Web Development in Visual Studio 2008

Better support for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will bring Visual Studio 2008 up to date with many of the capabilities provided in Expression Web, Microsoft’s tool for Web designers, making it easier for developers to control the look and feel of pages they create and to design for multiple browsers. Also, JavaScript improvements could ease debugging and development for Web developers using AJAX technology to create better Web UIs, and they make Visual Studio more attractive to Web developers who have opted for other tools or no tools at all.

ASP.NET Gets AJAX Support

Originally released as a set of extensions to ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX is now integrated into ASP.NET.

With ASP.NET AJAX, developers can build Web applications that have responsiveness and UI features approaching those normally found in desktop applications, without resorting to browser plug-ins such as Flash or Silverlight. AJAX is a common acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and describes a technique in which JavaScript in a Web page downloads small amounts of XML data in the background so that the entire page doesn’t have to be refreshed when anything changes. For example, both Google Maps and Microsoft’s Live Search Maps use AJAX technologies to allow users to scroll a map in a Web page by clicking and dragging. New sections of the map are downloaded in the background and the page can display a new section without reloading the page. Integrating AJAX support into ASP.NET helps developers build more functional Web interfaces without having to learn new skills.