Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Microsoft spruces up HTML capabilities in Visual Studio

news
Sep 9, 20112 mins

Greater use of data- and model-binding capabilities in ASP.Net also promised for vNext IDE

Microsoft says it will make it easier to deal with HTML in the planned next release of its Visual Studio IDE, dubbed vNext, but it won’t say when vNext will come out.

The HTML Editor capability in vNext will help developers quickly accomplish common tasks, said Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the company’s developer division, in a blog post on Visual Studio‘s ASP.Net Web development platform. He said Visual Studio will be able to activate the “smart tasks” features of ASP.Net server controls, as well as connect server control event handlers without needing to switch to the vNext editor’s design view.

Also on the horizon are improvements to ASP.Net Web forms and MVC (model-view-controller) capabilities, such as support for strongly typed data templates. “We’ve added the ability to declare what type of data a control is going to be bound to, by way of a new ModelType property on data controls,” Guthrie said. “Setting this property will cause two new typed variables to be generated in the scope of the data-bound template expressions: Item and BindItem.” Developers can use the variables in data-binding expressions and get IntelliSense and compile-time checking. Strongly typed data control support makes it easier to work with data-bound expressions, Guthrie said.

Similarly, Web forms will feature model-binding capabilities intended to simplify working with code-focused data access logic while retaining benefits of a two-way data-binding framework, Guthrie said. He claimed it will simplify work with code-focused data-access paradigms.

This article, “Microsoft spruces up HTML capabilities in Visual Studio,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in business technology news and get a digest of the key stories each day in the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld on Twitter.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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