ASP.NET MVC 2 is now available for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express with ASP.NET 3.5. You can download and install it from the following locations:

• Download ASP.NET MVC 2 using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer
• Download ASP.NET MVC 2 from the Download Center

The final release of Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 will have ASP.NET MVC 2 built-in – so you won’t need an additional install in order to use ASP.NET MVC 2 with them.

Some of the new features and capabilities include:

• New Strongly Typed HTML Helpers
• Enhanced Model Validation support across both server and client
• Auto-Scaffold UI Helpers with Template Customization
• Support for splitting up large applications into “Areas”
• Asynchronous Controllers support that enables long running tasks in parallel
• Support for rendering sub-sections of a page/site using Html.RenderAction
• Lots of new helper functions, utilities, and API enhancements
• Improved Visual Studio tooling support

For more information, see ASP.NET MVC 2 Released.

Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation

Special thanks to Scott Guthrie.