What is New in ASP.Net 5

Introduction

ASP.NET is a server-side web application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web pages, web applications and web services. The very first version of ASP.NET was published in January 2002. ASP.NET was built to provide a common platform that later became to be known as the Common Language Runtime (CLR), allowing programmers to write ASP.NET code using any supported .NET language.

Released Improvements:

• ASP.NET 5 Runtime updates
• ASP.NET Tooling features

ASP.NET Runtime Updates

After updates in Visual Studio 2013, some brilliant features were enhanced in this release of Visual Studio that supports the creation and development of ASP.NET 5 Preview applications. ASP.NET 5 Preview is clean and free of bugs and is a composable .NET stack for building modern web applications for both cloud and on-premises servers. Some new or updated features are given below.

• ASP.NET MVC and Web API have been unified into a single programming model in this release only.
  
  
• Environment-based configuration for a seamless transition to the cloud is a very advance feature.
  
  
• ASP.NET 5 runs on Windows with the .NET Framework or .NET Core.
  
  
• ASP.NET Core is a new cloud optimized runtime that supports true side-by-side versioning.
  
  
• Run in IIS, or self-hosted in your own process.
  
  
• Dependency injection out-of-the-box.
  
  
• NuGet everything, even the runtime itself.
  
  
• Environment-based configuration for a seamless transition to the cloud is one of the brilliant features.

ASP.NET Tooling Updates

Tools are something that play an indispensable part in project development and optimizes them as well. Tools provide programmers a more productive coding experience. Some wonderful features released are:

• Templates
• Projects and Builds
• IntelliSense and Error list
• NuGet Package Manager
• JSON Editor Improvements
• HTML Editor Improvements
• CSS/LESS/Sass Editor Improvements

Templates

In the older version likewise 2013 the "ASP.NET 5 Empty" and "ASP.NET 5 Starter Web" templates did not exist.



Now the newer release of Visual Studio 2015 contains the "ASP.NET 5 Empty" and "ASP.NET 5 Starter Web" templates that were added to the "New ASP.NET Project" dialog for C#.



The "ASP.NET 5 Class Library" and "ASP.NET 5 Console Application" templates are added to the "New Project" dialog under "Visual C#"/Web.

Older Version



Newer Version 

A console and class library are also included in ASP.NET 5. 




Projects and Builds

The project file no longer includes a project directory items and references.

In the latest release of updates to project files ASP.NET 5 projects uses the "projectName".kproj file as Visual Studio's project file. The .kproj file doesn't include any type of files from the recent directory or sub-directories, since Visual Studio automatically includes and monitors the ASP.NET 5 project directory files.

Project.json file is used to define project information

Since the enhancement done to Visual Studio it is now possible to use the project.json file for reference and package dependencies, version definitions, framework configurations, compile options, build events, package creation meta-data and run commands, as well as other details that also become reliable. This way, the project can be edited and can be run in Linux and on MacOS machines that do not have Visual Studio. That is far better than previous versions.

Dependencies node for Bower and NPM dependencies

NPM is the default package manager in the node.js. This release of Solution Explorer for ASP.NET 5 Web Applications now contains a Dependencies node showing Bower and NPM dependencies. The Bower dependencies are from bower.json in the project folder. The NPM dependencies are from package.json in the project folder. In the Dependencies node, under the Bower and NPM's package nodes, you can uninstall a package using the context menu command at any time, that will automatically remove the package from the corresponding JSON file and it seems more reliable and interesting as well.




Fast build time with Visual Studio

The build time is enhanced in this release such that in previous versions we saw that a project takes so much time to Build. Visual Studio uses the Roslyn engine to compile ASP.NET 5 projects at design time. Therefore, the project has already been compiled when you issue a "build" request. In Visual Studio 2015 Preview, Visual Studio simply es the design time compiler output to the build request. This avoids another build and improves performance when you build, run, or debug ASP.NET 5 projects. This feature reduces the time for making a build request.

NuGet package manager enhancement

The NuGet Package Manager manages all the packages in the Visual Studio that might be rewritten by Microsoft in a new release using the tool window style and can be viewed per project and solution. Now each project can open a NuGet Package Manager window at the same time. This change applies to all type of projects that uses the NuGet Package Manager.



older version of NuGet

 

IntelliSense and Error list

IntelliSense is the process in which suggestions are shown and errors pointed during the coding of the project in the editor and that reduces the time for coding the project. An IntelliSense item that exists in one framework, but not in another will be listed in the IntelliSense with a warning sign. The IntelliSense tooltip indicates which framework supports it and which framework doesn't.

Build errors shows from which framework the error arises. So, if you have an error in the code that is recognized by two targeting frameworks at a time, then it will show in two places, in the error and output error list, with the same description and file location, but with different project names that includes the framework name.

JSON Editor Improvement

Certain improvements have been made to the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) editor, including performance and other improvements, such as loading the JSON schema asynchronously, caching of the child schemas and better IntelliSense. Additionally, there are the following new features:

• Reload Schemas context menu: Visual Studio will cache the schema that is downloaded from the internet and will use the cache even after you restart Visual Studio. If you know the schema is changed, you can use the context menu Reload Schemas Ctrl+Shift+J to re-download the current used schema in the active JSON document and then use it immediately on the current document.
  
  
• JSON Schema validation: Add a JSON schema validation feature, based on the schema that is defined in the schema drop-down list.
  
  
• Un-minify context menu: one can right-click the JSON editor and select Un-minify context menu to un-minify any long arrays in the JSON file that will really help.
  
  
• IntelliSense for package.json/bower.json: In addition to providing IntelliSense and validation for both package.json and bower.json files, Visual Studio also provides live IntelliSense for both Bower and NPM packages directly within the JSON editor, this is one of the most convincing features.
  
  
• Duplicate property validation: The JSON editor will now provide validation for any duplicate properties. This helps catch the common problem with JSON file authoring.
  

HTML Editor Improvement

There are many improvements in the many editors and HTML is also in the fray of Improvement with many improvements like bug fixing and much more. Some of the most updated features are:

• Todo/Hack comment support in Task List: The HTML editor now supports Todo and Hack as other IDEs have like NetBeans and so on the comment token and display them in the Task List that might provide programmers a good experience.
  
  
• Angular icons: Both Angular directives (example. <ng-view>) and attributes (example. ng-controller) are now shown in IntelliSense with an Angular logo to make it easy to identify them for the programmers.
  
  
• Bootstrap icons: IntelliSense has already been exlained above; the IntelliSense provided in HTML class attributes now shows the Bootstrap logo if the class name was defined by the Bootstrap CSS file.
  
  
• Support for custom elements, polymer-elements and attributes: The HTML Editor no longer validates unknown attributes for custom elements, since there will be many custom made tags in different frameworks. Therefore, there will no longer be squiggles under the unknown elements.
  
  
• Better client template formatting:  Now the HTML editor does not parse, or no longer formats, double-curly syntax {{…}} anymore. This is to make sure that the content of that syntax is not treated as being HTML and therefore being invalidated, nor does it try to format them, that cannot be done correctly by using the HTML formatter. This is great for Angular, Handlebars, Mustache and other double-curly template syntaxes and others features remain intact.

CSS/LESS/Sass Editor Improvements

• Todo/Hack comment support in Task List: Same as the HTML editor CSS/LESS/Sass editor now supports Todo, Hack and so on comment tokens and displays them in the Task List
  
  
• @viewport fix for LESS editor: Some minor changes have been done to the LESS editor, @viewport will not show a verification warning anymore.
  
  
• Provide many more snippets: The CSS/LESS/Sass Editor now provides more snippets to enhance the project development experience that in turn provides a reliable application to the users.
  
  
• Browser Link
  
  
• WebJobs Tooling

Browser Link

After the feature enhancements, synchronization becomes more popular, CSS is now automatically synchronized, saving the CSS file or changing it externally (such as by using a LESS/SASS compiler) will cause the entire CSS file to reload in the browser. If the file is in a state where it cannot automatically synchronize then Ctrl + S will cause an automatic reload and this should return it back into a good state without having to refresh the linked browsers (Ctrl + Alt + Enter). The feature might be disabled in the toolbar when not in use, it wil depend on the programmer's will.

WebJobs Tooling

Visual Studio now supports controlling web jobs using Server Explorer WebJob's node inside an Azure Website in the following ways:

• Start/Stop Continuous WebJobs from Server Explorer.
•  Run On-demand or Scheduled jobs from Server Explorer

 Summary

This article just highlights the new features released by Microsoft on ASP.NET 5 in Visual Studio 2015 preview. Some tooling features are enhanced in this version, likewise enhancement in the editors of HTML, CSS, JSON and so on. Unlike many updates to the runtime, Microsoft as well has now enhanced the development environment and experience.