Announcing new Web Features in Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 CTP2

Xinyang Qiu

Update 4/21/2014: please see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2014/04/02/announcing-new-web-features-in-visual-studio-2013-update-2-rc.aspx for Update 2 RC web features.

Today, the Visual Studio team announced the release of CTP2 of Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 .  Our team added a few useful features and did some bug fixing in this update to improve the web development experience.  We will have future blogs to talk about some of the features in detail.  The release note contains more details.

New SASS project item and editor

We added LESS in VS2013 RTM, and we now have a SASS project item and editor.  SASS editor features are comparable to LESS editor, include colorization, variable and Mixins IntelliSense, comment/uncomment, quick info, formatting, syntax validation, outlining, goto definition, color picker, tools option setting etc.

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New JSON project item and editor

We have added a JSON project item and editor to Visual Studio.  Current JSON editor features include colorization, syntax validation, brace completion, outlining, tools option setting and more.

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Create remote Azure resources option when creating a new Web project

We added a Windows Azure “Create remote resources” checkbox on the new web application dialog.  By choosing it, you will be able to integrate the experience of creating a new web application, setting up the Windows Azure publishing site for testing, and creating publishing profile in a few simple steps.

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We also supports remote debugging for WAWS and remote view of Azure website content files in the server explorer.

ASP.NET Scaffolding

If your model is using Enums, then the MVC Scaffolder will generate dropdown for Enum. This uses the Enum helpers in MVC.

Updated the EditorFor templates in MVC Scaffolding so they use the Bootstrap classes.

MVC and Web API Scaffolders will add 5.1 packages for MVC and Web API

One ASP.NET Template changes

We updated ASP.NET templates to support Account Confirmation and Password Reset.

We updated ASP.NET Web API template to support authentication using On Premises Organizational Accounts.

ASP.NET SPA template now shows a template where the authentication is based on MVC and server side views. The template has a WebAPI controller which can only be accessed by authenticated users.

LESS editor improvements

We added features including nested media queries, named parameter support, support for selector interpolation, support for semicolons as parameter separators, goto definition for @import, goto definition of variables and mixins.

Knockout IntelliSense upgrade

We added a non-standard KnockOut syntax for VS intelliSense, “ko-vs-editor viewModel:” syntax.  It can be used to bind to multiple view models on a page using comments in the form:

Code Snippet
  1. <!– ko-vs-editor viewModel: <any javascript expression that evaluates to an object> –>
  2.  
  3. <!– /ko-vs-editor >

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We also added support for nested ViewModel IntelliSense, so you may drill into deeply nested objects on the ViewModel.

<div data-bind=”text: foo.bar.baz.etc” />

The IntelilSense displayed is the full IntelliSense of the JavaScript Object.

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New URL Picker in HTML, Razor, CSS, LESS and SASS pages

VS 2013 shipped with no URL picker outside of WebForm pages.  The new URL picker for HTML, Razor, CSS, LESS and SASS editors is a dialog-free, fluent typing picker that understands ‘..’ and filters file lists appropriately for img’s and links.

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BrowserLink now supports HTTPS connections and will list that in Dashboard with other connections as long as the certificate is trusted by browser.

ASP.NET Web Forms

The Web Forms templates now show how to do Account Confirmation and Password Reset for ASP.NET Identity.

Entity Framework Data Source and Dynamic Data Provider for Entity Framework 6. For more details please see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/webdev/archive/2014/01/30/announcing-preview-of-dynamic-data-provider-and-entitydatasource-control-for-entity-framework-6.aspx

ASP.NET MVC 5.1.1, ASP.NET Web API 2.1.1 and ASP.NET Web Pages 3.1.1 are included

We announced ASP.NET MVC 5.1, ASP.NET Web API 2.1 and ASP.NET Web Pages 3.1 in January.  We integrated that release with some minor bug fixes into VS 2013 Update 2 CTP2.

ASP.NET Identity

We integrated Microsoft.AspNet.Identity 2.0-alpha1 into the new project templates.  You can upgrade it to Microsoft.AspNet.Identity 2.0-beta1 to use two factor authentication and more features.

Entity Framework

We integrated Entity Framework 6.1.0-alpha1 into the new project template.  You can upgrade it to Entity Framework 6.1.0-beta1 to use the newest beta1 features.

Microsoft OWIN Components

We integrated stable version Microsoft OWIN Components (2.0.2) into the new project templates.  You can upgrade it to 2.1.0.  Please look at the release notes for the latest stable version (2.1.0) for more detailed information, which includes support for Google OAuth2 authentication and static file server.

NuGet

NuGet 2.8 RTM is included in this release.  You can always get the latest NuGet extension for Visual Studio through the menu “Tools->Extensions and Updates…”.

ASP.NET SignalR

We included 2.0.2 NuGet package for SignalR .  Please look at the release notes for more detailed information https://github.com/SignalR/SignalR/releases/tag/2.0.2

Known Problems

Web Essential 2013 is not yet compatible with the Update 2 CTP2. If you install Update 2 CTP2, after opening Visual Studio, you’ll get an error message “EditorExtensionsPackage” couldn’t be loaded.   Please visit this web essential blog post on how to get the compatible build for VS2013 Update 2 CTP2.

When creating an App for SharePoint with an ASP.NET MVC web application, users will receive the following message:

o Error: this template attempted to load component assembly ‘Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Project, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a’. For more information on this problem and how to enable this template, please see documentation on Customizing Project Templates

o The workaround to create a new provider-hosted or autohosted app for SharePoint using an MVC web application is to follow the steps:

  • Create a MVC web application project first.
  • After the web project is created, right-click the project node to launch the context menu.
  • In the context menu, select “Convert”, then choose “Convert to App for SharePoint Project…”.

Summary

We hope you can evaluate these new features and let us know about any bugs and suggestions.  For VS features, please use Connect to submit bugs, ASP.NET UserVoice to submit and vote for suggestions, and the ASP.NET Forums for Q&A.  For MVC/WebAPI/WebPages issues, please submit any issues you encounter and feature suggestions for future releases on our CodePlex site. Thank you!

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