Scott Hanselman

New ASP.NET website launched

December 02, 2011 Comment on this post [39] Posted in ASP.NET | ASP.NET MVC | Microsoft | MSDN
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A few weeks ago we introduced a beta of a freshly designed http://asp.net website. Today we launched it. Jon, myself, and the team that manages the site took lots of your feedback (lots from the comments of the Beta Blog Post) and did our best to incorporate as much as we could. This is just the start, and we've got lots of plans for the future including responsive design, more text content, localization, more HTML 5, HD Video, closed captioning and lots more.

It is a big site with thousands and thousands of pages. However, a lot of those pages were hard to find. We're continuing to try to get folks what they need in fewer clicks.

There's new content for people getting started, including "choosing a technology" videos, the Big Green Button remains with a new download video as well as quick download links for the stuff you're always searching for.

Each top level page (Web Pages, Web Forms, MVC) has a 5 minute app building video and lots more getting stated content. You asked for more text tutorials and we heard you. In-depth tutorials on deployment, working with the Entity Framework, suggested open source projects to check out for each, books, samples, and more. And, you can always find out about the next version of ASP.NET at http://asp.net/vnext.

The new ASP.NET Navigation

The home page header is smaller, per your feedback, making room for more Daily Community Spotlight content as well as pinned announcements. There's a cleaned up Community page with easy to access RSS feeds, a quick navigator and lots more fresh community content packed onto the page. Tutorials are more organized like a living book now and are easier to follow. Tutorials can now appear as multi-part tutorials with better navigation. Forums got a nice facelift, as did the Wiki, and Weblogs. Each technology also includes a great free video course from Pluralsight. Feedback is always appreciated.

Example Nerddinner Tutorial with Multi-part article navigation at right

Videos are larger, video downloads are simpler and links with table of contents are everywhere. All those videos you never could find actually do exist.

New video page includes more information and makes better use of space

The site is still powered by the Open Source CMS Umbraco and we're very happy with it. Jon Galloway worked tirelessly on this new site launch along with TerriM, ScottHu, SridharM, Samir and lots of other folks smarter than I. Jon digs into the new layout and "information architecture" over on his blog so check that out for more details on our thinking.

yslow on aspnetAlso as a part of this process we've gotten the http://facebook.com/aspnet and http://twitter.com/aspnet accounts up and firing on all cylinders. Join us on your favorite social network or subscribe in your favorite reader and we''ll make sure all the fresh Jon Galloway-curated spotlight content is delivered to you as we get it.

I'm also pretty proud of how we're doing in YSlow. The perf on the site is great. The home page is under 100 lines of HTML5, the markup is clean, and we're aiming for similar results in other parts of the site. Soon we'll make the ASP.NET site's personal CDN cookieless and have straight "A's" on YSlow, which is no small feat.

We realize that the #1 piece of feedback from you all is that you don't like the ads. At this point, that's out of my hands, but I'm working with the team on providing less distracting and more reasonably designed ads. Most of the ads are for hosting or controls, and the vendors that get ads are happy with being on the site. We're also working with the bosses on how to ensure that the site is funded appropriately. You don't have to tell me...I get it. Feel free to vote on the ASP.NET User Voice site.

It's never finished, but it's getting there. We're really happy with the improved performance, better navigation, fresher and more relevant content. We've got more in store, so stay tuned.

Hope you like it.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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December 02, 2011 12:37
Sweeet
December 02, 2011 13:59
Straight A's, teachers pet!
December 02, 2011 14:42
Nice job!
+5 for speeding it up.
December 02, 2011 15:30
I had a blog on weblogs.asp.net for 8 years before moving a couple months back to WordPress.

It's nice that you're investing time into the main ASP.NET page, but the fact that the weblogs are running on the VERY old and horrible (even for when it was installed) Community Server 2007 means that the weblogs.asp.net community is not getting the oxygen supply it so desperately needed.

Now I'm convinced moving my weblog off of the weblogs.asp.net hosting was a good idea. It was nice while it lasted. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
December 02, 2011 15:55
Looking very clean. When will release Microsoft new version of visual studio and .net 4.5?

December 02, 2011 16:53
Mind blowing. The new site is freakin fast! Great work!
December 02, 2011 17:00
Last time the ASP .NET page was changed there was a post on the forums "Where did the learn page go?" which has all the new links to the old content.

Is this old (new) content still available and are links going to be posted?
Joe
December 02, 2011 18:10
Who is "ScottHu"?
December 02, 2011 20:33
Looks pretty snazzy! Great work!

@Scott Scowden, ScottHu is Scott Hunter.
December 02, 2011 20:34
This looks and flows really well - be looking forward to the lessons learned. Great job and thanks

Is ScottHu the ScottGu v1.1?
December 02, 2011 21:27
Definitely a big improvement. Especially nice to see the focus on clean markup and performance optimization.

Now, figure out some way to cut down on the ads, at least on the front page.
December 02, 2011 22:08
Cool, thanks.
December 02, 2011 23:24
An excellent revamp. The performance is quite noticeable too. Big thanks to you and your team.
December 03, 2011 0:05
Why does http://aspnet.uservoice.com/forums/ only support FB and Google logins?
December 03, 2011 0:39
I couldn't care less about ads, nor that you chose Umbraco as the CMS. What I would like to see is a blog post on how it was working with Umbraco. What is custom, what is from the community packages. Do you use Courier for deployment, etc etc. And congratulations.
Nick
December 03, 2011 1:48
Glad you are working on doing something about the ads but yeah, beside that it looks great.
December 03, 2011 10:13
Nice look!!!
one thing, When I submit another thread link(say http://forums.asp.net/t/1745880.aspx/...) in asp.net forum answer, it takes wrong relative path.

December 03, 2011 12:50
I loved it. But without ads, it will be more cool i think.
December 03, 2011 14:28
I'm not entirely clear on whether or not this is an issue for MSDN or asp.net or what the distinction is when it comes to this sort of thing, but I find it really frustrating that if I search for something like "razor helper" there is no obviously authoritative documentation link in the results. Maybe I'm missing something?
December 03, 2011 22:28
Clearer and more useful than ever. TEN POINTS
December 05, 2011 0:03
Wow! I've been a ASP.NET developer for a few years. But until now I've never spend more time on ASP.net's site than I absolutely needed to - usually just for downloads and the odd video.

The new site is a pleasure to browse! Further it's a great example of a content hierarchy done well.

Plus, the HD videos kick ass!

Well done guys! Keep up the good work!

Matt
December 05, 2011 2:33
Scott,

Nice job on the new web site. Especially, finding contents are so much easier now. On the other hand, I am still seeing no use of tagging system on the asp.net forums. I opened up a thread for this as well:

http://forums.asp.net/t/1733930.aspx/1?What+is+the+point+of+tags+here+

Maybe the problem is me here. Who knows.
December 05, 2011 3:09
Way to go on the performance. I know it's hard to get there.
December 05, 2011 6:42
Nice to experience the responsiveness of the new ASP.Net site.
December 05, 2011 15:35
Love the new site, I don't know why everyone complains about the ads, they are not an issue for me. They are relevant and a good way to keep in the loop on controls and services related to asp.net.
December 05, 2011 17:01
Nice work! I have found the content at the ASP.NET site invaluable as I transition into the web realm.

It's a shame folks have become so conditioned by the "free" web that they would complain about some relevant and well-placed advertising on a site like the ASP.NET site. It seems people want fast, unlimited hosting, professional site design, and 100% backward compatibility, perfect uptime record, and primium content for free.

Ad serving is an effective way to defray some of the costs associated with all of the above, and people should either pony up some of their own hard-earned cash to access such resources, or simply appreciate the ad-funded model which allows such sites to remain high-quality.

Of course, the key words, from my first paragraph, are "Relevant" and "Well-placed".
December 05, 2011 22:25
Cool stuff.

You guys should add KnockoutJS to the open source projects list.
December 06, 2011 13:55
The new look is definitely outstanding. It's more organized - just the way I like it. Great job, man!

December 06, 2011 23:39
I'm curious how the multiple navigation elements are handled on the new Asp.net site. Is this a function of the Umbraco CMS?

I'm referring both to the top navigation bar (Home, Get Started, Downloads, etc.), the sub navigation bar (that displays when Web Pages, Web Forms, or MVC are selected in the top navigation bar), the bread crumb that appears on all pages other than Home, and the side navigation bar (usually titled "Chapters") that appears when many sections are selected (MVC -> Tutorials, for example).

I've been struggling to find a good solution for site navigation controls with MVC. I'm currently using the ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider, but I suspect I'll need to move to something that offers collapsing and expansion of sections, or separate, multiple level navigation controls (like the new ASP.NET site) as the site grows and I run out of room to display a menu in a legible font size.

Does anyone have any navigation control suggestions for MVC based sites? It would need to support areas, which I make use of, visually indicate which item is currently selected, and support either multiple controls to indicate a hierarchy (main and sub navigation) or expansion/contraction of sections. Not really a tree view control, but only showing the child nodes of a node when that parent node is selected.
December 07, 2011 17:37
I just wanna give my feedback. The header background really sucks (far from modern designs with textures and soft patters). Also I think adding a little bit of CSS3 new features won't be bad. After all, http://asp.net should represent Microsoft's web platform.
December 14, 2011 15:08
can any one tell me how to copy desig of one page to another
December 14, 2011 15:28
in asp.net only the design should be copy

on selecting a spefic button the details of that button comes rest of the content of the page is same
December 14, 2011 20:01
All good, but on your 404 page you have a broken link to "Contact us" :)
(http://www.asp.net/contact-us doesn't work for me)
December 16, 2011 12:35
-> http://validator.w3.org/ -> http://www.asp.net/
x
December 18, 2011 18:29
Goood Job Teams
December 19, 2011 8:15
Hi,

I found one strange thing in Home page of ASP.net site.

Sometime article not listed on first page for that date. After two days suddenly two article get published with one for currentdate and one for day before that.

I might be wrong but i found this thing since new website launch ( in Beta as well).

BTW.. New site looks nice compare to older one.

With Regards.
December 19, 2011 14:48
Wonderful design.. keep it up
December 31, 2011 0:55
congrats
December 31, 2011 1:46
New site looks awesome great jobs guys!!!

Comments are closed.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.