Overview

As software developers know, writing applications can be challenging, and we are constantly looking for tools and frameworks to simplify the process and help us focus on the business challenges we are trying to solve.  We have moved from writing code in machine languages such as assembler to higher level languages like C# and Visual Basic that ease our development, remove lower level concerns such as memory management, and increase our productivity as developers.  For Microsoft developers, the move to .NET allows the Common Language Runtime (CLR) to allocate memory, cleanup unneeded objects and handle low level constructs like pointers. 

Much of the complexity of an application lives in the logic and processing that goes on behind the scenes.  Issues such as asynchronous or parallel execution and generally coordinating the tasks to respond to user requests or service requests can quickly lead application developers back down into the low level coding of handles, callbacks, synchronization etc.  As developers, we need the same power and flexibility of a declarative programming model for the internals of an application as we have for the user interface in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).    Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) provides the declarative framework for building application and service logic and gives developers a higher level language for handling asynchronous, parallel tasks and other complex processing.

Having a runtime to manage memory and objects has freed us to focus more on the important business aspects of writing code.  Likewise, having a runtime that can manage the complexities of coordinating asynchronous work provides a set of features that improves developer productivity.  WF is a set of tools for declaring your workflow (your business logic), activities to help define the logic and control flow, and a runtime for executing the resulting application definition.  In short, WF is about using a higher level language for writing applications, with the goal of making developers more productive, applications easier to manage, and change quicker to implement.  The WF runtime not only executes your workflows for you, it also provides services and features important when writing application logic such persistence of state, bookmarking and resumption of business logic, all of which lead to thread and process agility enabling scale up and scale out of business processes. 

What’s New in WF 4

In version 4 of the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Windows Workflow Foundation introduces a significant amount of change from the previous versions of the technology that shipped as part of .NET 3.0 and 3.5.  In fact, the team revisited the core of the programming model, runtime and tooling and has re-architected each one to increase performance and productivity as well as to address the important feedback garnered from customer engagements using the previous versions.  The significant changes made were necessary to provide the best experience for developers adopting WF and to enable WF to continue to be a strong foundational component that you can build on in your applications. I will introduce the high level changes here, and throughout the paper each topic will get more in depth treatment. 

Before we continue, it is important to understand that backwards compatibility was also a key goal in this release.  The new framework components are found primarily in the System.Activities.* assemblies while the backwards compatible framework components are found in the System.Workflow.* assemblies.  The System.Workflow.* assemblies are part of the .NET Framework 4 and provide complete backward compatibility so you can migrate your application to .NET 4 with no changes to your workflow code. Throughout this paper we will use the name WF4 to refer to the new components found in the System.Activities.* assemblies and WF3 to refer to the components found in the System.Workflow.* assemblies. 

Designers

One of the most visible areas of improvement is in the workflow designer. Usability and performance were key goals for the team for the VS 2010 release.  The designer now supports the ability to work with much larger workflows without a degradation in performance and designers are all based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), taking full advantage of the rich user experience one can build with the declarative UI framework.  Activity developers will use XAML to define the way their activities look and interact with users in a visual design environment.  In addition, rehosting the workflow designer in your own applications to enable non-developers to view and interact with your workflows is now much easier. 

Data Flow

In WF3, the flow of data in a workflow was opaque.  WF4 provides a clear, concise model for data flow and scoping in the use of arguments and variables.  These concepts, familiar to all developers, simplify both the definition of data storage, as well as the flow of the data into and out of workflows and activities.  The data flow model also makes more obvious the expected inputs and outputs of a given activity and improves performance of the runtime as data is more easily managed. 

Flowchart

A new control flow activity called Flowchart has been added to make it possible for developers to use the Flowchart model to define a workflow.  The Flowchart more closely resembles the concepts and thought processes that many analysts and developers go through when creating solutions or designing business processes.  Therefore, it made sense to provide an activity to make it easy to model the conceptual thinking and planning that had already been done.  The Flowchart enables concepts such as returning to previous steps and splitting logic based on a single condition, or a Switch / Case logic. 

Programming Model

The WF programming model has been revamped to make it both simpler and more robust.  Activity is the core base type in the programming model and represents both workflows and activities.  In addition, you no longer need to create a WorkflowRuntime to invoke a workflow, you can simply create an instance and execute it, simplifying unit testing and application scenarios where you do not want to go through the trouble of setting up a specific environment.  Finally, the workflow  programming model becomes a fully declarative composition of activities, with no code-beside, simplifying workflow authoring.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Integration

The benefits of WF most certainly apply to both creating services and consuming or coordinating service interactions.  A great deal of effort went into enhancing the integration between WCF and WF.  New messaging activities, message correlation, and improved hosting support, along with fully declarative service definition are the major areas of improvement. 

Getting Started with Workflow

The best way to understand WF is to start using it and applying the concepts.  We will cover several core concepts around the underpinnings of workflow, and then walk through creating a few simple workflows to illustrate how those concepts relate to each other. 

Workflow Structure

Activities are the building blocks of WF and all activities ultimately derive from Activity.  A terminology note - Activities are a unit of work in WF. Activities can be composed together into larger Activities. When an Activity is used as a top-level entry point, it is called a "Workflow", just like Main is simply another function that represents a top level entry point to CLR programs. This for example:

Sequence s = new Sequence

{

    Activities = {

        new WriteLine {Text = "Hello"},

        new Sequence {

            Activities =

            {

                new WriteLine {Text = "Workflow"},

                new WriteLine {Text = "World"}

            }

        }

    }

};

Data flow in workflows

The first thought most people have when they think about workflow is the business process or the flow of the application.  However, just as critical as the flow is the data that drives the process and the information that is collected and stored during the execution of the workflow.  In WF4, the storage and management of data has been a prime area of design consideration. 

There are three main concepts to understand with regard to data: Variables, Arguments, and Expressions.  The simple definitions for each are that variables are for storing data, arguments are for passing data, and expressions are for manipulating data. 

Variables-storing data

Variables in workflows are very much like the variables you are used to in imperative languages: they describe a named location for data to be stored and they follow certain scoping rules.  To create a variable, you first determine at what scope the variable needs to be available.  Just as you might have variables in code that are available at the class or method level, your workflow variables can be defined at different scopes.

Arguments-passing data

Arguments are defined on activities and define the flow of data into and out of the activity.  You can think of arguments to activities much like you use arguments to methods in imperative code.  Arguments can be In, Out, or In/Out and have a name and type.  When building a workflow, you can define arguments on the root activity which enables data to be passed into your workflow when it is invoked.  You define arguments on the workflow much as you do variables using the argument window. 

As you add activities to your workflow, you will need to configure the arguments for the activities, and this is primarily done by referencing in-scope variables or using expressions, which I will discuss next.  In fact, the Argument base class contains an Expression property which is an Activity that returns a value of the argument type, so all of these options are related and rely on Activity. 

Expression-acting on data

Expressions are activities you can use in your workflow to operate on data.  Expressions can be used in places where you use Activity and are interested in a return value, which means you can use expressions in setting arguments or to define conditions on activities like the While or If activities.  Remember that most things in WF4 derive from Activity and expressions are no different, they are a derivative of Activity<TResult> meaning they return a value of a specific type.  In addition, WF4 includes several common expressions for referring to variables and arguments as well as Visual Basic expressions.  Because of this layer of specialized expressions, the expressions you use to define arguments can include code, literal values, and variable references. 

TO BE CONTINUED
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Top Reasons to host your ASP.NET 4 Website with HostForLife.eu

There are many reasons why so many people choose HostForLife over any other web hosting provider each year. Whether you’re beginner or an experience webmaster, HostForLife offers the perfect solution for everyone.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added-benefits you can find when hosting with us:

1. World-class 24x7 Customer Support
Will your hosting company promptly answer questions and resolve issues - at 3 am on a Sunday? Even some providers claiming “24x7” support will not - but HostForLife will. Our outstanding uptime is backed by true 24x7 customer support. An expertly trained technician will respond to your query within one hour, round the clock. You will also get qualified answers. Other hosting companies typically have very low - level support staff during the night or weekends. HostForLife always has knowledgeable, top - level  support standing by, day or night, to give you the answers you need.

2. Commitment to Outstanding Reliability
Reliability, Stability, and Performance of our servers remain out TOP priority. Even our basic service plans are equipped with standard service level agreements for 99.99% uptime. Advanced options raise the bar to 99.99%. Our state-of-the-art data centers combine servers and SAN storage with full redundancy and operational tools with proprietary service management techniques. Full backup and recovery capabilities are implemented, including redundant power supplies, cooling and connectionsto major data networks.

3. “Right-size” plans for maximum value
HostForLife offers a complete menu of services. IT professionals select only what they need - and leave behind what they don’t. The result is an optimal blend of cost and performance. We offer IT professionals more advanced features and the latest technology - ahead of other hosting companies.

4. Profitable, Stable, Debt-free Business
Financial stability is the bedrock of a hosting provider’s ability to deliver outstanding uptime, cost-effective service plans and world-class 24x7 support.  HostForLife’s customers are assured of our financial integrity and stability - a stark contrast to the ups and downs they may have experienced with other providers.

5. The Best Account Management Tools
HostForLife revolutionized hosting with Plesk Control Panel, a Web-based interfaces that provides customers with 24x7 access to their server and site configuration tools. Some other hosting providers manually execute configuration requests, which can take days. Plesk completes requests in second. It is included free with each hosting account. Renowned for its comprehensive functionally - beyond other hosting control panels - and ease of use, Plesk Control Panel is available only to HostForLife’s customers.

6. 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
HostForLife 30 day money back guarantee ensures you have the ability to cancel your account anytime within your first 30 days under our full 30 day money back guarantee (less one-time account setup free). So what are you waiting for? Sign up today, risk free…

7. Simplicity with FREE 1-Click Installation
HostForLife was designed with ease of use in mind. From one click installations of your favourite website applications to our much talked about drag and drop website builder, you can rest assure your stay with us is going to be a smooth one. HostForLife offers the most extensive set of scripts on the web allowing you to build complicated websites with little or no programming knowledge at all. From blogs to forums to powerful e-commerce solutions, Super Green has something that is right for you.

Are you looking for an affordable hosting service? Are you looking for good service at affordable prices? Try HostForLife.eu, only with € 3.00/month, you can get a reasonable price with best service. This topic contains only brief information about Visual Studio 2010, if you want to be more familiar with Visual Studio 2010, you should try HostForLife.eu.

New in Visual Studio 2010

Enhanced Docking Behavior

Document windows are no longer constrained to the editing frame of the integrated development environment (IDE). You can now dock document windows to the edges of the IDE, or move them anywhere on the desktop (this includes a second monitor). If two related document windows are open and visible, for example, a designer view and an editor view of the same Windows Form, changes that were made in one window will immediately take effect in the other window.

Tool windows can now move freely between docking at the edges of the IDE, floating outside the IDE, or filling part or all of the document frame. They remain in a dockable state at all times.

Zoom

In any code editing window or text editing window, you can quickly zoom in or out by pressing and holding the CTRL key and moving the scroll wheel on the mouse. You can also zoom textual tool windows, for example, the Output window. The zoom feature does not work on design surfaces or on tool windows that contain icons, for example, the Toolbox or Solution Explorer.

Box Selection

In previous releases of Visual Studio, you could select a rectangular region of text by holding down the Alt key while selecting a region with the mouse. You could then copy or delete the selected text. VS 2010 adds the following new capabilities to the box selection feature:

- Text insertion: Type into a box selection to insert the new text on every selected line.
- Paste: Paste the contents of one box selection into another.
- Zero-length boxes: Make a vertical selection zero characters wide to create a multi-line insertion point for new or copied text.

You can use these capabilities to rapidly operate on groups of statements, such as changing access modifiers, setting fields, or adding comments.

Call Hierarcy

Call Hierarchy, which is available in Visual C# and Visual C++, displays the following parts of your code so that you can navigate through it more effectively:

- Calls to and from a selected method, property, or constructor.
- Implementations of an interface member.
- Overrides of a virtual or abstract member.

This can help you better understand how code flows, evaluate the effects of changes, and explore possible execution paths by examining complex chains of method calls and other entry points in several levels of code.

Call Hierarchy is available at design time, unlike the call stack that is displayed by the debugger.

The member name appears in a pane of the Call Hierarchy window. If you expand the member node, Calls To member name and Calls From member name subnodes appear. If you expand the Calls To node, all members that call the selected member are displayed. If you expand the Calls From node, all members that are called by the selected member are displayed. You can also expand the subnode members into Calls To and Calls From nodes. This lets you navigate into the stack of callers.

Navigate to

You can use the Navigate To feature to search for a symbol or file in the source code.

Navigate To lets you find a specific location in the solution or explore elements in the solution. It helps you pick a good set of matching results from a query.

You can search for keywords that are contained in a symbol by using Camel casing and underscore characters to divide the symbol into keywords.

Highlighting References

When you click a symbol in the source code, all instances of that symbol are highlighted in the document.

The highlighted symbols may include declarations and references, and many other symbols that Find All References would return. These include the names of classes, objects, variables, methods, and properties.

In Visual Basic code, keywords for many control structures are also highlighted.

To move to the next or the previous highlighted symbol, press CTRL+SHIFT+DOWN ARROW or CTRL+SHIFT+UP ARROW.

Generate from Usage

The Generate From Usage feature lets you use classes and members before you define them. You can generate a stub for any undefined class, constructor, method, property, field, or enum that you want to use but have not yet defined. You can generate new types and members without leaving your current location in code, This minimizes interruption to your workflow.

Generate From Usage supports programming styles such as test-first development.

IntelliSense Suggestion Mode

IntelliSense now provides two alternatives for IntelliSense statement completion, completion mode and suggestion mode. Use suggestion mode for situations where classes and members are used before they are defined.

In suggestion mode, when you type in the editor and then commit the entry, the text you typed is inserted into the code. When you commit an entry in completion mode, the editor shows the entry that is highlighted on the members list.

When an IntelliSense window is open, you can press CTRL+ALT+SPACEBAR to toggle between completion mode and suggestion mode.

Top Reasons to host your ASP.NET 4 Website with HostForLife.eu

There are many reasons why so many people choose HostForLife over any other web hosting provider each year. Whether you’re beginner or an experience webmaster, HostForLife offers the perfect solution for everyone.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added-benefits you can find when hosting with us:

1. World-class 24x7 Customer Support
Will your hosting company promptly answer questions and resolve issues - at 3 am on a Sunday? Even some providers claiming “24x7” support will not - but HostForLife will. Our outstanding uptime is backed by true 24x7 customer support. An expertly trained technician will respond to your query within one hour, round the clock. You will also get qualified answers. Other hosting companies typically have very low - level support staff during the night or weekends. HostForLife always has knowledgeable, top - level  support standing by, day or night, to give you the answers you need.

2. Commitment to Outstanding Reliability
Reliability, Stability, and Performance of our servers remain out TOP priority. Even our basic service plans are equipped with standard service level agreements for 99.99% uptime. Advanced options raise the bar to 99.99%. Our state-of-the-art data centers combine servers and SAN storage with full redundancy and operational tools with proprietary service management techniques. Full backup and recovery capabilities are implemented, including redundant power supplies, cooling and connectionsto major data networks.

3. “Right-size” plans for maximum value
HostForLife offers a complete menu of services. IT professionals select only what they need - and leave behind what they don’t. The result is an optimal blend of cost and performance. We offer IT professionals more advanced features and the latest technology - ahead of other hosting companies.

4. Profitable, Stable, Debt-free Business
Financial stability is the bedrock of a hosting provider’s ability to deliver outstanding uptime, cost-effective service plans and world-class 24x7 support.  HostForLife’s customers are assured of our financial integrity and stability - a stark contrast to the ups and downs they may have experienced with other providers.

5. The Best Account Management Tools
HostForLife revolutionized hosting with Plesk Control Panel, a Web-based interfaces that provides customers with 24x7 access to their server and site configuration tools. Some other hosting providers manually execute configuration requests, which can take days. Plesk completes requests in second. It is included free with each hosting account. Renowned for its comprehensive functionally - beyond other hosting control panels - and ease of use, Plesk Control Panel is available only to HostForLife’s customers.

6. 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
HostForLife 30 day money back guarantee ensures you have the ability to cancel your account anytime within your first 30 days under our full 30 day money back guarantee (less one-time account setup free). So what are you waiting for? Sign up today, risk free…

7. Simplicity with FREE 1-Click Installation
HostForLife was designed with ease of use in mind. From one click installations of your favourite website applications to our much talked about drag and drop website builder, you can rest assure your stay with us is going to be a smooth one. HostForLife offers the most extensive set of scripts on the web allowing you to build complicated websites with little or no programming knowledge at all. From blogs to forums to powerful e-commerce solutions, Super Green has something that is right for you.

This topic contains information about key features and improvements in the ASP.NET 4. This topic does not provide comprehensive information about all new features and is subject to change. In case you are looking for ASP.NET 4 Hosting, you can always consider HostForLife.eu.

Visual Web Developer Enhancements

The following sections provide information about enhancements and new features in Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express.

The Web page designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been enhanced for better CSS compatibility, includes additional support for HTML and ASP.NET markup snippets, and features a redesigned version of IntelliSense for JScript.

Improved CSS Compability

The Visual Web Developer designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been updated to improve CSS 2.1 standards compliance. The designer better preserves HTML source code and is more robust than in previous versions of Visual Studio.

HTML and JScript Snippets

In the HTML editor, IntelliSense auto-completes tag names. The IntelliSense Snippets feature auto-completes whole tags and more. In Visual Studio 2010, IntelliSense snippets are supported for JScript, alongside C# and Visual Basic, which were supported in earlier versions of Visual Studio.

Visual Studio 2010 includes over 200 snippets that help you auto-complete common ASP.NET and HTML tags, including required attributes (such as runat=”server”) and common attributes specific to a tag (such as ID, DataSourceID, ControlToValidate, and Text).

You can download additional snippets, or you can write your own snippets that encapsulate the blocks of markup that you or your team use for common tasks.

JScript IntelliSense Enhancements

In Visual 2010, JScript IntelliSense has been redesigned to provide an even richer editing experience. IntelliSense now recognizes objects that have been dynamically generated by methods such as registerNamespace and by similar techniques used by other JavaScript frameworks. Performance has been improved to analyze large libraries of script and to display IntelliSense with little or no processing delay. Compatibility has been significantly increased to support almost all third-party libraries and to support diverse coding styles. Documentation comments are now parsed as you type and are immediately leveraged by IntelliSense.

Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010

For Web application projects, Visual Studio now provides tools that work with the IIS Web Deployment Tool (Web Deploy) to automate many processes that had to be done manually in earlier versions of ASP.NET. For example, the following tasks can now be automated:

- Creating an IIS application on the destination computer and configuring IIS settings.

- Changing Web.config settings that must be different in the destination environment.

- Installing security certificates in the destination environment.

- Installing assemblies in the GAC in the destination environment.

- Making required changes to the Windows registry in the destination environment.

- Propagating changes to data or data structures in SQL Server databases that are used by the Web application.

Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting

ASP.NET 4 adds new features to the multi-targeting feature to make it easier to work with projects that target earlier versions of the .NET Framework.

Multi-targeting was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5 to enable you to use the latest version of Visual Studio without having to upgrade existing Web sites or Web services to the latest version of the .NET Framework. 

In Visual Studio 2008, when you work with a project targeted for an earlier version of the .NET Framework, most features of the development environment adapt to the targeted version. However, IntelliSense displays language features that are available in the current version, and property windows display properties available in the current version. In Visual Studio 2010, only language features and properties available in the targeted version of the .NET Framework are shown.

Top Reasons to host your ASP.NET 4 Website with HostForLife.eu

There are many reasons why so many people choose HostForLife over any other web hosting provider each year. Whether you’re beginner or an experience webmaster, HostForLife offers the perfect solution for everyone.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added-benefits you can find when hosting with us:

1. World-class 24x7 Customer Support
Will your hosting company promptly answer questions and resolve issues - at 3 am on a Sunday? Even some providers claiming “24x7” support will not - but HostForLife will. Our outstanding uptime is backed by true 24x7 customer support. An expertly trained technician will respond to your query within one hour, round the clock. You will also get qualified answers. Other hosting companies typically have very low - level support staff during the night or weekends. HostForLife always has knowledgeable, top - level  support standing by, day or night, to give you the answers you need.

2. Commitment to Outstanding Reliability
Reliability, Stability, and Performance of our servers remain out TOP priority. Even our basic service plans are equipped with standard service level agreements for 99.99% uptime. Advanced options raise the bar to 99.99%. Our state-of-the-art data centers combine servers and SAN storage with full redundancy and operational tools with proprietary service management techniques. Full backup and recovery capabilities are implemented, including redundant power supplies, cooling and connectionsto major data networks.

3. “Right-size” plans for maximum value
HostForLife offers a complete menu of services. IT professionals select only what they need - and leave behind what they don’t. The result is an optimal blend of cost and performance. We offer IT professionals more advanced features and the latest technology - ahead of other hosting companies.

4. Profitable, Stable, Debt-free Business
Financial stability is the bedrock of a hosting provider’s ability to deliver outstanding uptime, cost-effective service plans and world-class 24x7 support.  HostForLife’s customers are assured of our financial integrity and stability - a stark contrast to the ups and downs they may have experienced with other providers.

5. The Best Account Management Tools
HostForLife revolutionized hosting with Plesk Control Panel, a Web-based interfaces that provides customers with 24x7 access to their server and site configuration tools. Some other hosting providers manually execute configuration requests, which can take days. Plesk completes requests in second. It is included free with each hosting account. Renowned for its comprehensive functionally - beyond other hosting control panels - and ease of use, Plesk Control Panel is available only to HostForLife’s customers.

6. 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
HostForLife 30 day money back guarantee ensures you have the ability to cancel your account anytime within your first 30 days under our full 30 day money back guarantee (less one-time account setup free). So what are you waiting for? Sign up today, risk free…

7. Simplicity with FREE 1-Click Installation
HostForLife was designed with ease of use in mind. From one click installations of your favourite website applications to our much talked about drag and drop website builder, you can rest assure your stay with us is going to be a smooth one. HostForLife offers the most extensive set of scripts on the web allowing you to build complicated websites with little or no programming knowledge at all. From blogs to forums to powerful e-commerce solutions, Super Green has something that is right for you.

Layout Templates for Wizard Control

In ASP.NET 3.5, the Wizard and CreateUserWizard controls generate an HTML table element that is used for visual formatting. In ASP.NET 4 you can use a LayoutTemplate element to specify the layout. If you do this, the HTML table element is not generated. In the template, you create placeholder controls to indicate where items should be dynamically inserted into the control. (This is similar to how the template model for the ListView control works.)

New HTML Formatting Options for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList Controls

ASP.NET 3.5 uses HTML table elements to format the output for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList controls. To provide an alternative that does not use tables for visual formatting, ASP.NET 4 adds two new options to the RepeatLayout enumeration:

- UnorderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ul and li elements instead of a table.
- OrderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ol and li elements instead of a table.

Header and Footer Elements for the Table Control

In ASP.NET 3.5, the Table control can be configured to render thead and tfoot elements by setting the TableSection property of the TableHeaderRow class and the TableFooterRow class. In ASP.NET 4 these properties are set to the appropriate values by default.

CSS and ARIA Support for the Menu Control

In ASP.NET 3.5, the Menu control uses HTML table elements for visual formatting, and in some configurations it is not keyboard-accessible. ASP.NET 4 addresses these problems and improves accessibility in the following ways:

- The generated HTML is structured as an unordered list (ul and li elements).
- CSS is used for visual formatting.
- The menu behaves in accordance with ARIA standards for keyboard access. You can use arrow keys to navigate menu items.
- ARIA role and property attributes are added to the generated HTML. (Attributes are added by using JavaScript instead of included in the HTML, to avoid generating HTML that would cause markup validation errors.)

Styles for the Menu control are rendered in a style block at the top of the page, instead of inline with the rendered HTML elements. If you want to use a separate CSS file so that you can modify the menu styles, you can set the Menu control's new IncludeStyleBlock property to false, in which case the style block is not generated.

Valid XHTML for the HTMLForm Control

In ASP.NET 3.5, the HtmlForm control (which is created implicitly by the <form runat="server"> tag) renders an HTML form element that has both name and id attributes. The name attribute is deprecated in XHTML 1.1. Therefore, this control does not render the name attribute in ASP.NET 4.

Maintaning Backward Compability in Control Rendering

An existing ASP.NET Web site might have code in it that assumes that controls are rendering HTML the way they do in ASP.NET 3.5. To avoid causing backward compatibility problems when you upgrade the site to ASP.NET 4, you can have ASP.NET continue to generate HTML the way it does in ASP.NET 3.5 after you upgrade the site.

ASP .NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC helps Web developers build compelling standards-based Web sites that are easy to maintain because it decreases the dependency among application layers by using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. MVC provides complete control over the page markup. It also improves testability by inherently supporting Test Driven Development (TDD).

Web sites created using ASP.NET MVC have a modular architecture. This allows members of a team to work independently on the various modules and can be used to improve collaboration. For example, developers can work on the model and controller layers (data and logic), while the designer work on the view (presentation).

Dynamic Data

Dynamic Data was introduced in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release in mid-2008. This feature provides many enhancements for creating data-driven applications, such as the following:

- A RAD experience for quickly building a data-driven Web site.
- Automatic validation that is based on constraints defined in the data model.
- The ability to easily change the markup that is generated for fields in the GridView and DetailsView controls by using field templates that are part of your Dynamic Data project.

For ASP.NET 4, Dynamic Data has been enhanced to give developers even more power for quickly building data-driven Web sites.

Enabling Dynamic Data for Individual Data-Bound Controls in Existing Web Applications

You can use Dynamic Data features in existing ASP.NET Web applications that do not use scaffolding by enabling Dynamic Data for individual data-bound controls. Dynamic Data provides the presentation and data layer support for rendering these controls. When you enable Dynamic Data for data-bound controls, you get the following benefits:

- Setting default values for data fields. Dynamic Data enables you to provide default values at run time for fields in a data control.
- Interacting with the database without creating and registering a data model.
- Automatically validating the data that is entered by the user without writing any code.

New Field Templates for URLs and E-mail Addresses

ASP.NET 4 introduces two new built-in field templates, EmailAddress.ascx and Url.ascx. These templates are used for fields that are marked as EmailAddress or Url using the DataTypeAttribute attribute. For EmailAddress objects, the field is displayed as a hyperlink that is created by using the mailto: protocol. When users click the link, it opens the user's e-mail client and creates a skeleton message. Objects typed as Url are displayed as ordinary hyperlinks.

Creating Links with the DynamicHyperlink Control

Dynamic Data uses the new routing feature that was added in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to control the URLs that users see when they access the Web site. The new DynamicHyperLink control makes it easy to build links to pages in a Dynamic Data site.

Support for Inheritance in the Data Model

Both the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL support inheritance in their data models. An example of this might be a database that has an InsurancePolicy table. It might also contain CarPolicy and HousePolicy tables that have the same fields as InsurancePolicy and then add more fields. Dynamic Data has been modified to understand inherited objects in the data model and to support scaffolding for the inherited tables.

Support for Many-to-Many Relationships (Entity Framework Only)

The Entity Framework has rich support for many-to-many relationships between tables, which is implemented by exposing the relationship as a collection on an Entity object. New field templates (ManyToMany.ascx and ManyToMany_Edit.ascx) have been added to provide support for displaying and editing data that is involved in many-to-many relationships.

New Attributes to Control Display and Support Enumerations

The DisplayAttribute has been added to give you additional control over how fields are displayed. The DisplayNameAttribute attribute in earlier versions of Dynamic Data enabled you to change the name that is used as a caption for a field. The new DisplayAttribute class lets you specify more options for displaying a field, such as the order in which a field is displayed and whether a field will be used as a filter. The attribute also provides independent control of the name that is used for the labels in a GridView control, the name that is used in a DetailsView control, the help text for the field, and the watermark used for the field (if the field accepts text input).

The EnumDataTypeAttribute class has been added to let you map fields to enumerations. When you apply this attribute to a field, you specify an enumeration type. Dynamic Data uses the new Enumeration.ascx field template to create UI for displaying and editing enumeration values. The template maps the values from the database to the names in the enumeration.

Enhanced Support for Filters

Dynamic Data 1.0 had built-in filters for Boolean columns and foreign-key columns. The filters did not let you specify the order in which they were displayed. The new DisplayAttribute attribute addresses this by giving you control over whether a column appears as a filter and in what order it will be displayed.

An additional enhancement is that filtering support has been rewritten to use the new QueryExtender feature of Web Forms. This lets you create filters without requiring knowledge of the data source control that the filters will be used with. Along with these extensions, filters have also been turned into template controls, which lets you add new ones. Finally, the DisplayAttribute class mentioned earlier allows the default filter to be overridden, in the same way that UIHint allows the default field template for a column to be overridden.

ASP .NET Chart Control

The ASP.NET chart server control enables you to create ASP.NET pages applications that have simple, intuitive charts for complex statistical or financial analysis. The chart control supports the following features:

- Data series, chart areas, axes, legends, labels, titles, and more.
- Data binding.
- Data manipulation, such as copying, splitting, merging, alignment, grouping, sorting, searching, and filtering.
- Statistical formulas and financial formulas.
- Advanced chart appearance, such as 3-D, anti-aliasing, lighting, and perspective.
- Events and customizations.
- Interactivity and Microsoft Ajax.
- Support for the Ajax Content Delivery Network (CDN), which provides an optimized way for you to add Microsoft Ajax Library and jQuery scripts to your Web applications.

Microsoft Ajax Functionality

You can now use the Microsoft Ajax Library to create entirely client-based Ajax applications. Microsoft Ajax functionality now enables client data scenarios for page and component developers. To enable these scenarios, you must download and install the newest version of the Microsoft Ajax Library, which is released separately from the .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010. You can download the latest version of the Microsoft Ajax Library from the Microsoft Ajax Web site.

The new version of the Microsoft Ajax Library includes the following features:

- The ability to render JSON data from the server as HTML.
- Client-side templates that enable you to display data by using only browser-based code.
- Declarative instantiation of client-side controls and behavior.
- A client DataView control that lets you create dynamic data-driven UI.
- Live binding between data and HTML elements or client controls.
- Client-side command bubbling.
- Full integration of WCF and WCF Data Services with client script, which includes client-side change tracking.

TO BE CONTINUED

Top Reasons to host your ASP.NET 4 Website with HostForLife.eu

There are many reasons why so many people choose HostForLife over any other web hosting provider each year. Whether you’re beginner or an experience webmaster, HostForLife offers the perfect solution for everyone.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added-benefits you can find when hosting with us:

1. World-class 24x7 Customer Support
Will your hosting company promptly answer questions and resolve issues - at 3 am on a Sunday? Even some providers claiming “24x7” support will not - but HostForLife will. Our outstanding uptime is backed by true 24x7 customer support. An expertly trained technician will respond to your query within one hour, round the clock. You will also get qualified answers. Other hosting companies typically have very low - level support staff during the night or weekends. HostForLife always has knowledgeable, top - level  support standing by, day or night, to give you the answers you need.

2. Commitment to Outstanding Reliability
Reliability, Stability, and Performance of our servers remain out TOP priority. Even our basic service plans are equipped with standard service level agreements for 99.99% uptime. Advanced options raise the bar to 99.99%. Our state-of-the-art data centers combine servers and SAN storage with full redundancy and operational tools with proprietary service management techniques. Full backup and recovery capabilities are implemented, including redundant power supplies, cooling and connectionsto major data networks.

3. “Right-size” plans for maximum value
HostForLife offers a complete menu of services. IT professionals select only what they need - and leave behind what they don’t. The result is an optimal blend of cost and performance. We offer IT professionals more advanced features and the latest technology - ahead of other hosting companies.

4. Profitable, Stable, Debt-free Business
Financial stability is the bedrock of a hosting provider’s ability to deliver outstanding uptime, cost-effective service plans and world-class 24x7 support.  HostForLife’s customers are assured of our financial integrity and stability - a stark contrast to the ups and downs they may have experienced with other providers.

5. The Best Account Management Tools
HostForLife revolutionized hosting with Plesk Control Panel, a Web-based interfaces that provides customers with 24x7 access to their server and site configuration tools. Some other hosting providers manually execute configuration requests, which can take days. Plesk completes requests in second. It is included free with each hosting account. Renowned for its comprehensive functionally - beyond other hosting control panels - and ease of use, Plesk Control Panel is available only to HostForLife’s customers.

6. 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
HostForLife 30 day money back guarantee ensures you have the ability to cancel your account anytime within your first 30 days under our full 30 day money back guarantee (less one-time account setup free). So what are you waiting for? Sign up today, risk free…

7. Simplicity with FREE 1-Click Installation
HostForLife was designed with ease of use in mind. From one click installations of your favourite website applications to our much talked about drag and drop website builder, you can rest assure your stay with us is going to be a smooth one. HostForLife offers the most extensive set of scripts on the web allowing you to build complicated websites with little or no programming knowledge at all. From blogs to forums to powerful e-commerce solutions, Super Green has something that is right for you.

ASP .NET 4 Core Services

ASP.NET 4 introduces many features that improve core ASP.NET services such as output caching and session state storage.

Extensible Output Caching

Since ASP.NET 1.0 was released, output caching has enabled developers to store the generated output of pages, controls, and HTTP responses in memory. On subsequent Web requests, ASP.NET can serve content more quickly by retrieving the generated output from memory instead of regenerating the output from scratch. However, this approach has a limitation — generated content always has to be stored in memory. On servers that experience heavy traffic, the memory requirements for output caching can compete with memory requirements for other parts of a Web application.

ASP.NET 4 adds extensibility to output caching that enables you to configure one or more custom output-cache providers. Output-cache providers can use any storage mechanism to persist HTML content. These storage options can include local or remote disks, cloud storage, and distributed cache engines.

Output-cache provider extensibility in ASP.NET 4 lets you design more aggressive and more intelligent output-caching strategies for Web sites. For example, you can create an output-cache provider that caches the "Top 10" pages of a site in memory, while caching pages that get lower traffic on disk. Alternatively, you can cache every vary-by combination for a rendered page, but use a distributed cache so that the memory consumption is offloaded from front-end Web servers.

Prealoading Web Applications

Some Web applications must load large amounts of data or must perform expensive initialization processing before serving the first request. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, for these situations you had to devise custom approaches to "wake up" an ASP.NET application and then run initialization code during the Application_Load method in the Global.asax file.

To address this scenario, a new application preload manager (autostart feature) is available when ASP.NET 4 runs on IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2. The preload feature provides a controlled approach for starting up an application pool, initializing an ASP.NET application, and then accepting HTTP requests. It lets you perform expensive application initialization prior to processing the first HTTP request. For example, you can use the application preload manager to initialize an application and then signal a load-balancer that the application was initialized and ready to accept HTTP traffic.

Permanently Redirecting a Page

Content in Web applications is often moved over the lifetime of the application. This can lead to links to be out of date, such as the links that are returned by search engines.

In ASP.NET, developers have traditionally handled requests to old URLs by using the Redirect method to forward a request to the new URL. However, the Redirect method issues an HTTP 302 (Found) response (which is used for a temporary redirect). This results in an extra HTTP round trip.

Session State Compression

By default, ASP.NET provides two options for storing session state across a Web farm. The first option is a session state provider that invokes an out-of-process session state server. The second option is a session state provider that stores data in a Microsoft SQL Server database.

Because both options store state information outside a Web application's worker process, session state has to be serialized before it is sent to remote storage. If a large amount of data is saved in session state, the size of the serialized data can become very large.

ASP.NET 4 introduces a new compression option for both kinds of out-of-process session state providers. By using this option, applications that have spare CPU cycles on Web servers can achieve substantial reductions in the size of serialized session state data.

You can set this option using the new compressionEnabled attribute of the sessionState element in the configuration file. When the compressionEnabled configuration option is set to true, ASP.NET compresses (and decompresses) serialized session state by using the .NET Framework GZipStream class.

ASP .NET 4 Web Forms

Web Forms has been a core feature in ASP.NET since the release of ASP.NET 1.0. Many enhancements have been in this area for ASP.NET 4, such as the following:

- The ability to set meta tags.
- More control over view state.
- Support for recently introduced browsers and devices.
- Easier ways to work with browser capabilities.
- Support for using ASP.NET routing with Web Forms.
- More control over generated IDs.
- The ability to persist selected rows in data controls.
- More control over rendered HTML in the FormView and ListView controls.
- Filtering support for data source controls.
- Enhanced support for Web standards and accessibility

Setting Meta Tags with the Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription Propperties

Two properties have been added to the Page class: MetaKeywords and MetaDescription. These two properties work like the Title property does, and they can be set in the @ Page directive.

Enabling View State for Individual Controls

A new property has been added to the Control class: ViewStateMode. You can use this property to disable view state for all controls on a page except those for which you explicitly enable view state.

View state data is included in a page's HTML and increases the amount of time it takes to send a page to the client and post it back. Storing more view state than is necessary can cause significant decrease in performance. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, you could reduce the impact of view state on a page's performance by disabling view state for specific controls. But sometimes it is easier to enable view state for a few controls that need it instead of disabling it for many that do not need it.

Support for Recently Introduced Browsers and Devices

ASP.NET includes a feature that is named browser capabilities that lets you determine the capabilities of the browser that a user is using. Browser capabilities are represented by the HttpBrowserCapabilities object which is stored in the HttpRequest..::.Browser property. Information about a particular browser's capabilities is defined by a browser definition file. In ASP.NET 4, these browser definition files have been updated to contain information about recently introduced browsers and devices such as Google Chrome, Research in Motion BlackBerry smart phones, and Apple iPhone. Existing browser definition files have also been updated.

The browser definition files that are included with ASP.NET 4 are shown in the following list:

- blackberry.browser
- chrome.browser
- Default.browser
- firefox.browser
- gateway.browser
- generic.browser
- ie.browser
- iemobile.browser
- iphone.browser
- opera.browser
- safari.browser

A New Way to Define Browser Capabilitie

ASP.NET 4 includes a new feature referred to as browser capabilities providers. As the name suggests, this lets you build a provider that in turn lets you write custom code to determine browser capabilities.

In ASP.NET version 3.5 Service Pack 1, you define browser capabilities in an XML file. This file resides in a machine-level folder or an application-level folder. Most developers do not need to customize these files, but for those who do, the provider approach can be easier than dealing with complex XML syntax. The provider approach makes it possible to simplify the process by implementing a common browser definition syntax, or a database that contains up-to-date browser definitions, or even a Web service for such a database.

Routing in ASP .NET 4

ASP.NET 4 adds built-in support for routing with Web Forms. Routing is a feature that was introduced with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 and lets you configure an application to use URLs that are meaningful to users and to search engines because they do not have to specify physical file names. This can make your site more user-friendly and your site content more discoverable by search engines.

Setting Client IDs

The new ClientIDMode property makes it easier to write client script that references HTML elements rendered for server controls. Increasing use of Microsoft Ajax makes the need to do this more common. For example, you may have a data control that renders a long list of products with prices and you want to use client script to make a Web service call and update individual prices in the list as they change without refreshing the entire page.

Typically you get a reference to an HTML element in client script by using the document.GetElementById method. You pass to this method the value of the id attribute of the HTML element you want to reference. In the case of elements that are rendered for ASP.NET server controls earlier versions of ASP.NET could make this difficult or impossible. You were not always able to predict what id values ASP.NET would generate, or ASP.NET could generate very long id values. The problem was especially difficult for data controls that would generate multiple rows for a single instance of the control in your markup.

Persisting Row Selection in Data Controls

The GridView and ListView controls enable users to select a row. In previous versions of ASP.NET, row selection was based on the row index on the page. For example, if you select the third item on page 1 and then move to page 2, the third item on page 2 is selected. In most cases, is more desirable not to select any rows on page 2. ASP.NET 4 supports Persisted Selection, a new feature that was initially supported only in Dynamic Data projects in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. When this feature is enabled, the selected item is based on the row data key. This means that if you select the third row on page 1 and move to page 2, nothing is selected on page 2. When you move back to page 1, the third row is still selected. This is a much more natural behavior than the behavior in earlier versions of ASP.NET. Persisted selection is now supported for the GridView and ListView controls in all projects.

FormView Control Enhancements

The ListView control, which was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5, has all the functionality of the GridView control while giving you complete control over the output. This control has been made easier to use in ASP.NET 4. The earlier version of the control required that you specify a layout template that contained a server control with a known ID.

Filtering Data with the QueryExtender Control

A very common task for developers who create data-driven Web pages is to filter data. This traditionally has been performed by building Where clauses in data source controls. This approach can be complicated, and in some cases the Where syntax does not let you take advantage of the full functionality of the underlying database.

To make filtering easier, a new QueryExtender control has been added in ASP.NET 4. This control can be added to EntityDataSource or LinqDataSource controls in order to filter the data returned by these controls. Because the QueryExtender control relies on LINQ, but you do not to need to know how to write LINQ queries to use the query extender.

Enhanced Support for Web Standards and Accessibility

Earlier versions of ASP.NET controls sometimes render markup that does not conform to HTML, XHTML, or accessibility standards. ASP.NET 4 eliminates most of these exceptions.

CSS for Controls that Can be Disabled

In ASP.NET 3.5, when a control is disabled (see WebControl..::.Enabled), a disabled attribute is added to the rendered HTML element.

CSS for Validation Controls

In ASP.NET 3.5, validation controls render a default color of red as an inline style. Therefore, ASP.NET 4 does not automatically show error messages in red.

CSS for Hidden Fields Div Element

ASP.NET uses hidden fields to store state information such as view state and control state. These hidden fields are contained by a div element. In ASP.NET 3.5, this div element does not have a class attribute or an id attribute. Therefore, CSS rules that affect all div elements could unintentionally cause this div to be visible. To avoid this problem, ASP.NET 4 renders the div element for hidden fields with a CSS class that you can use to differentiate the hidden fields div from others.

CSS for Table, Image, and ImageButton Controls

By default, in ASP.NET 3.5, some controls set the border attribute of rendered HTML to zero (0).

CSS for UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress Controls

In ASP.NET 3.5, the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress controls do not support expando attributes. This makes it impossible to set a CSS class on the HTML elements that they render.

Eliminating Unnecessary Outer Tables

In ASP.NET 3.5, the HTML that is rendered for the following controls is wrapped in a table element whose purpose is to apply inline styles to the entire control:

- FormView
- Login
- Password Recovery
- ChangePassword

If you use templates to customize the appearance of these controls, you can specify CSS styles in the markup that you provide in the templates. In that case, no extra outer table is required. In ASP.NET 4, you can prevent the table from being rendered by setting the new RenderOuterTable property to false.

TO BE CONTINUED

Top Reasons to host your ASP.NET 4 Website with HostForLife.eu

There are many reasons why so many people choose HostForLife over any other web hosting provider each year. Whether you’re beginner or an experience webmaster, HostForLife offers the perfect solution for everyone.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added-benefits you can find when hosting with us:

1. World-class 24x7 Customer Support
Will your hosting company promptly answer questions and resolve issues - at 3 am on a Sunday? Even some providers claiming “24x7” support will not - but HostForLife will. Our outstanding uptime is backed by true 24x7 customer support. An expertly trained technician will respond to your query within one hour, round the clock. You will also get qualified answers. Other hosting companies typically have very low - level support staff during the night or weekends. HostForLife always has knowledgeable, top - level  support standing by, day or night, to give you the answers you need.

2. Commitment to Outstanding Reliability
Reliability, Stability, and Performance of our servers remain out TOP priority. Even our basic service plans are equipped with standard service level agreements for 99.99% uptime. Advanced options raise the bar to 99.99%. Our state-of-the-art data centers combine servers and SAN storage with full redundancy and operational tools with proprietary service management techniques. Full backup and recovery capabilities are implemented, including redundant power supplies, cooling and connectionsto major data networks.

3. “Right-size” plans for maximum value
HostForLife offers a complete menu of services. IT professionals select only what they need - and leave behind what they don’t. The result is an optimal blend of cost and performance. We offer IT professionals more advanced features and the latest technology - ahead of other hosting companies.

4. Profitable, Stable, Debt-free Business
Financial stability is the bedrock of a hosting provider’s ability to deliver outstanding uptime, cost-effective service plans and world-class 24x7 support.  HostForLife’s customers are assured of our financial integrity and stability - a stark contrast to the ups and downs they may have experienced with other providers.

5. The Best Account Management Tools
HostForLife revolutionized hosting with Plesk Control Panel, a Web-based interfaces that provides customers with 24x7 access to their server and site configuration tools. Some other hosting providers manually execute configuration requests, which can take days. Plesk completes requests in second. It is included free with each hosting account. Renowned for its comprehensive functionally - beyond other hosting control panels - and ease of use, Plesk Control Panel is available only to HostForLife’s customers.

6. 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
HostForLife 30 day money back guarantee ensures you have the ability to cancel your account anytime within your first 30 days under our full 30 day money back guarantee (less one-time account setup free). So what are you waiting for? Sign up today, risk free…

7. Simplicity with FREE 1-Click Installation
HostForLife was designed with ease of use in mind. From one click installations of your favourite website applications to our much talked about drag and drop website builder, you can rest assure your stay with us is going to be a smooth one. HostForLife offers the most extensive set of scripts on the web allowing you to build complicated websites with little or no programming knowledge at all. From blogs to forums to powerful e-commerce solutions, Super Green has something that is right for you.

Visual Basic Complier and Language

Auto-Implemented Properties

Auto-implemented properties provide a shortened syntax that enables you to quickly specify a property of a class without having to write code to Get and Set the property.

Collection Initializers

Collection initializers provide a shortened syntax that enables you to create a collection and populate it with an initial set of values. Collection initializers are useful when you are creating a collection from a set of known values, for example, a list of menu options or categories.

Implicit Line Continuation

In many cases, implicit line continuation enables you to continue a statement on the next consecutive line without using the underscore character (_).

Multiline Lambda Expressions and Subroutines

Lambda expression support has been expanded to support subroutines in addition to multiline lambda functions and subroutines.

New Command-Line Option for Specifying a Language Version

The /langversion command-line option causes the compiler to accept only syntax that is valid in the specified version of Visual Basic.

Type Equivalence Support

You can now deploy an application that has embedded type information instead of type information that is imported from a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA). With embedded type information, your application can use types in a runtime without requiring a reference to the runtime assembly. If various versions of the runtime assembly are published, the application that contains the embedded type information can work with the various versions without having to be recompiled.

Dynamic Support

Visual Basic binds to objects from dynamic languages such as IronPython and IronRuby.

Covariance and Contravariance

Covariance enables you to use a more derived type than that specified by the generic parameter, whereas contravariance enables you to use a less derived type. This allows for implicit conversion of classes that implement variant interfaces and provides more flexibility for matching method signatures with variant delegate types. You can create variant interfaces and delegates by using the new In and Out language keywords. The .NET Framework also introduces variance support for several existing generic interfaces and delegates, including the IEnumerable<(Of <(T>)>) interface and the Func<(Of <(TResult>)>) and Action<(Of <(T>)>) delegates.

Integrated Development Environment

Navigate to

You can use the Navigate To feature to search for a symbol or file in source code. You can search for keywords that are contained in a symbol by using Camel casing and underscore characters to divide the symbol into keywords.

Highlighting References

When you click a symbol in source code, all instances of that symbol are highlighted in the document.

For many control structures, when you click a keyword, all of the keywords in the structure are highlighted. For instance, when you click If in an If...Then...Else construction, all instances of If, Then, ElseIf, Else, and End If in the construction are highlighted.

To move to the next or previous highlighted symbol, you can use CTRL+SHIFT+DOWN ARROW or CTRL+SHIFT+UP ARROW.

Generate from Usage

The Generate From Usage feature enables you to use classes and members before you define them. You can generate a stub for any class, constructor, method, property, field, or enum that you want to use but have not yet defined. You can generate new types and members without leaving your current location in code. This minimizes interruption to your workflow.

Generate From Usage supports programming styles such as test-first development.

IntelliSense Suggestion Mode

IntelliSense now provides two alternatives for IntelliSense statement completion: completion mode and suggestion mode. Suggestion mode is used when classes and members are used before they are defined.

Sample Application

Visual Basic includes new sample applications that demonstrate the following features: auto-implemented properties, implicit line continuation, collection initializers, covariance and contravariance, and multiline lambda expressions and subroutines.

Top Reasons to host your ASP.NET 4 Website with HostForLife.eu

There are many reasons why so many people choose HostForLife over any other web hosting provider each year. Whether you’re beginner or an experience webmaster, HostForLife offers the perfect solution for everyone.

You’ll have highly trained, skilled professional technical support people ready, willing, and wanting to help you 24 hours a day. Your web hosting account servers are monitored from three monitoring points, with two alert points, every minute, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The followings are the list of other added-benefits you can find when hosting with us:

1. World-class 24x7 Customer Support
Will your hosting company promptly answer questions and resolve issues - at 3 am on a Sunday? Even some providers claiming “24x7” support will not - but HostForLife will. Our outstanding uptime is backed by true 24x7 customer support. An expertly trained technician will respond to your query within one hour, round the clock. You will also get qualified answers. Other hosting companies typically have very low - level support staff during the night or weekends. HostForLife always has knowledgeable, top - level  support standing by, day or night, to give you the answers you need.

2. Commitment to Outstanding Reliability
Reliability, Stability, and Performance of our servers remain out TOP priority. Even our basic service plans are equipped with standard service level agreements for 99.99% uptime. Advanced options raise the bar to 99.99%. Our state-of-the-art data centers combine servers and SAN storage with full redundancy and operational tools with proprietary service management techniques. Full backup and recovery capabilities are implemented, including redundant power supplies, cooling and connectionsto major data networks.

3. “Right-size” plans for maximum value
HostForLife offers a complete menu of services. IT professionals select only what they need - and leave behind what they don’t. The result is an optimal blend of cost and performance. We offer IT professionals more advanced features and the latest technology - ahead of other hosting companies.

4. Profitable, Stable, Debt-free Business
Financial stability is the bedrock of a hosting provider’s ability to deliver outstanding uptime, cost-effective service plans and world-class 24x7 support.  HostForLife’s customers are assured of our financial integrity and stability - a stark contrast to the ups and downs they may have experienced with other providers.

5. The Best Account Management Tools
HostForLife revolutionized hosting with Plesk Control Panel, a Web-based interfaces that provides customers with 24x7 access to their server and site configuration tools. Some other hosting providers manually execute configuration requests, which can take days. Plesk completes requests in second. It is included free with each hosting account. Renowned for its comprehensive functionally - beyond other hosting control panels - and ease of use, Plesk Control Panel is available only to HostForLife’s customers.

6. 30-Day Money Back Guarantee
HostForLife 30 day money back guarantee ensures you have the ability to cancel your account anytime within your first 30 days under our full 30 day money back guarantee (less one-time account setup free). So what are you waiting for? Sign up today, risk free…

7. Simplicity with FREE 1-Click Installation
HostForLife was designed with ease of use in mind. From one click installations of your favourite website applications to our much talked about drag and drop website builder, you can rest assure your stay with us is going to be a smooth one. HostForLife offers the most extensive set of scripts on the web allowing you to build complicated websites with little or no programming knowledge at all. From blogs to forums to powerful e-commerce solutions, Super Green has something that is right for you.

Auto-Start Web Applications with ASP.NET 4

Some web applications need to load large amounts of data, or perform expensive initialization processing, before they are ready to process requests.  Developers using ASP.NET today often do this work using the “Application_Start” event handler within the Global.asax file of an application (which fires the first time a request executes).  They then either devise custom scripts to send fake requests to the application to periodically “wake it up” and execute this code before a customer hits it, or simply cause the unfortunate first customer that accesses the application to wait while this logic finishes before processing the request (which can lead to a long delay for them).

ASP.NET 4 ships with a new feature called “auto-start” that better addresses this scenario, and is available when ASP.NET 4 runs on IIS 7.5 (which ships with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2).  The auto-start feature provides a controlled approach for starting up an application worker process, initializing an ASP.NET application, and then accepting HTTP requests.

Configuring an ASP.NET 4 Application to Auto-Start

To use the ASP.NET 4 auto-start feature, you first configure the IIS “application pool” worker process that the application runs within to automatically startup when the web-server first loads.  You can do this by opening up the IIS 7.5 applicationHost.config file (C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config) and by adding a startMode=”AlwaysRunning” attribute to the appropriate <applicationPools> entry:

          <applicationPools>
                    <add name =”MyAppWorkerProcess” managedRuntimeVersion=”v4.0” startMode=”AlwaysRunning” />
          </applicationPools>

If you load up the Windows task manager, click the “show processes from all users” checkbox, and then hit save on a startMode attribute change to the applicationHost.config file, you’ll see a new “w3wp.exe” worker process immediately startup as soon as the file is saved.

A single IIS application pool worker process can host multiple ASP.NET applications.  You can specify which applications you want to have automatically start when the worker process loads by adding a serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" attribute on their <application> configuration entry:

          <sites>
                   <site name =”MySite” id=”1”>
                           <application path=”/” serviceAutoStartEnabled=”true” serviceAutoStartProvider=”PreWarmMyCache” />
                   </site>
          </sites>
          <serviceAutoStartProviders>
                   <add name=”PreWarmMyCache” type=”PreWarmCache, MyAssembly” />
          </serviceAutoStartProviders>

The serviceAutoProvider="PreWarmMyCache" attribute above references a provider entry within the config file that enables you to configure a custom class that can be used to encapsulate any "warming up" logic for the application.  This class will be automatically invoked as soon as the worker process and application are preloaded (before any external web requests are received), and can be used to execute any initialization or cache loading logic you want to run before requests are received and processed:

          public class PreWarmCache : System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient {
                  public void Preload(string[] parameters) {
                          // Perform initialization and cache loading logic here…
                  }
          }

IIS will start the application in a state during which it will not accept requests until your "warming up" logic has completed.  After your initialization code runs in the Preload method and the method returns, the ASP.NET application will be marked as ready to process requests. 

You can optionally combine the new auto-start "warming up" feature with the load-balancing capabilities of the IIS7 Application Request Routing (ARR) extension, and use it to signal to a load-balancer once the application is initialized and ready to accept HTTP traffic – at which point the server can be brought into the web farm to process requests.

Summary

The new "auto start" feature of ASP.NET 4 and IIS 7.5 provides a well-defined approach that allows you to perform expensive application startup and pre-cache logic that can run before any end-users hit your application.  This enables you to have your application "warmed up" and ready from the very beginning, and deliver a consistent high performance experience.

What is so SPECIAL on HostForLife.eu ASP. Net 4 Hosting?

We know that finding a cheap, reliable web host is not a simple task so we’ve put all the information you need in one place to help you make your decision. At HostForLife, we pride ourselves in our commitment to our customers and want to make sure they have all the details they need before making that big decision.

We will work tirelessly to provide a refreshing and friendly level of customer service. We believe in creativity, innovation, and a competitive spirit in all that we do. We are sound, honest company who feels that business is more than just the bottom line. We consider every business opportunity a chance to engage and interact with our customers and our community. Neither our clients nor our employees are a commodity. They are part of our family.

The followings are the top 10 reasons you should trust your online business and hosting needs to us:

- FREE domain for Life - HostForLife gives you your own free domain name for life with our Professional Hosting Plan and 3 free domains with any of Reseller Hosting Plan! There’s no need to panic about renewing your domain as HostForLife will automatically do this for you to ensure you never lose the all important identity of your site
- 99,9% Uptime Guarantee – HostForLife promises it’s customers 99.9% network uptime! We are so concerned about uptime that we set up our own company to monitor people’s uptime for them called HostForLife Uptime
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is opening 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmast/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Customer Tailored Support - if you compare our hosting plans to others you will see that we are offering a much better deal in every aspect; performance, disk quotas, bandwidth allocation, databases, security, control panel features, e-mail services, real-time stats, and service
- Money Back Guarantee - HostForLife offers a ‘no questions asked’ money back guarantee with all our plans for any cancellations made within the first 30 days of ordering. Our cancellation policy is very simple - if you cancel your account within 30 days of first signing up we will provide you with a full refund
- Experts in ASP. Net 4 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up HostForLife
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control  Panel in 1 minute!

Happy Hosting!

Compacting out-of-Process Session Data

We like using the Session object (We like the Cache object even better). Many developers object to the Session object because it imposes a footprint on the server even when a user isn't requesting a page. In ASP.NET 4 the sessionState tag in the web.config file now has a new attribute called compressionEnabled that causes serialized to data to be automatically compressed. Here's what it looks like:

<sessionState
         compressionEnabled=”true”. . .

Session data is only serialized if you're using a state server (where mode is set to "StateServer") or a database (mode="SqlServer"). But in those scenarios, this option will lower the impact of the user's footprint when storing data in the Session object -- provided you're willing to spend the CPU cycles to compact and un-compact your data.

Permanently Redirecting a Page

It would be wonderful if we never changed the URLs for our pages. However, in the real world that doesn't happen. Pages move around. Rather than let users get 404 errors when requesting a page using a URL that's worked in the past, ASP.NET programmers often put a Response.Redirect in the Page Load of the old page and have that Redirect send the user to the new location of the page.

In ASP.NET 4, you can now use the Response.RedirectPermanent method in the same way. RedirectPermanent issues HTTP 301 messages which signal to the client that this is a permanent redirection. Provided the client recognizes 301 messages, the client will automatically substitute the new URL for the old URL whenever the user requests the old URL, skipping the trip to the old location.

Alternatively, you could use Routing, which eliminates this problem. Implementing routing is much simpler in ASP.NET 4 and I'll cover that topic in a later column.

Control-Level Changes

Probably the most important change to existing controls is invisible: Many controls will be generating different HTML in ASP.NET 4. Partially this is a move to produce HTML that is more complaint with XHTML 4.0; partially it is an effort to produce HTML that CSS authors (i.e. not me) will find easier to style. Overall, there's a sharp reduction in the number of table tags being produced. However, if you have code that's dependent on the old HTML format, you can add this element to your config file to keep the old HTML:

<pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion=”3.5”/>

In the past, if you wanted to reduce the size of a page's ViewState, you considered setting the EnableViewState property on the Page to False. However, that disabled ViewState for all the controls on the page, and usually there were some controls that needed the ViewState. The alternative was to disable ViewState on each control where you didn't need it -- typically most of the controls on the page. Now in ASP.NET 4, you can disable ViewState for the Page and set EnableViewStateMode to Enabled on the controls where you actually need ViewState.

What is so SPECIAL on HostForLife.eu ASP. Net 4 Hosting?

We know that finding a cheap, reliable web host is not a simple task so we’ve put all the information you need in one place to help you make your decision. At HostForLife, we pride ourselves in our commitment to our customers and want to make sure they have all the details they need before making that big decision.

We will work tirelessly to provide a refreshing and friendly level of customer service. We believe in creativity, innovation, and a competitive spirit in all that we do. We are sound, honest company who feels that business is more than just the bottom line. We consider every business opportunity a chance to engage and interact with our customers and our community. Neither our clients nor our employees are a commodity. They are part of our family.

The followings are the top 10 reasons you should trust your online business and hosting needs to us:

- FREE domain for Life - HostForLife gives you your own free domain name for life with our Professional Hosting Plan and 3 free domains with any of Reseller Hosting Plan! There’s no need to panic about renewing your domain as HostForLife will automatically do this for you to ensure you never lose the all important identity of your site
- 99,9% Uptime Guarantee – HostForLife promises it’s customers 99.9% network uptime! We are so concerned about uptime that we set up our own company to monitor people’s uptime for them called HostForLife Uptime
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is opening 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmast/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Customer Tailored Support - if you compare our hosting plans to others you will see that we are offering a much better deal in every aspect; performance, disk quotas, bandwidth allocation, databases, security, control panel features, e-mail services, real-time stats, and service
- Money Back Guarantee - HostForLife offers a ‘no questions asked’ money back guarantee with all our plans for any cancellations made within the first 30 days of ordering. Our cancellation policy is very simple - if you cancel your account within 30 days of first signing up we will provide you with a full refund
- Experts in ASP. Net 4 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up HostForLife
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control  Panel in 1 minute!

Happy Hosting!

Why SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site.  A large percentage of traffic to sites now comes from search engines, and improving the search relevancy of your site will lead to more user traffic to your site from search engine queries (which can directly or indirectly increase the revenue you make through your site).

Measuring the SEO of your website with the SEO Toolkit

We blogged about the free SEO Toolkit we’ve shipped that you can use to analyze your site for SEO correctness, and which provides detailed suggestions on any SEO issues it finds. 

We highly recommend downloading and using the tool against any public site you work on.  It makes it easy to spot SEO issues you might have in the site, and pinpoint ways to optimize it further.

ASP .NET 4 SEO Improvement

ASP.NET 4 includes a bunch of new runtime features that can help you to further optimize your site for SEO.  Some of these new features include:

- New Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription properties
- New URL Routing support for ASP.NET Web Forms
- New Response.RedirectPermanent() method

Below are details about how you can take advantage of them to further improve your search engine relevancy.

Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription properties

One simple recommendation to improve the search relevancy of pages is to make sure you always output relevant “keywords” and “description” <meta> tags within the <head> section of your HTML.  For example:

<head runat=”server”>
           <title>My Page Title</title>
           <meta name=”keywords” content=”These, are, my, keywords” />
           <meta name=”description” content=”This is the description of my page” />
</head>

One of the nice improvements with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms is the addition of two new properties to the Page class: MetaKeywords and MetaDescription that make programmatically setting these values within your code-behind classes much easier and cleaner. 

ASP.NET 4’s <head> server control now looks at these values and will use them when outputting the <head> section of pages.  This behavior is particularly useful for scenarios where you are using master-pages within your site – and the <head> section ends up being in a .master file that is separate from the .aspx file that contains the page specific content.  You can now set the new MetaKeywords and MetaDescription properties in the .aspx page and have their values automatically rendered by the <head> control within the master page.

Below is a simple code snippet that demonstrates setting these properties programmatically within a Page_Load() event handler:

void Page_Load(object sender, EventsArgs e)
{
           Page.Title = “Setting the <head>’s <title> programmatically was already supported”;

           Page.MetaDescription = “Now you can set the <head>’s <meta> description too”;
           Page.MetaKeywords = “scottgu, blog, simple, sample, keywords”;
}

In addition to setting the Keywords and Description properties programmatically in your code-behind, you can also now declaratively set them within the @Page directive at the top of .aspx pages.

As you’d probably expect, if you set the values programmatically they will override any values declaratively set in either the <head> section or the via the @Page attribute. 

URL Routing with ASP.NET Web Forms

URL routing was a capability we first introduced with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1, and which is already used within ASP.NET MVC applications to expose clean, SEO-friendly “web 2.0” URLs.  URL routing lets you configure an application to accept request URLs that do not map to physical files. Instead, you can use routing to define URLs that are semantically meaningful to users and that can help with search-engine optimization (SEO).

With ASP.NET 4.0, URLs like above can now be mapped to both ASP.NET MVC Controller classes, as well as ASP.NET Web Forms based pages.  You can even have a single application that contains both Web Forms and MVC Controllers, and use a single set of routing rules to map URLs between them.

Response.RedirectPermanent() Method

It is pretty common within web applications to move pages and other content around over time, which can lead to an accumulation of stale links in search engines.

In ASP.NET, developers have often handled requests to old URLs by using the Response.Redirect() method to programmatically forward a request to the new URL.  However, what many developers don’t realize is that the Response.Redirect() method issues an HTTP 302 Found (temporary redirect) response, which results in an extra HTTP round trip when users attempt to access the old URLs.  Search engines typically will not follow across multiple redirection hops – which means using a temporary redirect can negatively impact your page ranking.  You can use the SEO Toolkit to identify places within a site where you might have this issue.

ASP.NET 4 introduces a new Response.RedirectPermanent(string url) helper method that can be used to perform a redirect using an HTTP 301 (moved permanently) response.  This will cause search engines and other user agents that recognize permanent redirects to store and use the new URL that is associated with the content.  This will enable your content to be indexed and your search engine page ranking to improve.

Below is an example of using the new Response.RedirectPermanent() method to redirect to a specific URL:

Response.RedirectPermanent(“NewPath/ForOldContent.aspx”);

ASP.NET 4 also introduces new Response.RedirectToRoute(string routeName) and Response.RedirectToRoutePermanent(string routeName) helper methods that can be used to redirect users using either a temporary or permanent redirect using the URL routing engine.  The code snippets below demonstrate how to issue temporary and permanent redirects to named routes (that take a category parameter) registered with the URL routing system.

// Issue temporary HTTP 302 redirect to a named route
Response.RedirectToRoute(“Products-Browse”, new { category = “beverages” });

//Issue permanent HTTP 301 redirect to a named route
Response.RedirectToRoutePermanent(“Products-Browse”, new { category = “beverages” } );

You can use the above routes and methods for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based URLs.

Summary

ASP.NET 4 includes a bunch of feature improvements that make it easier to build public facing sites that have great SEO.  When combined with the SEO Toolkit, you should be able to use these features to increase user traffic to your site – and hopefully increase the direct or indirect revenue you make from them.

What is so SPECIAL on HostForLife.eu ASP. Net 4 Hosting?

We know that finding a cheap, reliable web host is not a simple task so we’ve put all the information you need in one place to help you make your decision. At HostForLife, we pride ourselves in our commitment to our customers and want to make sure they have all the details they need before making that big decision.

We will work tirelessly to provide a refreshing and friendly level of customer service. We believe in creativity, innovation, and a competitive spirit in all that we do. We are sound, honest company who feels that business is more than just the bottom line. We consider every business opportunity a chance to engage and interact with our customers and our community. Neither our clients nor our employees are a commodity. They are part of our family.

The followings are the top 10 reasons you should trust your online business and hosting needs to us:

- FREE domain for Life - HostForLife gives you your own free domain name for life with our Professional Hosting Plan and 3 free domains with any of Reseller Hosting Plan! There’s no need to panic about renewing your domain as HostForLife will automatically do this for you to ensure you never lose the all important identity of your site
- 99,9% Uptime Guarantee – HostForLife promises it’s customers 99.9% network uptime! We are so concerned about uptime that we set up our own company to monitor people’s uptime for them called HostForLife Uptime
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is opening 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmast/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Customer Tailored Support - if you compare our hosting plans to others you will see that we are offering a much better deal in every aspect; performance, disk quotas, bandwidth allocation, databases, security, control panel features, e-mail services, real-time stats, and service
- Money Back Guarantee - HostForLife offers a ‘no questions asked’ money back guarantee with all our plans for any cancellations made within the first 30 days of ordering. Our cancellation policy is very simple - if you cancel your account within 30 days of first signing up we will provide you with a full refund
- Experts in ASP. Net 4 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up HostForLife
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control  Panel in 1 minute!

Happy Hosting!

This topic contains information about key features and improvements in the .NET Framework version 4. This topic does not provide comprehensive information about all new features and is subject to change.

Other new features and improvements in the .NET Framework 4 are described in the following sections:

1. Application Compatibility and Deployment
The .NET Framework 4 is highly compatible with applications that are built with earlier .NET Framework versions, except for some changes that were made to improve security, standards compliance, correctness, reliability, and performance.

The .NET Framework 4 does not automatically use its version of the common language runtime to run applications that are built with earlier versions of the .NET Framework. To run older applications with .NET Framework 4, you must compile your application with the target .NET Framework version specified in the properties for your project in Visual Studio.

The following sections describe deployment improvements.

- Client Profile
The .NET Framework 4 Client Profile supports more platforms than in previous versions and provides a fast deployment experience for your Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), console, or Windows Forms applications.

- In-Process Side-by-Side-Execution
This feature enables an application to load and start multiple versions of the .NET Framework in the same process. For example, you can run applications that load add-ins (or components) that are based on the .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 and add-ins that are based on the .NET Framework 4 in the same process.

2. Core New Features and Improvements
The following sections describe new features and improvements provided by the common language runtime and the base class libraries.

- Diagnostics and Performance
Earlier versions of the .NET Framework provided no way to determine whether a particular application domain was affecting other application domains, because the operating system APIs and tools, such as the Windows Task Manager, were precise only to the process level. Starting with the .NET Framework 4, you can get processor usage and memory usage estimates per application domain.

You can monitor CPU and memory usage of individual application domains. Application domain resource monitoring is available through the managed and native hosting APIs and event tracing for Windows (ETW). When this feature has been enabled, it collects statistics on all application domains in the process for the life of the process.

- Garbage Collection
The .NET Framework 4 provides background garbage collection. This feature replaces concurrent garbage collection in previous versions and provides better performance.

- Code Contracts
Code contracts let you specify contractual information that is not represented by a method's or type's signature alone. The new System.Diagnostics.Contracts namespace contains classes that provide a language-neutral way to express coding assumptions in the form of preconditions, postconditions, and object invariants. The contracts improve testing with run-time checking, enable static contract verification, and support documentation generation.

- Design-Time-Only Interop Assemblies
You no longer have to ship primary interop assemblies (PIAs) to deploy applications that interoperate with COM objects. In the .NET Framework 4, compilers can embed type information from interop assemblies, selecting only the types that an application (for example, an add-in) actually uses. Type safety is ensured by the common language runtime.

- Dynamic Language Runtime
The dynamic language runtime (DLR) is a new runtime environment that adds a set of services for dynamic languages to the CLR. The DLR makes it easier to develop dynamic languages to run on the .NET Framework and to add dynamic features to statically typed languages. To support the DLR, the new System.Dynamic namespace is added to the .NET Framework.

The expression trees are extended with new types that represent control flow, for example, System.Linq.Expressions..::.LoopExpression and System.Linq.Expressions..::.TryExpression. These new types are used by the dynamic language runtime (DLR) and not used by LINQ.

In addition, several new classes that support the .NET Framework infrastructure are added to the System.Runtime.CompilerServices namespace.

- Covariance and Contravariance
Several generic interfaces and delegates now support covariance and contravariance.

- BigInteger and Complex Numbers
The new System.Numerics..::.BigInteger structure is an arbitrary-precision integer data type that supports all the standard integer operations, including bit manipulation. It can be used from any .NET Framework language. In addition, some of the new .NET Framework languages (such as F# and IronPython) have built-in support for this structure.

The new System.Numerics..::.Complex structure represents a complex number that supports arithmetic and trigonometric operations with complex numbers.

- Tuples
The .NET Framework 4 provides the System..::.Tuple class for creating tuple objects that contain structured data. It also provides generic tuple classes to support tuples that have from one to eight components (that is, singletons through octuples). To support tuple objects that have nine or more components, there is a generic tuple class with seven type parameters and an eighth parameter of any tuple type. 

- File System Enumeration Improvements
New file enumeration methods improve the performance of applications that access large file directories or that iterate through the lines in large files.

- Memory-Mapped Files
You can use memory-mapped files to edit very large files and to create shared memory for interprocess communication.

- 64-Bit Operating Systems and Processes
You can identify 64-bit operating systems and processes with the Environment..::.Is64BitOperatingSystem and Environment..::.Is64BitProcess properties.

- Other New Features
The following list describes additional new capabilities, improvements, and conveniences. Several of these are based on customer suggestions.
1. To upport culture-sensitive formatting, the System..::.TimeSpan structure includes new overloads of the ToString, Parse, and TryParse methods, as well as new ParseExact and TryParseExact methods.

2. The new String..::.IsNullOrWhiteSpace method indicates whether a string is null, empty, or consists only of white-space characters. New overloads have been added to the String.Concat and String.Join methods that concatenate members of System.Collections.Generic..::.IEnumerable<(Of <(T>)>) collections.

3. The String..::.Contract method lets you concatenate each element in an enumerable collection without first converting the elements to strings.

4. Two new convenience methods are available: StringBuilder..::.Clear and Stopwatch..::.Restart.

5. The new Enum..::.HasFlag method determines whether one or more bit fields or flags are set in an enumeration value. The Enum..::.TryParse method returns a Boolean value that indicates whether a string or integer value could be successfully parsed.

6. The System..::.Environment..::.SpecialFolder enumeration contains several new folders.

7. You can now easily copy one stream into another with the CopyTo method in classes that inherit from the System.IO..::.Stream class.

8. New Path..::.Combine method overloads enable you to combine file paths.

9. The new System..::.IObservable<(Of <(T>)>) and System..::.IObserver<(Of <(T>)>) interfaces provide a generalized mechanism for push-based notifications.

10. The System..::.IntPtr and System..::.UIntPtr classes now include support for the addition and subtraction operators.

11. You can now enable lazy initialization for any custom type by wrapping the type inside a System..::.Lazy<(Of <(T>)>) class.

12. The new System.Collections.Generic..::.SortedSet<(Of <(T>)>) class provides a self-balancing tree that maintains data in sorted order after insertions, deletions, and searches. This class implements the new System.Collections.Generic..::.ISet<(Of <(T>)>) interface.

13. The compression algorithms for the System.IO.Compression..::.DeflateStream and System.IO.Compression..::.GZipStream classes have improved so that data that is already compressed is no longer inflated. Also, the 4-gigabyte size restriction for compressing streams has been removed.

14. The new Monitor..::.Enter(Object, Boolean%) method overload takes a Boolean reference and atomically sets it to true only if the monitor is successfully entered.

15. You can use the Thread..::.Yield method to have the calling thread yield execution to another thread that is ready to run on the current processor.

16. The System..::.Guid structure now contains the TryParse and TryParseExact methods.

17. The new Microsoft.Win32..::.RegistryOptions enumeration lets you specify a volatile registry key that does not persist after the computer restarts.

Managed Extensibility Framework

The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a new library in the .NET Framework 4 that helps you build extensible and composable applications. MEF enables you to specify points where an application can be extended, to expose services to offer to other extensible applications and to create parts for consumption by extensible applications. It also enables easy discoverability of available parts based on metadata, without the need to load the assemblies for the parts.

Parallel Computing

The .NET Framework 4 introduces a new programming model for writing multithreaded and asynchronous code that greatly simplifies the work of application and library developers. The new model enables developers to write efficient, fine-grained, and scalable parallel code in a natural idiom without having to work directly with threads or the thread pool. The new System.Threading.Tasks namespace and other related types support this new model. Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), which is a parallel implementation of LINQ to Objects, enables similar functionality through declarative syntax.

Networking

Networking improvements include the following:

1. Security improvements for Windows authentication in several classes, including System.Net..::.HttpWebRequest, System.Net..::.HttpListener, System.Net.Mail..::.SmtpClient, System.Net.Security..::.SslStream, and System.Net.Security..::.NegotiateStream. Extended protection is available for applications on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

2. Support for Network Address Translation (NAT) traversal using IPv6 and Teredo.

3. New networking performance counters that provide information about HttpWebRequest objects.

4. In the System.Net..::.HttpWebRequest class, support for using large byte range headers (64-bit ranges) with new overloads for the AddRange method. New properties on the System.Net..::.HttpWebRequest class allow an application to set many HTTP headers. You can use the Host property to set the Host header value in an HTTP request that is independent from the request URI.

5. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) support for the System.Net.Mail..::.SmtpClient and related classes.

6. Improved support for mail headers in the System.Net.Mail..::.MailMessage class.

7. Support for a null cipher for use in encryption. You can specify the encryption policy by using the System.Net..::.ServicePointManager class and the EncryptionPolicy property. Constructors for the System.Net.Security..::.SslStream class now take a System.Net.Security..::.EncryptionPolicy class as a parameter.

8. Credentials for password-based authentication schemes such as basic, digest, NTLM, and Kerberos authentication in the System.Net..::.NetworkCredential class. To improved security, passwords may now be treated as System.Security..::.SecureString instances rather than System..::.String instances.

9. Ability to specify how a URI with percent-encoded values is converted and normalized in the System..::.Uri and System.Net..::.HttpListener classes.

Web

ASP.NET version 4 introduces new features in the following areas:

1. Core services, including a new API that lets you extend caching, support for compression for session-state data, and a new application preload manager (autostart feature).

2. Web Forms, including more integrated support for ASP.NET routing, enhanced support for Web standards, updated browser support, new features for data controls, and new features for view state management.

3. Web Forms controls, including a new Chart control.

4. MVC, including new helper methods for views, support for partitioned MVC applications, and asynchronous controllers.

5. Dynamic Data, including support for existing Web applications, support for many-to-many relationships and inheritance, new field templates and attributes, and enhanced data filtering.

6. Microsoft Ajax, including additional support for client-based Ajax applications in the Microsoft Ajax Library.

7. Visual Web Developer, including improved IntelliSense for JScript, new auto-complete snippets for HTML and ASP.NET markup, and enhanced CSS compatibility.

8. Deployment, including new tools for automating typical deployment tasks.

9. Multi-targeting, including better filtering for features that are not available in the target version of the .NET Framework.

Client

Windows Presentation Foundation
In the .NET Framework 4, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) contains changes and improvements in many areas, including controls, graphics, and XAML. 

Data

ADO. NET
ADO.NET provides new features for the Entity Framework, including Persistence-Ignorant Objects, functions in LINQ queries, and Customized Object Layer Code Generation.

Dynamic Data
For ASP.NET 4, Dynamic Data has been enhanced to give you even more power for quickly building data-driven Web sites. This includes the following:

- Automatic validation that is based on constraints that are defined in the data model.

- The ability to easily change the markup that is generated for fields in the GridView and DetailsView controls by using field templates that are part of a Dynamic Data project.

Communications and Workflow

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides messaging enhancements and seamless integration with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). WF provides improvements in performance, scalability, workflow modeling, and an updated visual designer.

What is so SPECIAL on HostForLife.eu ASP. Net 4 Hosting?

We know that finding a cheap, reliable web host is not a simple task so we’ve put all the information you need in one place to help you make your decision. At HostForLife, we pride ourselves in our commitment to our customers and want to make sure they have all the details they need before making that big decision.

We will work tirelessly to provide a refreshing and friendly level of customer service. We believe in creativity, innovation, and a competitive spirit in all that we do. We are sound, honest company who feels that business is more than just the bottom line. We consider every business opportunity a chance to engage and interact with our customers and our community. Neither our clients nor our employees are a commodity. They are part of our family.

The followings are the top 10 reasons you should trust your online business and hosting needs to us:

- FREE domain for Life - HostForLife gives you your own free domain name for life with our Professional Hosting Plan and 3 free domains with any of Reseller Hosting Plan! There’s no need to panic about renewing your domain as HostForLife will automatically do this for you to ensure you never lose the all important identity of your site
- 99,9% Uptime Guarantee – HostForLife promises it’s customers 99.9% network uptime! We are so concerned about uptime that we set up our own company to monitor people’s uptime for them called HostForLife Uptime
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is opening 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmast/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Customer Tailored Support - if you compare our hosting plans to others you will see that we are offering a much better deal in every aspect; performance, disk quotas, bandwidth allocation, databases, security, control panel features, e-mail services, real-time stats, and service
- Money Back Guarantee - HostForLife offers a ‘no questions asked’ money back guarantee with all our plans for any cancellations made within the first 30 days of ordering. Our cancellation policy is very simple - if you cancel your account within 30 days of first signing up we will provide you with a full refund
- Experts in ASP. Net 4 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up HostForLife
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control  Panel in 1 minute!

Happy Hosting!