Microsoft plans early next month to release the next public preview of ASP.Net MVC (Model View Controller) Framework, said Scott Guthrie, a general manager in the Microsoft Developer Division, in his blog this week.The framework is set to be released at the Mix08 conference, which is being held in Las Vegas March 5-7; it will be downloadable off the Web so users do not need to attend the conference to get it. The technology will add to ASP.Net support for developing Web applications using an MVC architecture. MVC features models, which are components of an application maintaining state; views, which are components for displaying an application user interface, and controllers, for handling end user interaction, manipulating the model and choosing a view to render to display UI. A prior preview of the framework was offered as part of ASP.Net 3.5 Extensions CTP Release in December. Improvements in the March release include the ability to deploy the framework in the bin directory and work in partial trust; enhanced routing and infrastructure and improved Visual Studio 2008 tools support. Also featured are HTML helpers and refactoring and design improvements.Source code for ASP.Net MVC Framework will be downloadable as a buildable Visual Studio project solution, for viewing and debugging source code. A license will be included permitting users to patch the framework source code although they will not be able to redistributed their patched versions. “But [the license] will enable developers who want to get started building ASP.NET MVC applications immediately to make progress – and not have to worry about getting blocked by an interim bug that they can’t work around,” Guthrie said. The framework has been slated to ship as part of ASP.Net by the first half of this year. Microsoft in March plans to discuss enhancements to ASP.Net AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) libraries, Guthrie said. Software Development