【Scott Guthrie Blog Chinese Version Translated from .NET Web Product Roadmap (ASP.NET, Silverlight, IIS7)】【Original Publication Date】 Thursday, November 29, 2007 9:22 AM
Last week, we released Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. This release is massive for .NET, providing a wealth of new features and numerous improvements for web, client, office, and mobile development.
In the next few months, we will release a series of additional products built on top of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5, further enhancing .NET development. Below is a roadmap of some of the .NET web development products my team is working on, which are scheduled to be released in the coming months:
Releasing Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries
Last month, we announced that we will provide developers with the ability to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, as well as enable integrated source code debugging functionality using Visual Studio 2008. You can find more details about this in my blog post here.
We are currently finalizing the deployment of the source server that provides these sources and will soon release instructions on how to enable the integrated debugging experience within Visual Studio 2008. Once it is released, I will discuss the detailed steps to enable this feature in my blog.
ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions
VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 include a host of new ASP.NET development features. We plan to provide even more ASP.NET functionality in the "ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions" product, which will be released early next year. You will be able to download the first public preview version of this product online next week.
The upcoming ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions preview version will include:
ASP.NET MVC: This ASP.NET Model/View/Controller (MVC) framework provides a structured model that promotes clear separation of concerns in web applications, allowing you to unit test your code and support Test-Driven Development (TDD) processes. It also provides greater control over URLs published in your application and the HTML output. You can find more details in the first part of my ASP.NET MVC tutorial series. I hope to find time this weekend to write and publish the second part of this series.
ASP.NET AJAX Improvements: The new ASP.NET AJAX features in ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions will include better browser history support (integration with forward and back buttons via new server-side controls), improved AJAX content linking through permalinks, and additional JavaScript library enhancements.
ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support: ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions will provide new features that allow you to create data-driven websites more quickly, offering a rich scaffolding framework that allows rapid data-driven website development using ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC.
ASP.NET Silverlight Support: With the release of ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions, we will provide support for easily integrating Silverlight into your ASP.NET applications. This support will include new controls that make it easy to integrate Silverlight video, audio, and interactive content into your site.
ADO.NET Data Services: We will also release ADO.NET Entity Framework. This provides a new modeling framework that allows developers to define conceptual models corresponding to database data definitions, making them closer to the real-world view of information. We will also release a new set of data services (codenamed "Astoria") that make it easy to present REST-based API endpoints from ASP.NET applications.
Silverlight 2.0
Two months ago, we released Silverlight 1.0 for Mac and Windows, and announced plans to bring Silverlight to Linux. Silverlight 1.0 focuses on enabling rich media scenarios in the browser and supports a JavaScript/AJAX programming model.
Next year, we will release a major update to Silverlight, focusing on promoting the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). This release will include a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Framework, enabling a rich .NET development platform in the browser. Earlier this year, we released an early Alpha version containing some basic features of the product. Our next public preview will significantly expand the feature set. The next Silverlight public preview will include the following .NET-specific new features:
WPF UI Framework: The current Silverlight Alpha version only includes basic control support and a managed API for drawing interfaces. The next Silverlight public preview will add support for more advanced features of the WPF UI framework. These include: an extensible control framework model, layout manager support, two-way data binding support, control templating and skinning support. The WPF UI framework in Silverlight will be a compatible subset of the WPF UI framework in the .NET Framework 3.5 released last week.
Rich Controls: Silverlight will provide a rich set of controls, making it extremely easy to build RIA applications. The next public preview of Silverlight will add support for core form controls (text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, etc.), built-in layout management controls (StackPanel, Grid, etc.), commonly used functional controls (TabControl, Slider, ScrollViewer, ProgressBar, etc.), and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, etc.).
Rich Networking Support: Silverlight will provide rich networking support. The next preview will add support for REST, POX, RSS, and WS* communication. It will also add support for cross-domain network access (so Silverlight clients can access resources and data from any trusted source on the web). Rich Base Class Library Support: Silverlight will include rich support for .NET base functionality class libraries (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc.). The next public preview will also add built-in support for LINQ to XML and richer integration with the HTML DOM API.
We have previously referred to this .NET-enabled version of Silverlight as "Silverlight V1.1". After taking a step back and looking at all the new features included (the ones listed above are just a portion, there are many more features we haven't revealed yet), we realized that calling it 1.1 does not reflect its true nature. Therefore, we decided to rename it and will refer to it as "Silverlight V2.0" going forward.
We will release a Beta version of Silverlight 2.0 in the first quarter of 2008. This Beta will support a Go-Live license, allowing developers to start building and deploying Silverlight 2.0 applications.
We will also release a free Visual Studio 2008 tool update to provide excellent Silverlight 2.0 tool support within Visual Studio 2008, allowing developers to easily build Silverlight applications using any .NET language.
We will support Silverlight development in both the Standard and Professional editions of Visual Studio 2008, as well as in the free Visual Studio 2008 Express edition. I will begin writing a new series of blog tutorials in the coming weeks discussing how to build Silverlight 2.0 applications, providing an in-depth look at the new features. For more details, please stay tuned to my blog.
IIS 7.0
Early next year, we will release the final version of IIS 7.0 as part of Windows Server 2008. As I discussed in my previous blog post, IIS 7.0 is a major update to our web service product, introducing significant improvements and new extensibility, configuration, and management architectures.
A very cool thing about IIS 7.0 is its excellent integration with the .NET Framework, allowing you to extend and customize the server using any .NET language. You can now easily do things with VB and C# that previously required complex C++ ISAPI code. Deployment, management, and day-to-day operations of web applications on the server are now unified under IIS and ASP.NET.
We will also soon begin sharing details of a new web application deployment framework for IIS, which allows you to easily automate the deployment of web applications on single servers or across web farm machines. It will help you version control your web applications (including the ability to quickly roll back to previous versions), automatically allocate them across multiple servers, and fully automate deployment tasks (including through command-line and PowerShell script APIs). The combination of IIS7 and this web deployment framework will allow you to deploy and scale your ASP.NET server applications better than ever before.
Conclusion
The release of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 last week was a huge step forward for .NET development. This release not only provides a wealth of new language, runtime, and tool features, but more importantly, it provides a solid foundation upon which we can build in the future. Please keep an eye on my blog, where I will discuss the products mentioned above in more detail.
I hope this helps, Scott