ASP.NET DevConnections '07 - Day 1 - VS Orcas

The third session that I attended on Monday dealt with the impending release of Orcas.  From all of the features demo'd to the eager attendees, this has the potential to create even MORE productivity gains than what was initially created.  I'll give a quick explanation of each feature that was shown below.  After attending some of the other Non-MS presentations, I've found that the MS ones were really the most useful and packed the most into a very short period of time.

First off, since Orcas will be released with the .net Framework v3.5, there will be a A LOT more assemblies to choose from.  .net 3.5 is the next big upgrade for the ASP.NET platform and includes all of the much talked about features that have been touted over the last year or so.  

As part of the Orcas release, when a developer creates a project, they will specify which version of the .net Framework to use - .net 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5.  While that, by itself, is an incredible feature - it will also allow you to change the version of the framework for your application later, too.  During that process, it informs you of any references that are not compatible with the new version of the Framework.  That is VERY cool stuff!!!  

In addtion, Orcas features a brand new HTML Editor that includes the following features:

• Nested Design Views (think of master/master/child pages - the old IDE would only display the parent for the typical master/subpage relationship, not for the master/master/subpage.
• View switching is A LOT faster than it was.  This was due to the fact that when you open a page, it loads the Source and Designer into memory.  At this point, though, I wonder what effect that has to do with the memory utilization on a PC.  I'm thinking that 2.0GB+ will become a requirement for future development.
• It provides a VERY easy way to have a split view between the Designer and the Markup.  You can either choose to have the split horizontally or vertically for all those wide-screen folks out there.  Also, when you make a change via the designer, the HTML is immediately synchronized, so you won't run into wacky inconsistencies.
• You can easily add a style to your stylesheet via the HTML Editor.  In-fact, it is VERY easy to manage all of your styles straight from the designer view of the page.  In addition, when you make a more global change - the IDE will tell you which pages were effected by the page, so you can perform your own verifications.
• Along that same vein, it will show you, on-demand, conflicting font-families using something called "Applied Rules".  It's VERY cool stuff and I know would have saved me tons of time on my last project. <sigh>. 
  

Orcas will also support all of the enhancements that are going into the LINQ feature in the framework.  I'll show that in a later blog entry. 

Also, as part of .net 3.5 - there will be a few new controls.  Specifically shown were the ListView, LinqDataSource and the DataPager.  The ListView is a very very clean list-type control.  I believe it renders things in <div> tags which make them very easy to style and deal with.  No more tables!!!  Yay!  The LinqDataSource is just what it says it claims to be.  Right now, we have a SQLDataSource and an XMLDataSource - so it makes sense with the impending release of Linq, we'll have a LinqDataSource.  Lastly, we have a DataPager.  This was very interesting, I thought.  It really is abstracting the paging operation (for grids, lists, etc.) to a greater level than ever before.  I was quite impressed as it had support for the paging Best Practices.  Very Cool Stuff!

A last item that our presenter showed us were all of the AJAX Improvements added into the Orcas build.  Here are just a few of the items covered:

• In the markup view, all the Intellisense appears as you type.  Simply type one letter, hit the [tab] key and you're off and running! 
  
• MUCH better javascript Intellisense support that is more positional and type-safe than ever before.  For example, if you declare a variable and assign it to a textbox (input) element, after that assignment, you will ONLY get the methods and such for that type of element.  
  
• Along that same line of thought, with the improved Intellisense, comes an improved method of calling Javascript methods and functions in linked .js files.  That's an incredible advance and should make the client-side coding experience a bit more intuitive and less of a hassel.  In the standalone .js files, you can also call out to methods and "classes" in other .js files - simply add "/// <reference name="Javascript_File_Name.js" /> at the top of the file and that tells VS.net where to load the methods and classes.      
  
• A small enhancement (but very useful) is the addition of javascript namespaces and enumerations.  Wow!
• Javascript debugging - 'nuff said.
• Also, in the javascript, you can structure up class-docs (much like Javadocs) to the top of your methods and amazingly enough, when you call out to the methods later, you'll get the full design-time support that you get with the server-side code.  The structure is something like: 
  

///<summary></summary>
///<param name="test" type="String">Test Description</param>
///<returns type="Number"></return>
 

That's it on this session, but wow!  what a ton of useful stuff!  Can't wait to play with the CTP or Beta - should be only a few more weeks....I hope!