Web Platform and Tools Product Management-- who we are, what we do now, and a place for you to tell us what to do

Article
05/12/2006

A lot has changed over the last five months for me and I wanted to tell let you all know, my reading faithful what has been going on. Then, I want to ask you to provide us with feedback about what you want us to do to make your lives easier for the next twelve months. We are in the middle of FY07 planning (Microsoft fiscal year runs July 1àJune 30^th) where we make all of our budgeting plans and tactics for the year.

In November, I took on a new role here at Microsoft. It wasn’t a big change, but instead of just being the Product Manager for ASP.NET, VWD and “Atlas,” I took on a broader team that I affectionately call Web Platform and Tools Product Management. It is probably a bit of a misnomer, but our groups charter is to ensure that Web Developers have the best possible experience building and delivering applications of all types on the Web using Microsoft technology or the Microsoft Web Platform. This includes product management for:

And a handful of other incubation efforts related to the Web like dynamic languages, web community, etc.

As of today, my team consists of:

Keith Smith (ASP.NET, Web Tools, and “Atlas”)

Sanjoy Sarkar (ASP.NET breadth community and outreach)

Eric Woersching (IIS and Shared Hosting) [he’ll be starting a blog soon is my guess J]

TBH (Commerce Server)

TBH (Internet Explorer) [I need to write the JD still and open the req, let me know if you are interestedJ]

Over the past year we’ve been responsible for delivering a lot of great content and resources that we see you all using on a regular basis including the CSS Adapters, How Do I Videos, learn2asp.net, provider toolkit, ASP v ASP.NET Comparisons (just soft-launched), ASP v ASP.NET Productivity Study (new too!), the ASP.NET 2.0 Starter Kits, all our community efforts (www.asp.net, atlas.asp.net, etc.), a bunch of IIS related stuff that you will be seeing come online with Vista Beta 2 (very very soon!), lots of whitepaper content on MSDN, the ASP.NET Design Templates and a whole bunch more.

But the big QUESTION for you all is what else do you want? What else do you need? I want to hear it all, product feedback, content feedback, materials for your boss, friends, developer materials, everything. No holds barred, your feedback will help me prioritize some of my team’s efforts and spend for FY07. Tell everyone you know – keep the feedback coming.

Some things we are looking at already are:

Extending the CSS Adapters

Formalizing the ASP.NET design center

Tons of “Atlas” related resources

Comments

Anonymous
May 12, 2006
My wish list:
-Provide a starter community site that utilizes the masterpage, themes, and security model for asp.net 2.0. It would also be great if it utilzed Atlas.
-Provide a control for creating a simple bar graph using the asp.net 2.0 dataproviders. Nothing fancy to upset the charter folks, just something to play with. $600+ for a charting tool for a simple 2d bar graph is a bit much for the hobbyist.
-Work on the Mobile Web Development tools and provide way more help, webcasts, and walkthroughs for this technology.
-Keep up the great work with Atlas, and come out with a release version with an indepth webcast. Possibly in combination with the Community Starter Kit mentioned earlier.
Thanks for all the great work. Without asp.net 2.0 I would not be able to write datacentric site with membership. Keep up the great work!
T
Anonymous
May 12, 2006
Hello,

WAT ( Web Amin Tool ) is the most preferred tool for managing all online activities for memberships and providers. It currently supports only offline, it should be made possible for supporting online also. This is the most required tool.

Profiles provider should be incorporated within WAT, in some way.

More starterkits, with CSS/ATLAS support with detailed white papers is a must at this stage. More details on Web Designer ( Expression Tools ) should be provided and atleast few Starterkits that works with Beta version of Web Designer should be given to the community. This will help to know more about web designer with live working examples.

After all, WEB DESIGNER is everyones dream for the future.

Thanks

Thanks
Anonymous
May 13, 2006
Thanks for the blog.

I don't know how much control you have over the integration of unit testing within the products - but I was/is HIGHLY disapointed that unit testing integration was only included in the team visual studio products.

This sends the wrong message.

I hope you are able to have the vision to see that unit testing should be a part of ALL the VS products lines and not just a 'team' functionality.
Anonymous
May 13, 2006
Position and its instant communication to others will be all pervasive if you wish ubliquitous...just like time is...and just like time governs the present life of ordinary citizens, so will the position and its instant communication to others.

- So, i need native localization library to query radio-navigation systems (GPS and Galileo, interoperability scheduled between the two... see egnos signals too)...

- Merge Microsoft Live strategies (Live.com ...) with mahups, gadgets, Atlas framework...

- Hosting services from Microsoft (IIS/SQL/ASP.NET 2.0/Atlas...)

-Think about xForms implementation (W3C Recommendation) and work with W3C on its Mobile Web Initiative...

- apart from that, i like the scottt40 wish list:-)

christophe from France ...my english is so bad;-)
Anonymous
May 13, 2006
Position and its instant communication to others will be all pervasive if you wish ubliquitous...just like time is...and just like time governs the present life of ordinary citizens, so will the position and its instant communication to others.

- So, i need native localization library to query radio-navigation systems (GPS and Galileo, interoperability scheduled between the two... see egnos signals too)...

- Merge Microsoft Live strategies (Live.com ...) with mahups, gadgets, Atlas framework...

- Hosting services from Microsoft (IIS/SQL/ASP.NET 2.0/Atlas...)

-Think about xForms implementation (W3C Recommendation) and work with W3C on its Mobile Web Initiative...

- apart from that, i like the scottt40 wish list:-)

christophe from France ...my english is so bad;-)
Anonymous
May 13, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 14, 2006
I second the "More info on Mobile Web Developement Tools" info.

Keep the Starter kits coming, as well as examples of how to extend them.

I don't think I personally could ask for much more as I already feel like I'm drinking from the firehose.
Anonymous
May 15, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 15, 2006
This is great feedback and ideas -- keep it coming.. we are documenting :)
Anonymous
May 15, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 15, 2006
My big thing at the moment is more Atlas -- more docs, more examples, more real-world scenarios and solutions. This would be particularly useful for the Control Toolkit.
Anonymous
May 16, 2006
I played with the latest beta of the Expression Web Designer. Looks like FrontPage. It does not add anything comparing with Visual Studio 2005, 99% overlap, just uses templates instead of master pages and themes. I don’t understand how it is better than what we have now, and don’t see a way and a point in combining templates with master pages/themes. Do you really need to create another incompatible tool for web development?
Anonymous
May 16, 2006
Regarding Atlas: the most important thing – reliability in real world, not cool features. I don’t need anything out of it if it breaks in some scenarios/browsers.
Anonymous
May 16, 2006
Aleksey, Expression Web Designer is aimed at the professional design market, not Visual Studio users so even if there is overlap, of which there will of course be some, designers do not ordinarily use Visual Studio. Having said that, EWD has many additional capabilities in the area of visual CSS design that designers will love.
Templates, as it dynamic web templates and master pages are two alternative methods of designing sites. "Incompatible tool for web development" - on the contrary, EWD is very compatible with all the modern web standards that people strive to adhere to...
Anonymous
May 17, 2006
Hi Brian,

I have been reading your blog for a while now -- my company is concerned about the "stability" of the new ASP.NET 2.0 platform. We are currently developing 1.1 apps -- I would like to see some "material for the boss" or "material for the company" probably more case-studies, and probably a "ASP.NET 1.1 and ASP.NET 2.0 Productivity Study", more starter kits and more Design templates.
Anonymous
May 18, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2006
Parag:

The Web Development Tools team (which owns Visual Web Developer and WAT) is investigating its plans for WAT for the next release of Visual Studio. Due to security issues, the ASP.NET 2.0/VS2005 version of WAT is for local development only. Furthermore, most hosters provide their own control panels for manipulating and configuring deployed Web applications.

You will definitely see and hear more from us regarding Expression Web Designer and Visual Studio 2005 workflow including tutorials and how-to videos.
Anonymous
May 18, 2006
Steve,

I understand your disappointment and frustration with the business decision to use the unit testing functionality to differentiate the lower-end editions of Visual Studio from the upper-end. The unit testing features are awesome and anyone serious about Web sites with maintainable quality or using test-driven development would definitely benefit whether doing team development or as a single-person shop.

While the integrated unit testing generators, designers and reporting are currently only available in the "Visual Studio Team Edition for Testers" and "Visual Studio Team Suite" products, there is nothing precluding an enterprising developer from writing unit tests manually with the other VS products. It's not integrated, true, but it is possible with a little effort.
Anonymous
May 18, 2006
genium:

I'm not sure I follow your request for a GPS localization library and how it relates to Microsoft's web platform. Are you requesting a .NET API?

Windows & Office Live are platforms that can and do benefit from technologies and frameworks like mash-ups, Gadgets and Atlas. At MIX we showed how easy it is to build a Microsoft Gadget with Atlas that can be hosted on http://www.live.com. http://www.live.com itself is a mash-up that uses the Atlas client script core. Another site you may find interesting is http://preview.local.live.com/ which also uses Atlas at its core.

Microsoft has been working with many of our hosting partners to make web hosting using our platform simple and cost-effective. Check out http://asp.net/Hosters/ for more information.

Thanks,
Keith
Anonymous
May 18, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2006
Jeffrey McManus:

More Atlas goodies is at the top of my list for our FY07 planning. You can expect new samples, new docs, new tutorials, new videos and more controls courtesy of the Atlas Control Toolkit.

The engineering team is focused on getting Atlas into your hands as quickly as possible and we product managers will do everything we can to make it easier for new and existing ASP.NET developers to learn how to Atlas-enable their sites.
Anonymous
May 18, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
May 18, 2006

Fix ObjectDataSource to properly support object resurection from (e.g. instead of always doing an Activator.CreateInstance) when using DataObjectType.

2) CSS Adapters for GridView, DetailsView, FormView, and WebParts.

3) Atlas Control Toolkit updates for Validator extenders, Formatted input extenders.

4) Make www.asp.net source (the site itself) downloadable.

Anonymous
May 21, 2006
Please give an option in the current web application (not the one ScottGu has put out) project to be prompted to add files to a project rather than just add whatever is in the folder. Include this ability in the publish.

I have a folder - ie. Uploads - I don't want that folder and it's underlying content in my VS 2005 project (and also it get's put in VSS) automatically. Additionally, this renders the 'publish' feature null and void because if I publish that folder then I'll be overwriting uploads on my production website.

(I don't goto ScottGu's new project solution because I still want to deploy on a per file basis rather than an entire dll, etc...)
----
I've sent an email regarding the testing request earlier. I'm still miffed that I have a PROFESSIONAL version of VS 2005 that doesn't include the testing features. TDD isn't just for enterprise developers - it is something used by ALL developers. Again, I'm very annoyed by this decision, as it shows the team is out of touch with what developers are doing.
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Continue to provide development support for you applications within VS 2005. I see MCMS and other products are featuring this. I just did a Sharepoint 2003 setup for a customer and I was majorly disapointed that Frontpage was the product and the so called templates for the SPP. What a disaster - I've never seen such mangled html in my life! I pray that Sharepoint 2007 will be a totally different application that doesn't require or even mention the words Sharepoint or Expression.
----
Speaking of Expression - just add the CSS capability to VS 2005. This is where VS 2005 should be at. Stop adding inline styles. When I select some text and make it bold - add it to a CSS not to the html (I know I'm lazy, but it's all the extra steps that use up all the customer's money to have me there). Don't make inline styles the default. Prompt the user "what external css file would you like" and write all styles into that file by DEFAULT!
----
Speaking of CSS - this new release of CSS adapters : are there any better tutorials out there?
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Atlas - I love it. Great stuff. The Atlas Control Toolkit - well, it's ok - it's a start. But can we get some controls that would work for those of us building real applications? ie. I'd love to see a masked textbox in my Atlas toolkit.
----
Validation controls: Great start, but I hope to see more advanced validation controls. First off - the checkboxlist needs a validator that works for senario's like 'confirmation that 2 out of the 5 were checked'. Saying a custom validator doesn't work with checkboxlist when you fire up the page to test it (it let's you put a checkboxlist control in the validatecontrol property but then throws an error when you fire up the page) is a problem. I thought the whole point of custom validator was to put your own validation - why would it care if you pointed it to a checkboxlist? This makes it more difficult to write the javascript function that uses args and source. Speaking of which - a more complex custom validator that let you assign multiple controls and had a signature of source[] array in javascript would allow a much richer validator without writing a ton of extra javascript.
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Did I say Atlas was great? :) The update panels. Although, I still don't know why a 'update progress' control can't be assigned to an update panel. ie. If I have multiple panels on a page, not all of them get the 'Please wait...searching....' just the search part.
Please include a drop panel object that fires an event on drop with an event to be handled. Would be really nice to have drag and drop built into the Treeview.
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Speaking of Treeview - can we have the Treeview, menu, etc... bind to an objectdatasource and not just an xmldatasource? I don't put stuff in xml files - the database is better for me.
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Please separate the table adapter from the actual entity object in a dataset. My snobbish developer friends cringe when they see me referencing the dataset this way.
Don't get me wrong - I love the ability to drag a stored proc from my sql window to the dataset and have it generate all that code (I smile even more when I drag the gridview on the page and use an objectdatasource to point to the table adapter - beautiful). I just ask that you let me separate it into the correct layers. I like the partial classes to inject my business logic into the adapter calls.

Speaking of which - it would be nice to have functions in there that don't goto a data source. Perhaps instead tell it to point to a List<> instead of a data source ?
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Not sure if IIS 7 has this - but I need a way to 'export' a website or virtual directory out of one instance of IIS into another. This would be far better than trying to duplicate all the security, etc.. when I need to move a project from one IIS on a server to another. Especially if I have developed my code on a VM instance.
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Give an option on VS 2005 and VSS so that when another developer pulls down the project, instead of locking the referenced dll's from projects in the solution instead they aren't included. When someone pulls the solution from source safe - VS tries to checkout the referenced dll's rather than see that when the developer builds the project it needs to built it - not pull it from sourcesafe. (I think this problem stems from the problem I have above).
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Lastly - put some focus on building good Business objects rather than concentrate so much on just UI stuff. Perhaps some ORM tools, as well as little things like generating getters and setters properties by selecting a group of private member variables. There is so much in this area of development that VS could help provide.
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Glad to see the team is taking feedback on this stuff - I think it's important - I like how ScottGu operates - and the way the team is releasing CTP's for items like Atlas really help keep the community engaged. Also - keep posting the 'how to' video's.
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Web Platform and Tools Product Management-- who we are, what we do now, and a place for you to tell us what to do

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