This should be the real deal and benefit companies both big and small.  The framework’s been certified by Positive Technologies, and during the Chaos Constructions CC9 Festival, apparently stood firm against more than 25,000 attacks.

As for some specifics about how it works, a formal statement noted, “The new security framework provides proactive protection against the majority of known web attacks and security flaws like XSS and SQL injections and phishing.”

Also, “The framework recognizes threats among incoming requests, blocks website intrusions and maintains a comprehensive log about suspicious and dangerous activity being registered, providing an opportunity to respond accordingly.”

So hopefully ASP.NET developers will find themselves able to operate in a safer environment thanks to this development.  Would-be buyers should know that Bitrix Site Manager ASP.NET is available now at what’s supposed to be a special (”30% discount limited-time offer”) price of $690.

The MVC HTTP handler controls are incoming requests. The logic parses a URL, and depending on the request, will decide on what controller to utilize. A small difference you’ll notice with ASP.NET MVC is the URL is related to an action, not a file. Every URL utilized contains routing information to help identify a target controller.

ASP.NET MVC acts independently of other server controls and technologies. ASPX syntax is supported in the default view, and any other engine you plug in will use its own syntax.

For those who are used to Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC can be mixed together with ASP.NET in the same app. You are able to combine both frameworks because they utilize the same run-time environment. It should be noted that ASP.NET MVC pages can host the older frameworks, but not the other way around.

This recent development really takes the ASP.NET framework in a different direction for web applications. The .NET framework has recently come under criticisms for not being expansive as some other programming languages currently coming up in the market. The ASP.NET MVC inclusion should make strides for expanding its usability factor.

Here’s a list of new features which can be enjoyed by ASP.NET MVC:

1. Asynchronous controllers that increase the scalability of sites that interact with Web services

2. Strongly-typed HTML helpers for generating form input fields and reducing errors caused by typos

3. Client validation support for globalization data for multiple cultures

4. Server validation that renders model-level errors only

5. Templated helpers that automatically associate edit and display elements with data types

6. Html.RenderAction for rendering subsections of a page or site

Steve Mandel recently took a look at the volume (which was authored by the similarly-initialed Scott Mitchell) and came away impressed.  He wrote, “This book is well written and is divided into four parts with a total of 24 chapters.  While the level of the book is directed at beginners, it’s a good refresher for more experienced developers who want to learn some of the new features available in ASP.NET 3.5.”

Mandel isn’t alone in his opinion, either, as “Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET 3.5 in 24 Hours” is averaging about 4.5 stars on Amazon.

Here’s an added bonus: the book isn’t a boring instruction manual.  Each chapter includes a question and answer section, a workshop segment, and a selection of exercises to help readers gain a bit of real-world understanding and practical experience.

All in all, this seems to represent a pretty worthwhile way of getting someone up to speed on ASP.NET, and the 24-hour timeframe named by the title makes it look like an efficient one, too.

Scott Hanselman has apparently been running a sort of poll on Twitter for a couple of years, and this time around, his question garnered 1,250 responses.  That’s not a bad number - a lot of formal surveys don’t even try to approach half as many people - and given that Twitter tends to be popular with techies, looking for answers on the site seems like a pretty good idea.

On to the results, then.  As mentioned earlier, ASP.NET WebForms came out on top with 723 shows of support.  Ajax was the closest-scoring alternative, as 629 individuals mentioned it.  Next was WCF with 609 votes, and then we get to ASP.NET MVC with its 553 votes.

If you’re curious, WinForms, Silverlight, and WPF rounded out the seven-member group, with 516, 398, and 386 people referencing them, respectively.

A bit hat tip goes to Kathleen Richards, and it looks like the ASP.NET community can pat itself on the back, too.

A slightly better explanation of SEO is that it’s what helps certain sites rank above others in Google’s search results.  There are other factors involved - no amount of keyword optimization will put Jim-Bob’s Cowhide Boots ahead of Nike following a search for “shoes” - but SEO is a big deal when it comes to visibility and traffic.

That’s why it’s important that Scott Guthrie, a corporate vice president in the Microsoft Developer Division, wrote earlier this week, “ASP.NET 4 includes a bunch of new runtime features that can help you to further optimize your site for SEO.”

He then named “New Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription properties,” “New URL Routing support for ASP.NET Web Forms,” and a “New  Response.RedirectPermanent() method” as the key upgrades.

ASP.NET developers should be able to use these features to their advantage.  Just consider reading up a little on SEO and keep you expectations realistic.

-You can move a control between Control Collections and we’ll just move the control in the Browser too
- You can remove a control and replace it with a new control and if they are of the same type, we will reuse that instance in the Browser and only emit the state changes. A great example is paging/sorting in the GridView: Only the Text property of the Labels get’s serialized.

- You can remove a control entirely and we’ll just issue a RemoveControlCommand to the Browser, not touching anything else.

- It also means a lot more to you, but we’ll just have to expand information on this topic as we go.

Gaiaware is hoping the concept of DRIMR will help developers utilize code that helps keep re-rendering strategies at bay. There’s an image on Gaiaware’s blog that shows what DRIMR is all about, showing how DRIMR acts as a center puzzle piece to all the various aspects of development.

Stian Solberg, cofounder of Gaiaware discusses the benefits of DRIMR, “The basic concept of ASP.NET AJAX UpdatePanels is that you surround an area where you want to update HTML so you don’t disrupt the whole page, and this often leads to writing unnecessary HTML” he continues, “But now, with DRIMR, because we’ve built our own AJAX engine, we are able to insert controls anywhere in the page without re-rendering.”

What’s most impressive about Gaia Ajax 3.6 is that DRIMR is just one function of the product. Gaiaware’s blog post I linked to previously, has a slew of more details if you’re interested.

The partnership announcements come with the release of DotNetNuke 5.2. Telerik’s RadControls will be readily available with this edition, and provide a richer toolset by way of an engaging user interface. DotNetNuke 5.2 will be available in two editions, Community Edition, and Professional Edition. In order to completely use the RadControls tool set, you’ll have to purchase the Professional Edition.

DotNetNuke hopes with the partnership that engaging user experiences will be more frequent for website users. For those who are interested in the DotNetNuke 5.2 release should know the full Telerik RadEditor is only available with the Professional Edition.

Telerik has made out good in this deal as DotNetNuke plans to promote Telerik on its website, newsletter, and at future trade shows.

Here’s a list of features you’ll find with DotNetNuke’s Professional Edition 5.2:

- Enhanced Rich Text Editor - Based on the commercially successful RadEditor from Telerik, the new text editor offers features like Microsoft Word “clean” HTML, spell checking, HTML templates, image resizing and compression and more.

- Page Caching - Improves web site performance by serving cached pages from a location specified by the site administrator: memory, database, or disk.

- Module Caching - Stores module content in a centralized database for faster page loading without requiring web server processing.

- Security Center - Protects DotNetNuke Professional Edition users by dynamically loading lists of known security vulnerabilities affecting the current software version and provides navigational guidance to acquire the latest software updates.

Svetozar Georgiev, co-CEO at Telerik had this to say about the partnership, “We’re excited that Telerik RadControls has become part of the sophisticated DotNetNuke web content management system. Combining the RadControls toolset and developer rights with the DotNetNuke Professional Edition will make it possible for web site developers to easily access our powerful tools and create dynamic, interactive web applications.”

Along With Georgiev, Shaun Walker, Co-Founder of DotNetNuke provided this statement, “We are very pleased with the addition of Telerik RadControls to the DotNetNuke platform. Developers will benefit from the powerful tools for developing rich, client-side interfaces for web site visitors. Combined with the other new features in Professional Edition 5.2, this latest release should greatly benefit customers using DotNetNuke in business-critical applications.”

It sounds like the deal is going to benefit everyone involved. What remains to be seen is if the most important benefactors, the users, will truly receive a more highly enhanced experience. If the company’s reputations are anything to go by, I’d say ‘yes’.

Let’s start with a basic description.  According to the Orchard Project’s homepage, it’s “a free, open source, community-focused project aimed at delivering applications and reusable components on the ASP.NET platform.”

The official explanation then continued, “It will create shared components for building ASP.NET applications and extensions, and specific applications that leverage these components to meet the needs of end-users, scripters, and developers.  Additionally, we seek to create partnerships with existing application authors to help them achieve their goals.”

Sounds nice, right?  Services and products that simplify matters and help just about everybody are great in theory, at least.

And that takes us to making sure the Orchard Project is great in practice.  The Orchard Project team has published a feature roadmap, some developer information, and docs and designs/specs so that onlookers can educate themselves and offer constructive criticism.  Bug fixes, feature suggestions, and all other sorts of input are welcome, to boot.

What’s more, all of this feedback isn’t going to disappear into a black, did-they-ignore-me? hole.  Open community participation is the name of the game, and the Orchard Project team is trying to fine-tune a proper contribution model.

As for when a downloadable release of Orchard might become available, well, that’s where a little bit of patience is required.  It doesn’t look like there are going to be any big happenings in the near future.

Bertrand Le Roy, the project’s program manager, told Barb Mosher, “For the moment, we are focusing on three week iterations to deliver specific features.  When we will have something ready for public consumption depends on our ability to maintain our current velocity. . . .  At this point, we are very far from having something that you would reasonably build a public web site on and we’re not announcing a release date.”

DiscountASP.NET offers SQL 2008 Reporting Services as an optional add-on improvement.

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services supports a wide range of reporting needs, including ad-hoc reporting and Web-based reporting. SQL Reporting Services provides the ability to author a variety of richly formatted reports from different data sources. Reports are processed and can be offered through a variety of ways, including through subscriptions, access to a central report repository, or embedded into web applications.

“With the launch of SQL 2008 Reporting Services, we deliver a cost-effective enterprise reporting solution,” said Takeshi Eto, VP Marketing.

“Our customers have the ability to transform their data into meaningful and manageable reports to help them in their business decision making process.”

To support SQL 2008 Reporting Services, DiscountASP.NET introduces a SQL 2008 Reporting Services User Manager tool to their Control Panel, allowing customers to add/remove/manage additional SQL Reporting Services users in real-time.

Silverlight’s starting to become more and more common online - Microsoft’s baking it into Bing and all other sorts of stuff - so the juxtaposition of it and ASP.NET tends to elevate the web application framework.  Think of it as relevance by association.

As for the ASP.NET details, Infragistics stated in a press release, “The new WebHierarchicalDataGrid leverages the power of ASP.NET to deliver the best user experience available in any ASP.NET hierarchical grid. With high performance and flexibility, the new data grid is perfect for line of business applications scenarios featuring multiple child band, pay to play model, animations, load on demand and much more.”

Also, according to the company, “WebEditors, WebMonthCalendar, and WebDataPicker new controls as well as the enhanced controls in this release provide extraordinarily sophisticated functionality as demanded by the application.  Each control includes advanced capabilities such as CSS support and one setting global styling.”

It looks like NetAdvantage for .NET will cost around $1,200, or $1,700 for people who prefer to receive priority support.