Microsoft has released the final version of ASP.NET MVC 2-a free framework that helps developers build standards-based, SEO-friendly Websites.
In a March 11 blog post, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie announced that ASP.NET MVC 2 come less than a year after the initial version. ASP.NET MVC follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, which isolates domain logic from input and presentation, enabling independent development, testing and maintenance of each. The popular Ruby on Rails Web development framework also follows the MVC pattern.
ASP.NET MVC 2 is now available for Visual Studio 2008/Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with ASP.NET 3.5, Guthrie said. However, the final release of Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 will have ASP.NET MVC 2 built-in-so users will not need an additional install to use ASP.NET MVC 2 with them.
Said Guthrie:
““ASP.NET MVC 2 is the next significant update of ASP.NET MVC. It is a compatible update to ASP.NET MVC 1-so all the knowledge, skills, code and extensions you already have with ASP.NET MVC continue to work and apply going forward. Like the first release, we are also shipping the source code for ASP.NET MVC 2 under an OSI-compliant open-source license.”“
Some of the new features and capabilities, according to Guthrie, include:
New Strongly Typed HTML Helpers
- Enhanced Model Validation support across both server and client
- Auto-Scaffold UI Helpers with Template Customization
- Support for splitting up large applications into “Areas”
- Asynchronous Controllers support that enables long-running tasks in parallel
- Support for rendering subsections of a page/site using Html.RenderAction
- ??Ã Lots of new helper functions, utilities and API enhancements
- Improved Visual Studio tooling support
Moreover, ASP.NET MVC 2 can be installed side-by-side with ASP.NET MVC 1-meaning developers can have applications built with Version 1 and others built with Version 2 on the same machine, Guthrie said.