s also open source so you can poke and prod your way through the code over at GitHub.

May 10, 2013

ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 Now Available

The world of Web development is changing rapidly. To keep up, Microsoft has been making incremental changes to ASP.NET. The latest update to the framework brings changes and additions to every member of the ASP.NET family.

Micrososft recently released ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 to the general coding public. The release contains new templates and tooling ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API and the rest of the ASP.NET family. Microsoft put together a little video to go over what’s in the latest release:

If you don’t like watching informative videos, here’s a quick rundown of the new features in this latest release. First, Web Forms got a a new FriendlyURL package that adds the following benefits:

SignalR Is The Latest And Greatest Tool Available To ASP.NET Developers

In November, Microsoft announced a number of features coming to its ASP.NET Web application framework over the next few months. One of the more prominent announcements was SignalR, a feature that adds “real-time functionality to Web applications using WebSockets and other down-level transports.” It’s available as a Release Candidate , but a Microsoft blogger is already showing off some tips and tricks on how to get the most out of it.

Microsoft blogger, Mike Brind, recently posted a pretty extensive tutorial on his blog that goes into how developers will want to use SignalR in building ASP.NET Web pages with WebMatrix. First things first, however, he explains what SignalR is and what the new library can to accomplish:

The web works on a Request-Response model. Browsers and other user agents make requests and web server provide a response to that request.The response is sent to the delivery address provided in the request by the user agent. And that is the natural order of things on the Web – servers can’t make responses without a request. For the most part, this is not an issue, but if you want to display real-time updates on your web page, you have needed to resort to techniques like repeatedly polling the server using AJAX to see if any changes had been made to data. Alternatively, you could use Comet technology, which keeps a persistent connection open between the server and the client. HTML5 introduced two new techniques – Server Sent Events and WebSockets. SignalR is a user-friendly wrapper around all these technologies that makes it a lot easier to create applications that require the real-time display of data. SignalR utilises HTML5 Web Sockets API where it is available, and falls back onto other technologies where they are not – Server Sent Events, Forever Frames or Long Polling, the last two of which are Comet techniques.

Brind suggests that any interested developer obtain the prerelease version of SignalR via Visual Studio. He suggests using the Package Manager Console and installing it via the Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR -Pre command.

From there, Brind explains the basics of SignalR including how you set up an application that uses the library. He says that an application is powered by a hub, which holds some similarities with a Controller in ASP.NET MVC. Those familiar with that should have little to no problem adopting SignalR into their own applications.

For the rest of the post, Brind gets into the nitty gritty of the code required to implement SignalR into your ASP.NET Web pages. His first example shows how to create a Chat window on a Web page using SignalR. The second example is a little more complicated as he combines SignalR with Knockout to create a simple product listing page where users can view details about individual products.

You can check out both of Brind’s examples at his GitHub page, and get refreshed on all the latest changes to SignalR at the official Web site.

Microsoft Details Its Plans For The Future Of ASP.NET

With the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft has been updating all of its development tools to help developers get the most out of the new OS. The company has shipped a number of products including Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5, but there’s still much to be done, especially with ASP.NET.

In late October, Microsoft finally unveiled its roadmap for proposed updates and additions to ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2. There’s a number of new features that developers can look forward to, but Microsoft warns that these additions are only in the planning stage now and may not see the light of day for some time.

First up is SignalR, a new addition to the ASP.NET family. Microsoft says that it adds “real-time functionality to web applications using WebSockets and other down-level transports.” The first release of SignalR will add item templates and hubs to an ASP.NET application and integrate with both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web API. You can find out more at the SignalR GitHub directory.

Speaking of Web API, Microsoft will be extending to add “richer OData functionality, expand support for Windows Store Apps and enable simple tracing and monitoring.” To be more specific, the following features will be added in the future:

OrcsWeb Now Offers Complete ASP.NET 4.5 Support

OrcsWeb is one of the leading providers of Microsoft Windows-based cloud and dedicated server hosting solutions. To remain at the top, the company must remain up-to-date on all the latest technologies. Their quick adoption of the latest version of ASP.NET only cements their dedication.

OrcsWeb announced that ASP.NET 4.5 is now available across all platforms – cloud and dedicated. They worked closely with Microsoft throughout the beta stage to make sure their .NET 4.5 support was perfect. Users can expect new features, increased performance and control, and other benefits with the latest release of .NET.

“ASP.NET 4.5 is the most exciting release of the .NET framework yet. Microsoft has made significant performance improvements in both application startup and memory utilization that customers will recognize immediately,” according to Jeff Graves, Director of Technology. “Security improvements help web developers easily protect their application from malicious users with unobtrusive validation and the baked-in AntiXSS library. Asynchronous HTTP calls are much easier to manage with the new await command. The best part is that OrcsWeb clients can take full advantage of these features today, across all of our platforms.”

Here are the key improvements that users will find built into .NET 4.5:

Microsoft Makes ASP.NET Open Source

Microsoft is becoming increasingly more and more one of the good guys within the tech community. Their latest move is definitely going to make a lot of developers happy.

Scott Hanselman, a Microsoft employee, announced Tuesday that Microsoft is making ASP.NEt MVC 4, ASP.NET Web API and ASP.NET Web Pages v2 all open source under the Apache 2.0 license. These technologies have been open source for a while now, but they weren’t “really” open source. What this means is that the team didn’t take contributions from the development community, now they are.

The open source movement will allow developers to directly submit fixes and unit tests to Microsoft. They list the things that outside developers can now take part in:

Find a bug? Send a unit test or fix.
Think our coverage isn’t sufficient? Submit a unit test.
Got a feature idea? Get involved more deeply with the developers and help write it.

When you submit a fix, the developers will test it against their current standards. They’re keeping this process transparent as developers will be able to see Microsoft’s “developers’ checkins to the product out in the open.”

All this doesn’t mean that Microsoft is going to reduce support for ASP.NET. In fact, they claim to have more developers working on these programs more than ever before. The open source movement just makes it easier for developers to collaborate on these programs.

ASP.NET Web Forms are not open source, however, and Microsoft has a valid reason for that. Web Forms is part of System.Web.dll which the Windows Server OS relies upon. It can’t be replaced as easily with newer versions.

If you want to get to work right now, the source code is now available at codeplex. For more information on this open source initiative, check out Microsoft’s page for it.