ASP.NET MVC 2

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 ASP.NET MVC 1.0 , Microsoft also shipping the source code for ASP.NET MVC 2 under an OSI-compliant open-source license.

ASP.NET MVC 2 Features

ASP.NET MVC 2 adds a bunch of new capabilities and features.  I’ll cover them in a lot more depth with this blog series.  Some of them include:

• New Strongly Typed HTML Helpers
• Enhanced Model Validation support across both server and client 
• Auto-Scaffold UI Helpers with Template Customization
• Support for partitioning large applications into “Areas”
• Asynchronous Controllers support
• Support for rendering sub-sections of a page/site using Html.RenderAction
• Lots of new helper functions, utilities, and API enhancements
• Improved Visual Studio tooling support

How to download ASP.NET MVC 2

ASP.NET MVC 2 is designed to work with both VS 2008 / .NET 3.5, as well as with VS 2010 / .NET 4.  Supporting both versions means that you can start using it today without having to wait to upgrade to VS2010 / .NET 4.

Click Here to download the ASP.NET MVC 2 release candidate for .NET 3.5 and VS 2008.  It can be installed side-by-side with ASP.NET MVC 1.0 on the same machine.

ASP.NET MVC 2 is a built-in component of VS 2010 / .NET 4 – which means you will not have to download or install anything to get it once you install any version of Visual Studio 2010.  The current public VS 2010 Beta 2 release includes the ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 release.  The upcoming VS 2010 Release Candidate that will be available for download next month will have a more recent ASP.NET MVC 2 RC built-in.

ASP.NET Web Forms + ASP.NET MVC

Microsoft is always careful to make clear that ASP.NET MVC is an option with ASP.NET.  ASP.NET Web Forms continues to be the most widely used approach when building applications with ASP.NET, and the new ASP.NET 4 release contains significant improvements for ASP.NET Web Forms development (clean client IDs and CSS based control markup, better viewstate management, new data and charting controls, URL routing, SEO improvements, and much more).

References

ScottGu’s Blog on ASP.NET MVC 2  – Keep visit this blog for latest findings on ASP.NET MVC 2.0