Scott Guthrie Surveys Features in Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4

Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of .NET Developer Platform, describes the changes coming in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 in a series of blog postings that promise to last a couple months. For the up-to-date list of postings, see VS 2010 and .NET 4 Series.

Try the latest Beta version of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 and provide feedback to the team at Make Visual Studio the Best It Can Be.

Here’s a quick summary of what is coming in the releases as posted so far:

Simplified Web.Config Files

ASP.NET 4.0 now has clean, simple, web.config files. For more information and a walkthrough of how you will use this feature, see Clean Web.Config Files.

Start with an Empty ASP.NET Project or Pick from Online Gallery

You can create “Empty projects” for ASP.NET or create projects that already have some layout and common functionality included in them, and which can help you get started when building a new application. VS 2010 also ships with starter template projects that allow you to create a new ASP.NET application that has some layout/CSS structure and common functionality already implemented within it.

VS 2010 also support the ability when inside the “New Project” and “Add Item” dialogs to search an online gallery of additional templates to use.  You can contribute your own templates to the gallery, rate and review submissions of others, and search and filter them by project type, keyword and community rating. 

For a walkthrough of how to use this feature, see Starter Project Templates.

Let Me Target a Specific .NET Version

With Visual Studio 2010 can can use and target multiple versions of .NET.  VS 2010 can be installed “side by side” with previous versions of Visual Studio.

.NET 4.0 can also be installed “side by side” with previous versions of .NET on the same machine.  .NET 4.0 has a new version number for both the framework libraries and CLR engine – which means it runs completely independently from .NET 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5.  What this means is that you can install .NET 4.0 on a machine that has .NET 2.0/3.0/3.5 installed, and configure some applications to run using .NET 4.0 and others to run using the older .NET versions (the IIS admin tool allows you to configure this for ASP.NET applications).  This allows you to use .NET 4.0 for new applications - without having to necessarily test and upgrade all your existing ones.

For more information, see Multi-Targeting Support.

Let Me Work Across Multiple Montors

Visual Studio 2010 allows editors, designers and tool-windows to be moved outside the top-level window and positioned anywhere you want, and on any monitor on your system.

See a walkthrough Multi-Monitor Support.

Just the Code Please, No Designers For Me

This feature lets you that hides the WYSIWYG web designer and lets you get straight at the source code. When you select this profile, it hides all toolbars by default, and disables and hides the designer tabs within the document windows of HTML and ASP.NET pages.

See for a walkthrough of the features at Code Optimized Web Development Profile.

Snippets for ASP.NET, HTML, JavaScript

Snippets allow you to be more productive within source view by allowing you to create chunks of code and markup that you can quickly apply and use in your application with a minimum of character typing. Snippets are supported for HTML, ASP.NET markup and JavaScript.

See ASP.NET, HTML, JavaScript Snippet Support for a walkthrough of how you would use this feature in your applications.

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,Visual Studio,.NET Framework,HTML

del.icio.us Tags: ASP.NET,Visual Studio,.NET Framework,HTML