WebMatrix 2 is Released

On June 6th, I announced  RC version of WebMatrix 2.   I highly encourage you to read the post Announcing WebMatrix 2 RC as it covers most of the new features that we are releasing.

I also encourage you to visit www.webmatrix.com which has tons of user documentation.

Since the June RC release we primarily focused on getting polish on the product and as part of this post I am hoping to highlight the key changes since WebMatrix 2 RC.  This post is not intended to be flashy but hopefully will give you an understanding of the effort that the team took in taking WebMatrix 2 from RC to RTM.

In last few weeks we have worked to make WebMatrix 2 available in 14 languages below:

English	Italian	Czech
German	Korean	Polish
Japanese	Russian	Port-Brazil
French	Chinese-Simplified	Turkish
Spanish	Chinese-Traditional

The goal for the RTW release was not to add a ton of new features but to actually make only targeted changes to make your experience with the product even more awesome and raise the quality even more.  We had given “Go-Live” license with the RC release already but now hopefully there would be nothing stopping you upgrading from WebMatrix  1 to WebMatrix 2.  JFYI: we will soon turn on the “Upgrade” flag in WebMatrix which will prompt millions of users using WebMatrix 1 to move to WebMatrix 2.

WebMatrix 2 in my opinion is one of the best light weight web development tool out there.  With support for Node.js, PHP, ASP.NET, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, SQL CE, SQL Server, MySQL, FTP, Web Deploy, Less, ScSS, Coffee Script, SEO, iPhone/iPad simulators and many many other features there is no doubt that it is probably the best web editing tool that one could possibly get for FREE, so if you are not already using it I hope you give it a try by downloading it below:

Since WebMatrix 2 RC we fixed over 100 bugs, many of them reported on Stackoverflow and user voice. Thanks for the taking the time to report issues, and helping us make WebMatrix 2 even better.  Below are some notable fixes that went in between WebMatrix 2 RC and RTM:

• Accessibility:  Microsoft has pretty high bar when it comes to accessibility and the team spent quite some time in making sure the product is highly accessible.
• Editor: Huge performance enhancements in editing of complex and big files.
• Editor: Better detection of JavaScript errors within script blocks of any html files.
• Editor: Formatting improvements on JavaScript Editor and enabling it to work more seamlessly with JSLint.
• Editor: Making sure that we show function signature help in JavaScript editor.
• Editor: Exposed extensibility points for Editor context menu.
• FTP: FTP publishing improvements including sub-folder publishing and re-tries in case of failures.
• Node.js: Code completion for Scoket.io for Node.js sites
• Node.js: Code outlining fix-ups for SaaS editor
• Node.js: Added a new template for package.json for Node.js sites
• PHP: Support for the new short PHP tag.
• PHP: Support for proper auto-completion for long PHP tags.
• PHP: Support for detection of PHP/MySQL Apps when downloaded from a remote location
• ASP.NET: Improved formatting of documents in ASP.NET Web Pages (Razor Syntax)
• ASP.NET: Making Comment/Un-comment work nicely across different types of syntax (CSS, JS, HTML, Razor) within ASP.NET Web Pages file.
• ASP.NET: Making C# colorization and intellisense more resilient in complex editing scenarios
• ASP.NET: Proper validation for generic types in C# & VB editors
• ASP.NET: Handling the nuances of Web Pages 1 vs. Web Pages 2 effectively
• General: Support opening a random folder as a site in WebMatrix by right clicking on it in Windows.
• General: Shipping RTW version of IIS Express, Web Pages, Web Deploy, SQL CE and every other component which makes WebMatrix 2 into a one stop shop for web development.
• General: Making sure the product works seamlessly on Windows XP and beyond, both on x86 and x64 machines.

With all these improvements we hope you will have fun using WebMatrix 2 and will create more awesome website in time to come.   Here is once again a link to the download.

/*code awesomely */

Vishal

PS: We now have few WebMatrix team twitter handles which you might want to consider following@vishalrjoshi @justinbeckwith & @webmatrix

ASP.NET Team Sessions at TechEd Dubai

The TechEd, Middle East web site does not have deep-linking for the sessions so I thought I would quickly blog it out so that it can be shared easily.  Here are the sessions Scott & I are doing at TechEd Dubai (sorted by date & time)if you are around please stop by:

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09 March 2011 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

Deep Dive into Razor

Track: Web Platforms (WEB303)

Speakers: Scott Hunter

Razor is the new syntax for building web applications in both ASP.NET Web Pages and ASP.NET MVC. It has a very concise syntax that blurs the transition between code and markup. We will start with a deep dive showing how to program the web using Razor which will include building reusable components called helpers that can share both markup and code in a very natural way. Next we will demonstrate how Razor’s extensibility can be used to use it outside of typical web scenario’s by writing some code using the Razor syntax to send rich emails that contain both text, markup and code. You should walk away knowing how to program that web with Razor and how Razor can be used outside the web to increase your productivity as a rich templating engine.

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The New Cool Kid on the Block: ASP.NET MVC 3

09 March 2011 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM

Track: Web Platforms (WEB304) 

Speaker: Vishal Joshi

ASP.NET MVC 3 with its friends Razor and NuGet are here to make your web development much easier and jazzier. If you are a web developer intending to build standards based, maintainable and extensible apps in a productive fashion, you are not allowed to leave Tech·Ed without learning about ASP.NET MVC 3. It doesn’t matter even if you haven’t played with ASP.NET MVC before, come join us and we will introduce you to it. If you have been working with ASP.NET MVC already, join us and you can hear about all the new toys you now have.

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10 March 2011 09:00 AM - 10:00 AM

What’s New in ASP.NET & Visual Studio for Web Developers

Track: Web Platforms (WEB305)

Speaker: Scott Hunter

ASP.NET 4 gives you more control than ever over markup as well as adding exciting new features making both client and server side data based applications easier and faster to develop than ever before. With Visual Studio 2010 adding improved support for JavaScript, HTML markup and CSS editing and powerful new web application deployment technology, together, ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 make it easier and quicker than ever to develop standards based, CSS styled web applications. We will also cover some of the latest improvements in Visual Studio such as support for Razor Syntax, NuGet and IIS Express.

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10 March 2011 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM

Introduction to Microsoft ASP.NET MVC

Track: Web Platforms (WEB05L) 

Speakers: Scott Hunter, Vishal Joshi

This lab introduces you to developing Web applications with ASP.NET MVC, and teaches you the basic conventions and features contained within it. It also shows you how to unit test your custom controllers and your application's route definitions.

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10 March 2011 01:45 PM - 02:45 PM

Meet the Visual Studio Team

Track: Developer Tools, Languages, and Frameworks (IAT209)

Speakers: Lisa Feigenbaum, Shy Cohen, Brian Keller, Vishal Joshi, Scott Hunter

Session Type: Interactive Discussion

Audience: Developer

This is an opportunity to interact with key members of the Visual Studio team. They discuss their areas of expertise and answer any questions you might have.

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10 March 2011 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM

Web Deployment That Can Impress your Boss

Track: Web Platforms (WEB306)

Speaker: Vishal Joshi

If you typically deploy your web applications using Windows Explorer or have a deployment document longer than your resume, please stop. Come see a practical session on how the new deployment goodness in Visual Studio 2010 can help. We dig into Web Deploy (a.k.a. MSDeploy) and deployment from within Visual Studio 2010. Learn how to package up web apps in .zip files, deploy them using UI, or command file, move their settings and databases easily and much more. We start with the basics and ramp it up quickly, exploring team build deployment and advanced techniques.

-Vishal

VS 2010 for Web Developer Previews

 

At PDC 2008 in LA and TechEd EMEA 2008 in Barcelona we announced key new features for Visual Studio 2010 for Web Developers...  Apart from our focus on MVC, Dynamic Data, Silverlight and other key ASP.NET runtime functionality, this was the first time we announced the key investments pillars for Web Developers in VS 2010...  Over the next year or so we will be writing in details about these new features, but to start off  I thought it would be great to share various videos which are available to view online today ...

Visual Studio 2010 - Web Development Overview

In this talk we provided the glimpse of the major investment areas in VS 2010.  The talk is divided into following key areas

• Design View - Improved CSS 2.1 Support &  standards compliance
• Source View
• HTML Snippets
• JScript Intellisense
• Web Deployment
• Web.Config Transformation
• Web 1-Click Publish

Jeff did a great presentation at PDC on this topic which can be viewed at the link below:

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL48/ (77.32 mins)

I also presented a similar talk at TechEd EMEA which is available for viewing below:

Web Development Futures with Visual Studio 2010 from Vishal Joshi on Vimeo.

http://www.vimeo.com/2667207 (62.42 mins)

Visual Studio 2010 - Web Deployment

In this talk we talk about Web Deployment in detail and how next wave of Web Deployment technologies will make deployment a much easier task.  The key focus areas of this talk are:

• Web Packaging - Packaging your web applications into .zip files
• Web.Config Transformation - Transforming your web.config file (i.e. connection string, debug flags etc) from dev environment to production environment
• DB Deployment - Packaging and deploying your SQL Server databases along with your web application
• Web Publishing - Using Web 1-Click Publish functionality to deploy your web application with ease.

I did a presentation on web deployment at PDC and TechEd EMEA; the PDC presentation can be viewed at the below link:

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC33/  (84.42 mins)

If you would like to see a more compressed version of the talk then I also did a talk with Jason Olson in Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 Week! you can view this video at the below link:

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/VisualStudio/Web-Development-and-Deployment-with-Visual-Studio-2010/ (34.40 mins)

Hope you will enjoy these videos...

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,Vishal R. Joshi,Visual Studio,Visual Studio 2010,VS,VS 10,Web Application Projects,WAP,Web Deployment,MSDeploy

Subscribe to my posts on "Your Websites Our Passion"

 

Now you can subscribe to the posts that I make on our Team blog (Visual Studio Web Developer)  by using the below RSS feed...

http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/rss.aspx?Tags=Vishal+R.+Joshi&AndTags=1

Numbers of Bloggers in Microsoft

From a recent Wired magazine article about Microsoft:"In fact, the 71,000-employee company now has more than 4,800 bloggers posting on every imaginable tech topic, from startups to SQL." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_microsoft_pr.html

PS: Thanks to my colleague Gus who provided the pointer to this article...

Disclaimer: This is probably a very conservative estimate coz there might be many many more employees who might have blogs on other private blog site and also on live spaces etc... I guess the above number is TechNet and MSDN blogs (exludes me too :-))...