Announcing release of ASP.NET and Web Tools 2013.1 for Visual Studio 2012

We have released ASP.NET and Web Tools 2013.1 for Visual Studio 2012. This release brings a ton of great improvements, and include some fantastic enhancements to ASP.NET MVC 5, Web API 2, Scaffolding and Entity Framework to users of Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web.

You can download and start using these features now.

Below are details on a few of the great improvements you can take advantage of with this release.  Please visithttp://asp.net/aspnet/overview/aspnet-and-visual-studio-2012/aspnet-and-web-tools-20131-for-visual-studio-2012 for additional release notes, documentation, and tutorials.

Round tripping

With this release of ASP.NET and Web Tools, it is now possible for developers using Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2013 to collaborate on an ASP.NET MVC 5 application. This release brings in key features such as support for ASP.NET Razor 3 editing which allows developers to use syntax highlighting and Intellisense when editing a Razor View in their MVC application. Developers can also be productive by using the new ASP.NET Scaffolding framework in Visual Studio 2012 in any type of web application project such as ASP.NET Web Forms, MVC, and Web API.

ASP.NET MVC 5 and Web API 2 Templates

You can now use MVC 5 or Web API 2 project templates to create an application. These project templates will install the necessary NuGet packages for MVC 5 and Web API 2.

You can also add MVC 5 and Web API 2 controllers or views using item templates.

To learn more about what’s new in MVC 5 please visit http://www.asp.net/visual-studio/overview/2013/release-notes#TOC10

To learn more about what’s new in Web API 2 please visit http://www.asp.net/visual-studio/overview/2013/release-notes#TOC11

ASP.NET Scaffolding

ASP.NET Scaffolding is a code generation framework for ASP.NET Web applications. In previous versions of Visual Studio, scaffolding was limited to running within ASP.NET MVC projects. Since the advent of "One ASP.NET" there is no specific ASP.NET MVC project type, as all projects are just ASP.NET projects. 

With this update, you can use MVC‘s scaffolding from within any ASP.NET project, including scaffolding MVC controllors within Web Forms apps. To learn more about what is new in Scaffolding, please visit http://www.asp.net/visual-studio/overview/2013/aspnet-scaffolding-overview

ASP.NET Razor Tooling

With this release you will also get great editor support for editing Razor views in MVC. This includes features such as syntax highlighting, Intellisense etc.

Entity Framework 6

When you Scaffold a MVC controller or Web API controller using Entity Framework, the controller will use Entity Framework 6 to generate code to perform CRUD actions on an entity. The controller also show cases some of the key features in Entity Framework 6 such as generating async actions. For more information on what’s new in Entity Framework please visithttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/data/jj574253

Bootstrap

When you Scaffold a MVC controller with Entity Framework and generate views for CRUD operations, the views use Bootstrap CSS framework to style the pages. Bootstrap is a responsive mobile first CSS framework that makes front end web development much easier. For more information on how to customize Bootstrap please visit http://www.asp.net/visual-studio/overview/2013/creating-web-projects-in-visual-studio#bootstrap.

NuGet 2.7

NuGet 2.7 includes a rich set of new features which are described in detail at NuGet 2.7 Release Notes.

This version of NuGet improves the experience around automatic package restore. When installing NuGet 2.7, users implicitly consent to automatically restoring missing packages. Users can explicitly opt out of package restoration through the NuGet settings in Visual Studio. This change simplifies how package restore works.

Summary

ASP.NET and Web Tools 2013.1 for Visual Studio 2012 enables developers to take advantage of the improvements in ASP.NET MVC 5, Web API 2, Scaffolding, and Entity Framework when using Visual Studio 2012. This release also makes it possible for developers to collaborate on MVC 5 or Web API 2 projects across Visual Studio 2012 and 2013.

Please download and start using this update now. If you want an offline installer then please goto http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41532