Top ASP 101 Stories Migrating to ASP.NET Getting Scripts to Run on a Schedule The Top 10 ASP Links @ Microsoft.com QUICK TIP: Avoid unnecessary window switching Show All Tips >>

ASP.NET Beta 2 Available For Download!

Download Beta 2

Without any further delay here are the links:

The Announcement

Here's a copy of the email announcing the release sent by Scott Guthrie to the ASP community mailing list run by asplists.com @ Tue 6/19/2001 12:33 AM:

I’m pleased to announce the public availability of ASP.NET Beta 2. It can be downloaded immediately from http://www.asp.net. Total size is only 18MB – making it ideal for web download. It will install and run on Windows 2000 and Windows XP (both workstation and server additions).

Beta2 is a major milestone in the ASP.NET project. It contains all of the features planned for V1, and meets an extremely high quality bar – one that we feel confident will support production deployments of .NET Web applications.

A host of large scale applications have already gone live on ASP.NET Beta 2 (we specifically waited to release Beta2 until all the production bugs they found were fixed) and the list of these applications will continue to grow over the summer. Visit the sites below to see ASP.NET Beta 2 in action today:

-- MSN Music: http://music.msn.com
-- Office Update: http://office.microsoft.com
-- UDDI: http://uddi.microsoft.com
-- MSN Yellow Pages: http://yellowpages.msn.com

With Beta2 we will be supporting the "ASP.NET Go Live" license – which will specifically permit customers to use the beta to launch production applications. We expect this summer to be a fun period of web development as more and more ASP.NET sites appear across the web.

On behalf of the entire ASP.NET Team, I’d like to thank you for your continued effort and support of ASP.NET. It is really exciting for us on the product team to see all of the interest and activity around the beta today. We can’t wait to see it grow even more as we complete the push to RTM.

Happy Coding,
-- Scott

P.S. A few additional Beta 2 Notes:

-- Before installing Beta 2 please make sure to remove Beta 1 from your machine. If you have the .NET Framework SDK Beta1 installed you can accomplish this simply by running the uninstall program (within Add/Remove Programs). If you have VS.NET Beta1 installed you will unfortunately need to re-install your drive partition.

-- The 18MB download available at www.asp.net does not ship with local documentation or samples (it instead creates an “ASP.NET” start menu that links off to online versions of these). To obtain local documentation and samples please install the .NET Framework SDK (127MB download).

-- Beta 2 contains a large number of breaking changes from Beta 1. You will almost certainly need to update existing Beta1 code to work on the latest bits. Our plan is for Beta 2 to contain the final APIs for the product – as such you should not need to make such major changes again for RTM.

-- The developer solution application site at http://www.IBuySpy.com has been updated for Beta2. Tonight only the IBuySpy Store is available for download – Beta 2 of the IBuySpy Portal will appear later this week.

My 2 Cents

First the good... the download is now only 19MB if you just want ASP.NET as opposed to Beta 1 where it was over 120 MB. The install is pretty simple... just be sure you pull off Beta 1 if you had it installed.

Now the bad... the small download doesn't contain the docs... for those you'll need to get the full SDK. The support for NT4/IIS4 seems to have been pulled since it says the download will only work on 2000/XP. As of yet I am unsure if this is just for the Beta and will be reinstated for release or if it's out for good. (Looks like it's out for good!) And the last ugly bit is that most, if not all, of your Beta 1 code won't work anymore.

Stay tuned for more ASP.NET info and updated versions of our .NET samples.