BARCELONA, Spain — Nov. 5, 2007 — Today, during the keynote address at Microsoft TechEd Developers 2007, S. “Soma” Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp., announced that Microsoft will release Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 by the end of November 2007. Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 enable developers at all levels to rapidly create connected applications that offer compelling user experiences for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, mobile devices and the Web. Soma also unveiled plans to open new opportunities for Visual Studio partners, as well as to deliver new tools and resources for developers, including a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Microsoft Sync Framework and new capabilities for Popfly Explorer.

“The highly social and visual nature of the Web has fundamentally changed what users expect from all applications they interact with, regardless of whether it’s on a customer-facing Web site or Windows rich client application, or a desktop business application built using Microsoft Office,” said Somasegar. “Traditionally, organizations have been hard pressed to deliver the richer, more connected applications and services they need to boost productivity, drive revenue and stay ahead of the competition. With Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5, it is easy for developers to use the skills they already have to build compelling applications that take advantage of the latest platforms.”

FWBS Ltd., Xerox Corp., Dell Inc. and K2 are just a few of the early adopter customers that are already experiencing the benefits of these releases. FWBS used Visual Studio, the .NET Framework and the Microsoft Office system to build an Office Business Application (OBA) for the law field. The application enables users to work within Microsoft Office — the tools they use every day — while also dramatically improving productivity and helping users respond quickly to changing business needs.

Xerox has also had early success developing applications with the new tools. “We’ve already seen significant advantages from using Visual Studio Team System 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. With the first application we built, we easily saved 50 percent of the time and money it would have taken to create the same application with other tools,” said Eugene Shustef, feature design lead, Global Technology, Xerox. “That’s more than a savings to IT — it delivers a huge time-to-market advantage because it put the tool into the hands of our analysts six months sooner than they would have had it otherwise.”

Creating New Opportunities for Partners

Microsoft also announced plans to make additional investments in the Visual Studio partner ecosystem. In response to partner feedback and in order to provide better support for interoperability with other developer tools and cross-platform scenarios, Microsoft is today announcing plans to change licensing terms, no longer limiting partners to building solutions on top of Visual Studio for Windows and other Microsoft platforms only. This licensing change will be effective for the release of Visual Studio 2008 and the Visual Studio 2008 SDK.

“Integrating dynaTrace’s cross-platform application performance management and diagnostics product with Visual Studio has opened up additional commercial opportunities for our business and delivered a compelling solution for our customers. .NET and Visual Studio is a strategic platform for our business, and Microsoft’s additional investments in the partner ecosystem make it even more compelling,” said Klaus Fellner, senior director of product marketing at dynaTrace. “We’re looking forward to taking advantage of the new technology available with the launch of Visual Studio 2008 and the partner benefits available through the Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program.”

In addition, Microsoft announced plans to create a shared source licensing program for Premier-level partners in the VSIP program. The program will provide these partners with the ability to view Visual Studio IDE source code for debugging purposes, and simplify the process of integrating their products with Visual Studio 2008.

Tools for Today and Tomorrow

Microsoft also announced a number of additional resources for developers of all skill sets, enabling them to make the most out of their Microsoft tools investments to build great applications on the latest platforms:

• The first CTP of the Microsoft Sync Framework demonstrates Microsoft’s ongoing investments in synchronization and builds on the synchronization functionality available in Visual Studio 2008. With Visual Studio 2008, developers can rapidly take advantage of offline synchronization capabilities to sync-enable applications and services easily with rich designer support. The Microsoft Sync Framework extends the support featured in Visual Studio 2008 to also include offline and peer-to-peer collaboration using any protocol for any data type, and any data store. This is part of Microsoft’s long-term commitment to providing synchronization for partners and independent software vendors that can embed the Sync Framework into their applications easily to create rich sync-enabled ecosystems that allow any type of data to follow their customers wherever they go.
• A new release of Popfly Explorer will add new Web tools that provide Web developers and Popfly users an easy way to add Silverlight gadgets built in Popfly to their Web pages, as well as publish HTML Web pages directly to Popfly.

These latest releases are part of the broader Microsoft Application Platform, a portfolio of technology capabilities and core products that help organizations develop, deploy and manage applications and IT infrastructure. They also mark another major milestone leading up to the global launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 on Feb. 27, 2008, in Los Angeles.

Product Information and Availability

Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 will be available by the end of November 2007. The .NET Framework 3.5 will also be available to end users via a free, optional download from Microsoft Update. A CTP of Microsoft Sync Framework is available today at http://msdn.microsoft.com/sync. Popfly Explorer is a hosted development environment available today at http://www.popfly.com. More information about all of these releases is available at http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio.

Few days ago, I shared about how to upgrade your ASP.NET 1.1 to ASP.NET 2.0, this time I am going to discuss about enabling ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 to your existing Web Site or Web Application.

1) You have to downlaod and install the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions 1.0. Here
2) You may download and extract the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Here

After install it, you will found out that you may create AJAX Enabled Web Application when creating new projects(Web Site or Web Application). You may also found out that there is a new tab called “AJAX Extensions” in Toolbox. If you have extracted the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, you may do the following,

1) Create new tab called “AJAX Control Toolkit”;
2) Right click under the created tab and click on “Choose Items…”;
3) Click “Browse…” and browse to the folder which you extract the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, and then browse to “~\SampleWebSite\Bin\” and select AjaxControlToolokit.dll
4) Now you will see a lot of controls which you are ready to use. You may browse and view the “Toolkit Live” to get the sample and idea on the controls.

You are now ready to build your AJAX web site or web application. However, if you have any existing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site or Web Application, you do the normal action to write AJAX, you will found out that the AJAX is not working in your existing Web Site or Web Application. You have to do the following in order to let your existing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site or Web Application to be “AJAX Enabled”,

1) Open web.config from your existing web site or web application
2) Add the following XML under <configuration> tab.

<configSections>
    <sectionGroup name=”system.web.extensions” type=”System.Web.Configuration.SystemWebExtensionsSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″>
      <sectionGroup name=”scripting” type=”System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″>
          <section name=”scriptResourceHandler” type=”System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingScriptResourceHandlerSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ requirePermission=”false” allowDefinition=”MachineToApplication”/>
        <sectionGroup name=”webServices” type=”System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingWebServicesSectionGroup, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″>
          <section name=”jsonSerialization” type=”System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingJsonSerializationSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ requirePermission=”false” allowDefinition=”Everywhere” />
          <section name=”profileService” type=”System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingProfileServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ requirePermission=”false” allowDefinition=”MachineToApplication” />
          <section name=”authenticationService” type=”System.Web.Configuration.ScriptingAuthenticationServiceSection, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ requirePermission=”false” allowDefinition=”MachineToApplication” />
        </sectionGroup>
      </sectionGroup>
    </sectionGroup>
  </configSections>

  <system.web>
    <pages>
      <controls>
        <add tagPrefix=”asp” namespace=”System.Web.UI” assembly=”System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
      </controls>
    </pages>
    <!–
          Set compilation debug=”true” to insert debugging
          symbols into the compiled page. Because this
          affects performance, set this value to true only
          during development.
    –>
    <compilation debug=”false”>
      <assemblies>
        <add assembly=”System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
      </assemblies>
    </compilation>

    <httpHandlers>
      <remove verb=”*” path=”*.asmx”/>
      <add verb=”*” path=”*.asmx” validate=”false” type=”System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
      <add verb=”*” path=”*_AppService.axd” validate=”false” type=”System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
      <add verb=”GET,HEAD” path=”ScriptResource.axd” type=”System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ validate=”false”/>
    </httpHandlers>

    <httpModules>
      <add name=”ScriptModule” type=”System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
    </httpModules>
  </system.web>

  <system.web.extensions>
    <scripting>
      <webServices>
      <!– Uncomment this line to customize maxJsonLength and add a custom converter –>
      <!–
      <jsonSerialization maxJsonLength=”500″>
        <converters>
          <add name=”ConvertMe” type=”Acme.SubAcme.ConvertMeTypeConverter”/>
        </converters>
      </jsonSerialization>
      –>
      <!– Uncomment this line to enable the authentication service. Include requireSSL=”true” if appropriate. –>
      <!–
        <authenticationService enabled=”true” requireSSL = “true|false”/>
      –>

      <!– Uncomment these lines to enable the profile service. To allow profile properties to be retrieved
           and modified in ASP.NET AJAX applications, you need to add each property name to the readAccessProperties and
           writeAccessProperties attributes. –>
      <!–
      <profileService enabled=”true”
                      readAccessProperties=”propertyname1,propertyname2″
                      writeAccessProperties=”propertyname1,propertyname2″ />
      –>
      </webServices>
      <!–
      <scriptResourceHandler enableCompression=”true” enableCaching=”true” />
      –>
    </scripting>
  </system.web.extensions>

  <system.webServer>
    <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration=”false”/>
    <modules>
      <add name=”ScriptModule” preCondition=”integratedMode” type=”System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
    </modules>
    <handlers>
      <remove name=”WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated” />
      <add name=”ScriptHandlerFactory” verb=”*” path=”*.asmx” preCondition=”integratedMode”
           type=”System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
      <add name=”ScriptHandlerFactoryAppServices” verb=”*” path=”*_AppService.axd” preCondition=”integratedMode”
           type=”System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptHandlerFactory, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
      <add name=”ScriptResource” preCondition=”integratedMode” verb=”GET,HEAD” path=”ScriptResource.axd” type=”System.Web.Handlers.ScriptResourceHandler, System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ />
    </handlers>
  </system.webServer>

Now you are ready to make your web site or web application to be “AJAX Enabled”.

As you might already know, the VS2008 VPC will be expired on Nov 1st, the VSTS team is going to release a new VPC with updated expiration date.  Detail in below,

As the final act in our saga of expiring VPCs, I’m happy to announce that we’ve reissued VPCs for VS2008 Beta2 with an updated expiration date.  You can find the updated links on the VS2008 download page:

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite VPC
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite & Team Foundation Server VPC

Thanks to everyone that has helped us get the word out about this situation and please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this might have caused you.  Needless to say, we’re taking steps now to ensure that we don’t make this particular mistake again.

Source from Jeff Beehler’s Blog — VS2008 Beta2 VPCs re-released

Last time, I speak in Hong Kong .NET UserGroup Monthly Gathering in 2007 Sept right after MSDN Seminar, the topic was “Experience Sharing: Upgrading ASP.NET 1.x –> 2.0 –> AJAX”. Well, I also promised that i will blog about it. Actually, it is nothing new and it is nothing special. I just shared my experience on how I upgrade ASP.NET 1.1 to 2.0 and how to enable AJAX.

First, I am not sure if you know that, in .NET framework 2.0, there is 2 types of Web Projects, ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site and ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application. You may refer to the following link for more information if you would like to read more.

Introduction to Web Application Projects
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa730880(VS.80).aspx

If you are going to upgrading your existing ASP.NET 1.x project, you should choose to be using ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application project. This is the message from one of ScottGu’s blog, Tutorial on VB and C# are also mentioned.

“Because the VS 2005 Web Application Project model has the same conceptual semantics as the VS 2003 Web Project Model, it also makes migrating VS 2003 web projects very, very easy – with zero/minimal code changes required.  To learn how to automatically upgrade a VS 2003 web project using this option, please review these VB and C# tutorials that walkthrough the VS 2003 to VS 2005 upgrade process step-by-step.”

However, if you want to move your existing ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site to ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application, you may read the following message from ScottGu’s blog,

“If you want to migrate an existing VS 2005 Web Site Project to be a VS 2005 Web Application Project, please also review these other VB and C# migration tutorials that walkthrough the Web Site to Web Application conversion process step-by-step.  This article here also describes some of the differences between the VS 2005 Web Site Project Model and VS 2005 Web Application Project Model. “

 

Q: How can I create ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application Project?
A: Your machine must installed VS2005 with SP1 in order to create ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application Project

Q: I don’t want to install VS2005 SP1 at the moment, any other way?
A: you need the deprecated “Microsoft Visual Studio Web Application Projects” installer you can find it here.

Q: Anything I need to download if I am going to start developing in ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application Project?
A: Available as a separate download is a custom build tool for generating a strongly-typed Profile class for the ASP.NET 2.0 Profile system.  This allows you to right-click on a web.config file containing profile declarations and auto-generate the Profile type into your code-behind project assembly.  You can learn more about this and download it here. 

Q: I would like to read more and the full story on ScottGu blog.
A: Sure, you may go to ScottGu’s blog - VS 2005 Web Application Project V1.0 Released

Q: Any other resource from Microsoft Official link?
A: Sure, here you are, MSDN: Upgrade from ASP.NET 1.x

Q: You mentioned ASP.NET 2.0 to AJAX….
A: Yes, I am going to blog about it later on. Please come back some time for more detail.

For users who downloaded the VPC of VS2008 Beta 2 from MSDN, please be noted that the VPCs will expire on Nov 1st, instead of March 15, 2008 as announced originally.

It is best that you start to backup and move your Team Foundation Server data to an alternative source. For instructions on how to move, please refer to the article http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms404879(vs.90).aspx from the MSDN Library.

Some FAQ you might have:

FAQ

Q. Will my data be available after November 1, 2007?A.This is still being researched, however, currently the understanding is that customers will NOT be able to access their date after November 1^st unless the data is moved to an alternate installation location.

Q. Can I reset my system date to re-enable the OS image?A.Again there is still research being done, however, from the current understanding of the problem resetting the system date back DOES NOT re-enable the OS image.