So I haven’t actually posted much about technology stuff, but the geeky side of my life is about to rear its ugly head. Oh boy… here goes:
So I’ve been reading bits and blips about the new MVC(Model View Controller) framework coming out for ASP.NET for a little while now, but I hadn’t really thought much of it. Microsoft has a tendency to release demos and previews for products that won’t actually see the light of day for some time, and I hate wasting my time on such things. So, as cool as it is, I didn’t pay much attention to it. Things changed, though, when I had opportunity to go see MVC demoed and explained by a Microsoft evangelist on Tuesday night. It turns out the ASP.NET MVC framework is actually much more robust and feature-filled than I originally thought. What’s even better, it’s bin deployable! Basically meaning you can use it now, you don’t have to wait for Microsoft to roll it into an ASP.NET version 3 years from now.
Since I discovered that golden bit of information, I’ve slowly begun rolling it into my top secret project that I’ve been working on this summer. The MVC pattern gives ASP.NET a much better model for web applications than traditional web forms. We may finally see an end to those ugly post-back-every-click websites and see some slick, user-friendly asp.net sites. Another great feature that has been added is routing. This is something that php on apache based servers have had for awhile, but IIS and ASP.NET have lacked. This basically means you can uses pretty, sensible urls (www.micahlee.com/blog/post/edit/1) instead of cryptic ones (www.micahlee.com/index.aspx?action=editblogpost&id=1). ASP.NET MVC includes a very nice and easy-to-use routing library that, when combined with controllers, makes web application design and development in ASP.NET a breeze.
Overall, MVC is a revolutionary addition to ASP.NET. If you do web development, you should check it out. Here’s a link: http://www.asp.net/mvc/
