This has been an exciting start of the year for web developers. Several products were launched for the Microsoft Web technology stack .. very cool & exciting ways to do the web better. Check out this post from the Gu (here) on a recap of all the new products launched & also for some hands-on.

So, about two weeks back, I did a couple of sessions for my Sogeti colleagues & client on what’s new in ASP.NET MVC3 & WebMatrix. There was great audience participation during the demos, indicating how nice & fun web development is shaping up to be with the MVC paradigm and the new tools.

We covered topics as follows:

• State of the ASP.NET world
• MVC3 Intro
• Razor View Engine & its syntax
• What’s new in Models, Views & Controllers
• ViewBag & HTML Helpers
• Layouts & convention over configuration
• Action Filters & Caching
• Server, client & remote validations
• Unobstrusive Javascript
• Nugets
• Introduction to WebMatrix & uses
• Templates & Open Source integration
• SEO & ease of publishing
• Blogging with social media integration

The slide-deck is available (here). Also, MIX11 happened last week where several exciting enhancements were released for the next web. Most noticeable among them being the IE10 preview, HTML5 goodness & EF .. topics for some other day may be.

Adios!