ASP.NET MVC 2 Released

The final release of ASP.NET MVC 2 is now available for VS 2008/Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with ASP.NET 3.5.  You can download and install it from the following locations:

• Download ASP.NET MVC 2 using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer
• Download ASP.NET MVC 2 from the Download Center

ASP.NET MVC 2 Features

ASP.NET MVC 2 adds a bunch of new capabilities and features.  I’ve started a blog series about some of the new features, and will be covering them in more depth in the weeks ahead.  Some of the new features and capabilities include:

• New Strongly Typed HTML Helpers
• Enhanced Model Validation support across both server and client
• Auto-Scaffold UI Helpers with Template Customization
• Support for splitting up large applications into “Areas”
• Asynchronous Controllers support that enables long running tasks in parallel
• 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

You can learn more about these features in the “What’s New in ASP.NET MVC 2” document on the www.asp.net/mvc web-site.

Visual Studio 2010 RC Updates

Microsoft released VS 2010 RC patches to fix following issues

• Patch that fixes crashes with Tooltip invocation and when hovering over identifiers
• Patch that fixes issues with the Web Forms designer not correctly adding controls to the auto-generated designer files
• Common Cause of Intellisense and IDE sluggishness on Windows XP, Vista, Win Server 2003/2008 systems
• Improved Text Rendering with WPF 4 and VS 2010

jQuery 1.4.2 released

jQuery 1.4.2 is out on February 19th, 2010. This is the second minor release on top of jQuery 1.4, fixing some outstanding bugs from the 1.4 release and landing some nice improvements. There were a total of 40 tickets closed in this minor release.

In this release we’ve added two new methods: .delegate() and .undelegate(). These methods serve as complements to the existing .live() and .die() methods in jQuery. They simplify the process of watching for specific events from a certain root within the document.

ReSharper 5 Beta 2 Released

Please click here to find more.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate

Microsoft has released Release Candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 to all MSDN subscribers on February 8th 2010 and will be made available to the world on Wednesday, February 10th. The RC includes a go-live license for people who want to deploy in their production environment.

Please click here to download.

Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/dd441784.aspx for release candidate walkthroughs. 

jQuery 1.4.1 Released

jQuery 1.4.1 is now out! This is the first bug fix release on top of jQuery 1.4, fixing some outstanding bugs from the 1.4 release and touching up some gaps in the API.

New Features

A full list of the API changes can be found in the 1.4.1 category on the jQuery API site.

• .live(“focus”) and .live(“blur”) now work – mapping to .live(“focusin”) and .live(“focusout”). (Documentation, Ticket)
• .live(“hover”) now exists, mapping to .live(“mouseenter mouseleave”). (Documentation, Ticket)
• It’s now possible to bind multiple event types with live. (Documentation, Ticket)
• Calling .die() (with no arguments) removes all bound live event handlers. (Documentation, Ticket)
• .height( function ) and .width( function ) now exist. (Height Documentation, Width Documentation, Ticket)
• jQuery.parseJSON has been exposed, allowing you to parse JSON strings into JavaScript objects. (Documentation, Ticket)
• jQuery.error has been exposed, to be used by plugin developers to provide informative user feedback. (Documentation, Ticket)

Bug Fixes

Core

• window.JSON can’t take an empty string

Events

• multi event bind() causes namespacing to fail

• bind() with special events causes things to get corrupted (Ticket 1, Ticket 2)

• change event broken in IE

• Unable to preventDefault on live submit

• Select change event firing on first focus

• .live() is affecting inline scripts

• Stop live click from triggering on right click

Traversing

• prev/nextUntil needs to check for non-elements

• Make sure filter/not only does it on elements

Effects

• Make sure animations only happen if speed is truthy or 0

Ajax

• ajaxError not firing on 404 for load

• if data has length breaks param

• Make sure context is set back to original in all cases

• Don’t deep extend context

• Don’t attempt to set the readyState

• Parsererror cause lost

Offset

• Make sure .offset(coords) return a jQuery set

Manipulation

• Make sure .html() is XHTML purified

• Cloned checkbox checked aren’t cloned in WebKit

• replaceWith(fn) function scope is useless

• wrapInner(fn) is inconsistent with wrapInner(html)

• .remove() not removing generic handler

• Possible memory leak with remove()/events in IE

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Launch Date Postponed

In a very small announcement by Developer Division’s Marketing and Communications Manager Rob Caron, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 is set to be officially launched April 12, 2010 and not March 22 as previously announced. However, the date for release to manufacturing (RTM) still remains unknown.

Historically, RTM for Visual Studio has been months ahead of the official launch. Visual Studio 2008 as an example was RTM November 19 2007, but officially launched February 27 2008, 3 months later.

Scott Guthrie reported late last year that Visual Studio 2010 is postponed because of performance issues found in Beta 2 and revealed plans for an intermediate release in February:

…we plan to make a Release Candidate build available in February that everyone will be able to download and test. It will be a public build and include a broad “go live” license that supports production deployment.

Taking into account that the official release date is now April 12 and the RC is in February, the date difference between the official release and the RTM is probably much closer than for previous releases of Visual Studio.