Telerik Watch Minute: RadMVC

No, there is no new product called RadMVC- that's just my "catchy" title for this episode of Telerik Watch Minute. As you might have guessed, though, this episode is focused on showing you how you can get started using the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX in ASP.NET MVC. Telerik is one of the only ASP.NET component vendors supporting MVC and we're doing it without requiring you to learn a whole new set of controls. You can use the same RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX Q3 2008 SP2 that you use today in ASP.NET MVC. This is a big concept, though, so this is a longer than usual Telerik Watch Minute. Hopefully the extra time spent in the demo will help you gain a complete understanding of how you can get started with the RadControls in MVC and set you up for success on Microsoft's latest incantation of ASP.NET. Enjoy! Watch this epsidoe in full HD on Telerik TV (makes it easier to read the code)

Telerik MVC demo app now available

Hopefully you know by now that Telerik's RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX fully support ASP.NET MVC. That's right. You can use the same RadControls that you know and love today in Microsoft's latest incantation of the ASP.NET framework. But since this is such a new feature, and since we know many of you are still trying to wrap your mind around MVC, we've built a full ASP.NET MVC demo application that uses many of the RadControls so you can see how this is all supposed to work. The demo is a simple- and stylish - forums application. It uses 9 of the RadControls, including RadGrid, RadEditor, RadChart, RadTreeView and RadUpload, to build a forum site that has basic thread/post navigation, formatted forum posting, user authentication (with support for custom avatars), and a site activity "Statistics" view. Everything you need to have a fully functional MVC forums app. The source is available for immediate download, so I encourage anyone interested in learning more about MVC or the RadControls in MVC to grab the bites and study the example. Hopefully this will help those of your adopting MVC find ways to use the RadControls in new and creative ways. We'll continue to expand our documentation and support for MVC as adoption continues, so let us know what you think! We want to know your thoughts on MVC and our current support for it. Is MVC starting to "woo" you away from WebForms? View the Telerik MVC Forums demo now

ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 released today

For all of you MVC fans out there, listen up: the third preview release of the ASP.NET MVC Framework has just dropped and is now available for download at the normal locations. This release comes about two months after the last "official" release (Preview 2 - released March 18th) and continues the iterative release trend Microsoft has adopted for the MVC project. Under this model, Microsoft is releasing bits for its new framework much earlier than it normally would and relying heavily on community feedback to guide the direction of the product. The approach has its pros and cons- we get to play with code earlier (pro) but lots of incorrect (a.k.a. outdated) information about the framework floods the internet (con). I'll reserve my judgment on this "experimental" product development approach 'til we see what the MVC team ultimately produces, but in the mean time, use caution when searching the interwebs for ASP.NET MVC help. It's likely already out of date.

Point in case, the new Preview 3 release makes a number of fundamental changes to the way ASP.NET MVC works. These changes are to be expected as the MVC team tweaks the Framework's API to "feel right," but if you've been dipping your toes in the MVC pool with Preview 2 be preparred to make some code changes. Among the key changes in this release:

• Action methods in MVC Controllers no longer rely on the static RenderView() method to render a view. Instead, a more flexible ActionResult is now returned by action methods. There are 6 enumerated ActionResult types, easily enabling you to do everything from render HTML (ViewResult) to redirecting the users (RedirectResult). This change will affect Preview 2 apps.
• The ViewData property of ViewPage no longer returns T. Instead, a new property has been added to the page's ViewDataDictionary to handle that task: Model. Call the Model property to access a strongly typed collection of data passed to the page.
• Routing has changed a lot in in Preview 3. The most significant change is the way routes are defined in the Global.asax file. A new MapRoute extension method makes the process much simpler than Preview 2, significantly reducing the number of lines of code it takes to define routes. This is a welcome change, but it will also require you to update your Preview 2 apps.
  

For a complete overview of the changes in Preview 3, be sure to review the release notes (caution: Word link). You can also find an exhaustive post covering all of the changes in Preview 3 from the master of increbile blogging, ScottGu.

Many of these changes are going to make MVC more enjoyable to use. The new ActionResult, for instance, is going to dramatically simplify MVC unit testing by removing the previously painful mocking required to test views. We also get the impression from Scott's post that the MVC team is "starting to feel good" about the MVC URL routing and controller/action components, so we may start to see these APIs stabilize in future releases. Scott's also indicating that future MVC releases will focus more on delivering improved HTML Helpers and better Ajax integration, two areas that are very interesting to those of us that spend a lot of time in the UI. I guess we'll find out in another couple of months.

Until then, enjoy the new preview and let us know what you think. Is ASP.NET MVC something that you'd consider using instead of WebForms in your organization?

ASP.NET MVC, 3.5 Extensions CTP released

In the rare chance that you missed this breaking news in the .NET community, here is your courtesy notice that the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP Preview has been released. That's right. A "CTP Preview". Doesn't that make this a preview of a preview? I think the CTP naming has gotten a little out of hand in this case, but the point is clearly that this is an early preview release of unfinished features coming to ASP.NET.

Nonetheless, this release is crammed-full of new goodies for ASP.NET. Frankly, it's a lot more exciting than the recent official .NET 3.5 release. Included in this preview of a preview are:

• ASP.NET AJAX improvements (including history support, permalink support, JS improvements)
• ASP.NET MVC
• ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support
• ASP.NET Silverlight Support
• ADO.NET Data Services (including "Astoria" preview)

I haven't talked much about MVC on this blog, but you can check out some of my thoughts on the new framework on my ASP.NET Weblog. There is definitely a lot to take-in with this release (as if there wasn't already enough new stuff to deal with), so expect a lot of additional information in this blog and others over the coming weeks. For now, the best place to go to get download links to all of these bits is ScottGu's original announcement post.

Had enough new technologies and frameworks in 2007 yet?