ASP.NET MVC Goes Beta

ASP.NET MVC, the model view controller architecture for Web applications based on .NET 3.5 Framework, is now available as a beta release. The release supports both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1.

ASP.NET MVC is an alternative, not a replacement, for ASP.NET Web Forms that offers the following benefits:

• Clear separation of concerns
• Testability - support for Test-Driven Development
• Fine-grained control over HTML and JavaScript
• Intuitive URLs

For example, MVC gives Web developers complete control over their URLs, meaning that Web pages won't need to have .asp, .aspx or any other "dot" extension (unless developers want to use them).

ASP.NET MVC Beta release comes with an explicit "go-live" license that allows you to deploy it in production environments.

Click here to download it.  You can also explore tutorials, quickstarts, and videos to learn more.

Scott Guthrie's blog entry, ASP.NET MVC Beta Released, contains a quick summary of some of the new features and changes in this build compared to the previous "Preview 5" release: 

• New "Add View" Menu in Visual Studio
• New \Scripts directory and jQuery Support
• Built-in Model Binder Support for Complex Types
• Refactored Model Binder Infrastructure
• Strongly Typed UpdateModel and TryUpdateModel WhiteList Filtering
• Improved Unit Testing of UpdateModel and TryUpdateModel Scenarios
• Strongly Typed [AcceptVerbs] attribute
• Better Validation Error Messages
• HTML Helper Cleanup and Refactoring
• Silverlight / ASP.NET MVC Project Integration
• ASP.NET MVC Futures Assembly
• \Bin and GAC Assembly Deployment