ASP.NET vNext

Previously Mike wrote a great editorial about all things //BUILD I'd like to re-iterate that developers who are looking to build apps for Windows 8 can check out a wealth of content on the BUILD website, the new Windows Dev Center, and Channel 9. That said, Windows 8 isn't going to be the subject of this week's editorial. I'd like to talk about the enhancements to the Microsoft Web Platform that has also happened over the last month.

The first thing to call out is the beta of the beta launch of a redesigned ASP.NET website at https://beta.asp.net. The new site is built on Umbraco and if you'd like to provide feedback please check the post on Scott Hanselman's blog.

During Scott Guthrie's //BUILD keynote, Scott announced the availability of ASP.NET MVC 4 developer preview. Note those words, developer preview. This is a pre-beta release so proceed with caution.

Scott has started an ASP.NET vNext Series of posts and Phil Haack spoke at the //BUILD conference on building mobile web applications with ASP.NET MVC 4. In his talk, he demonstrated a recipe that he wrote to automate the process of creating mobile versions of desktop views.

Speaking of mobile with the roll out of Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" it may be a good time to start thinking about IE9 mobile as a target for your web applications. Check out this //BUILD session building optimized websites and using the web browser control with IE9.

For those of you that are enjoying the light weight nature of Web Matrix (check out this post on Re-writing a 5 year old WebForms application as an ASP.NET Web Pages application with Razor) the WebMatrix 2 beta is now available for download.