Asp.net News & Articles

Welcome to the February installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next month.

If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at pr@cmswire.com with a pointer to who we should contact at your project for updates.

More news from Kentico (news, site). This time it’s not a new release, but a new version for its Partner Program that will give its 900 partners added support for the development of better, if not bigger, Kentico ASP.NET websites.

While announcements about extending  partner programs come a dime-a-dozen, this one is slightly different in that Kentico has divided its partners into three different levels of partners and provided a new portal where they can interact.

Basically, partners will from here on be divided into three different categories: Partner, Certified Partner and Gold Certified Partner. The portal provides support for business and web development with the services offered depending on level of partnership.

As it stands 69 of Kentico's partners have attained Gold Certification, 122 have achieved Certified, with the rest classified as partners. Presumably, the more you use Kentico products, the more likely it is you will be elevated.

The fact that 35% of the Partners are in the US indicates how well and successfully the Czech-based web content management provider has been in the US, and is only topped by the number of European partners at 39%. Interesting to see if this figure changes by this time next year.
 

It was only yesterday that we gave you the goods on the new open source content management project named Orchard (news, site). But we didn't know everything we wanted to know. So we reached out to Bertrand Le Roy, Program Manager for the Orchard project. Here's what he told us.

So the truth is, Orchard is not Microsoft's newest dive into the world the open source content management. At least not officially. When the project is run by a group of Microsoft employees, you can't help but wonder what, if any, role Microsoft might have behind the scenes.

Word about the new ASP.NET based open source Web CMS appeared only last week and now the details have arrived on CodePlex.

For those of you who run a Microsoft web environment built on IIS (Internet Information Server), but still would like to run some open source applications and/or websites, there's good news for you.

Helicon Tech, a provider of web server enhancement tools, has released an Apache emulator for IIS 7. Called Helicon APE, it implements .htaccess configurations within the IIS web server. This includes almost all of the major Apache modules (35+ to be exact).

The Helicon APE offers modification-free transition of Apache websites to IIS, simple configuration of PHP and Apache compatible URL rewriting syntax.

Helicon APE
 

The Helicon APE is installed on IIS 7 as a managed module, but can also work for other versions of IIS that support ASP.NET when installed as an ASP.NET module.

APE costs start at US$ 25 for a website and US$ 95 for a server license. There's also a free version for up to 3 websites on a single server.

Now this one isn't from Microsoft, but is another step towards interoperability between Microsoft and open source. There are likely many who would love to have this product.

Hooked on Microsoft or just tied into ASP.NET? Bitrix (news, site) comes to your aid with its new Site Manager CMS in just your flavor.

Mid-March we saw the first official release of Microsoft's new ASP.NET MVC (news, site) framework. The alternative to Web Forms when developing ASP.NET applications has been well received and talked about frequently.

Work on ASP.NET MVC 2 started almost immediately and we saw the first preview of that version mid-August. MVC 2 Preview 1 included things like template helpers, areas and built-in support for data annotations.

But that was only the start of the work for ASP.NET MVC 2. And now a second preview has been released with even more functionality such as:

• Client Side Validation: New support for jQuery validation (here's a good example of this functionality on Pietro Brambati's blog)
• Areas: Support for areas in a single project
• Model Validation Providers: The ability to hook in model validation providers other than the default Data Annotations
• Metadata Providers: The ability to hook in other metadata providers, the default being Data Annotations
• Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2: A set of HTML code snippets for MVC 2 Preview 2

Along with new features, there were also a number of changes made to existing types and members and a few bug fixes.

The version of ASP.NET MVC 2 Preview 2 that you can download and use now works for Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

To see the Visual Studio 2010 HTML code snippets you'll have to wait for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (MVC will be included in the beta).

Get more details on Phil Haack's blog and the official ASP.NET MVC website.

Maybe it is because Telerik (news, site) is finding Europe too small, or because there just isn’t enough business in Europe with all the purse-tightening that is going on. Whatever the reason, the Bulgaria-based company has announced it is expanding operations in  Massachusetts and opening a new office in Texas.

In addition to the new offices, the company has also announced that it is launching a new marketplace for add-ons for its Sitefinity ASP.NET Web CMS.

Microsoft's ASP.NET team has launched a free AJAX content delivery network (CDN) that will provide improved performance for your AJAX-enabled web applications.

The CDN is a network of edge cache servers around the world that stores Microsoft's AJAX libraries so your application can download necessary files faster, thus increasing web application performance.

This service is similar to Amazon's CloudFront CDN. The Amazon CDN is primarily targeted at small to medium sized businesses and developers who can't afford, and don't necessarily need, the more well-known, expensive CDNs like Akamai and Limelight. It supports the caching of images, css files, video and other static content.

Unlike Amazon's CloudFront CDN, the AJAX CDN is free for both commercial and non-commercial use and provides caching support for only AJAX libraries such as jQuery and ASP.NET AJAX.

Using the CDN is as simple as adding a couple of script elements to a page in your application that wants to access the AJAX libraries on the CDN. Also available are debug versions of the script. A single script is required to access the JQuery library.

You can get a list of the current scripts available on the CDN on the Microsoft AJAX website. Make sure you read the terms of use statement.

As libraries are updated, they will be added to the CDN.

If you are using ASP.NET 4, you can use the ScriptManager control to access the CDN. It has a new property called EnableCdn. If set to true, it will automatically request Javascript files from the CDN.

Learn more about how to use the ScriptManager control and  ASP.NET AJAX Preview 5 in Scott Gu's post introducing the new AJAX CDN.

Apparently, there was a little mishap with Web CMS vendor Ektron's (news, site) scheduled publishing process. Not that we're one to be calling a kettle black -- this sort of thing happens around here more than we'd like to admit.

The new v8.0 release of CMS400.NET wasn't supposed to see the light of day for about another week, yet surfaced late yesterday in its full video-and-all glory via a company microsite. In case it's no longer available when you read this, we've got a few screenshots below.

With Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (news, site) out in beta, it seems like a good time to have a look at what's new and improved in the .NET framework.

There have been so many changes to the .NET framework 4.0 beta 1 that it would be impossible to cover everything. From improved security to parallel computing to a new runtime environment (dynamic language runtime) to workflow to lots of new features for the Web, one can get lost in the details.

Here are some of the highlights.

With the release of mojoPortal 2.3.1.6 (news, site), this simple CMS has focused principally on upgrading its image editing abilities with TinyMCE and FCKeditor WYSIWYG features.

The upgrade from the North Carolina-based company is focused on the optional ability to automatically resize images for the web or, in the case where images are already web-ready, the ability to turn this feature off.

For people working in companies that have a web department, but their principal business is not web development, this will be particularly welcome. Especially for content managers who have to explain to their less web-savvy colleagues that a 10MB image is just not going to cut the cloth.

Over two years in the making, Striquent's Webaptive CMS (news, site) is now available for users looking to take their ASP.NET web applications to the next level by adding content management functionality.

It's been roughly five months since ASP.NET MVC 1.0 became available and developers flocked to download it. Now, after a brief break helping out with ASP.NET 4, Phil Haack and his team have gotten back in the saddle and started working on ASP.NET MVC 2.0.

Preview 1 of ASP.NET MVC 2.0 is now available for download and the team is looking for feedback. Here's a quick look at what's new and what's still coming.

Kentico (news, site) expands its presence in the market with a new enterprise hosting solution via its new partner, Intermedia. Intermedia is a comms specialist offering email and messaging, which all adds up to a practical and convincing services bundle.