The .NET Framework is a Microsoft offering and is intended to be used by most new applications created for the Windows platform. It includes a large library of coded solutions to common programming problems and a virtual machine that manages the execution of programs written specifically for the framework. Recently, ASP.NET preview version 4.0 was unveiled by Microsoft. The current stable release is 3.5. In this article we will tell you about a few new features and enhancements in ASP.NET 4.0

Please note that in order to work with ASP.NET 4.0, you are required to have Visual Studio 2010 installed on your computer. You can download Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate (With ASP.NET 4.0) from this link.

Here is a listing of the new features and enhancements in ASP.NET 4.0:

• State Management Improvements including improvements to ViewState, Session and Cache

• Enhancements to ASP.NET Data Presentation Controls

• Enhanced Support for Performance Monitoring

• Enhanced control over ControlIDs of Controls

• Support for Routing

• Search Engine Optimization (for IIS & Dot Net) Enhancements

• Simplification of Web.Config file

• State Management Improvements

Thanks to the much needed improvements in Cache, Session and ViewState in ASP.NET 4.0, you can now store data in any of the following cache storages:

Disk-based output caches – To store cache data in disk
Custom object caches – To store cache data using custom cache providers
Distributed object caches – To store cache data in a separate server
Cloud-based object caches – To store cache data in cloud databases

Using ASP.NET 4.0 Cache API you can design and implement your custom cache storage provider easily in your application's web.config file. For example:

type="MyDiskCacheProvider.OutputCacheEx.DiskOutputCacheProvider,MyDiskCacheProvider"/>

There is also notable improvement in View states as stated in a CIOL Blog Post:

There has also been a marked improvement in ViewState in ASP.NET 4.0. You can now use the ViewStateMode property - a new property introduced for all controls in ASP.NET 4.0, to determine whether or not ViewState should be enabled for a particular control in your webform. This gives your better control and flexibility on the ViewState as the EnableViewState property introduced in the earlier versions of ASP.NET resulted in inconsistent behavior of the ViewState.