What are the new features?

• 
  
  ASP.NET controls for Silverlight
  
  You can integrate the rich behavior of Microsoft Silverlight into your Web application by using the familiar model of ASP.NET server controls. The MediaPlayer server control lets you integrate media sources such as audio (WMA) and video (WMV) and take advantage of rich built-in media player skins. The Silverlight server control lets you add your own Silverlight XAML content to ASP.NET pages, using a custom JavaScript type or a Silverlight 2 managed-code XAP package.
• 
  
  ASP.NET MVC
  
  ASP.NET MVC provides a framework that enables you to easily implement the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern for Web applications. This pattern lets you separate applications into loosely coupled, pluggable components for application design, processing logic, and display. ASP.NET MVC also greatly facilitates test -driven development (TDD).
  
  Be sure to watch all four videos from Scott Hanselman.
• 
  
  ASP.NET Dynamic Data
  
  ASP.NET Dynamic Data helps developers build a fully customizable, data-driven app quickly. It provides a rich scaffolding framework that allows rapid data driven development without writing code, yet it is easily extendible using the traditional ASP.NET programming model.
• 
  
  ADO.NET Entity Framework
  
  ADO.NET Entity Framework is a new modeling framework that enables developers to define a conceptual model of a database schema that closely aligns to a real world view of the information. Benefits include easier to understand and easier to maintain application code that is shielded from underlying database schema changes.
• 
  
  ADO.NET Data Services
  
  ADO.NET Data Services provide new services that find, manipulate and deliver data over the web using simple URIs. Benefits include an easy and flexible way to access data over the web, while enabling the separation of presentation and data access code.
• 
  
  ASP.NET AJAX
  
  New additions to ASP.NET AJAX include support for managing browser history (Back button support).

DOWNLOADS: Where can I find these new features?

Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008

The Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 includes the new ASP.NET MediaPlayer and Silverlight server controls.

ASP.NET MVC Preview 2

The ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 release contains the latest version of the ASP.NET MVC framework and related Visual Studio tools support.

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (December 2007)

The ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (December 2007) release includes the ADO.NET Entity Framework runtime, ADO.NET Data Services, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and new additions to ASP.NET AJAX. For more information about the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (December 2007) release, see the Readme.

Note: The ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (December 2007) also contains older versions of the ASP.NET controls for Silverlight and the ASP.NET MVC framework and tools support. While we recommend that you uninstall the previous releases before using the new ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 release for Visual Studio 2008, it is not dangerous to have both the Extensions Preview and the Preview 2 versions of the MVC installed. Make sure to use the new Web application project templates to create new ASP.NET MVC Web applications instead of using the Web application project templates that the previous release installed.

Additional information for the ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 and ASP.NET Controls for Silverlight
A readme file is available that explains how to run features from the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (December 2007) with the new releases, and that provides information about upgrading, API changes, and known issues for ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET server controls for Silverlight. For details, see ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 and ASP.NET Server Controls for Silverlight.

Where can I ask questions and discuss?

ASP.NET controls for Silverlight Forum
Question and discussions related to new ASP.NET controls for Silverlight

ASP.NET MVC Forum
Question and discussions related to ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET Dynamic Data Forum
Question and discussions related to ASP.NET Dynamic Data

ADO.NET Entity Framework Forum
Question and discussions related to ADO.NET Entity Framework

ADO.NET Data Services Forum
Question and discussions related to ADO.NET Data Services

ASP.NET AJAX UI Forum
Question and discussions related to ASP.NET AJAX

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview Forum
Setup issues and general questions regarding the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (December 2007) release

Where can I learn more

To learn more about the new features listed on this page, check out the Quickstarts and additional videos. In the Quickstarts you can find more in-depth information about each feature, find samples, and see the features in action.

»  Quickstarts to learn more about the new features being added to ASP.NET and ADO.NET

»  More videos to see the new features in action