One ASP.NET in Visual Studio 2013

Many new features were announced for Visual Studio 2013 at the Build Conference in San Francisco with a lot of focus set on web development. The sessions presented by Scott Hanselman and Mads Kristensen were packed out with web developers wanting to get a sniff at what’s new. In this post, we will take a look at the New ASP.NET Web Application process and how it has been simplified for developers in Visual Studio 2013.

Remember this screen?

Microsoft received a lot of feedback from developers stating that the new web project screen was too cluttered. Now there is the concept of “one ASP.net” where only one project type is specified when creating a new web project.

The screenshot below shows what it looks like in Visual Studio 2013. Notice how there is only one ASP.NET Web Application project type available.

Developers now have the ability to add any framework to any project. Scaffolding now works across all frameworks to make it easier for developers to get started when building web applications.

Also notice how easy it is to add Web Forms, MVC, or Web API to your web application by ticking the boxes. The availability of these options depends on the web application template you have selected. Developers can also choose to add unit tests to any type of web application.

These changes provide a huge amount of freedom to developers who wish to mix and match what was previously thought of as “separate technologies” into a single and powerful ASP.NET web application.