Scott Guthrie announced today that they've released the Preview 3 build of the ASP.NET MVC framework.  This new build includes features not included in last month's build including Visual Studio tool integration and documentation plus some enhancements/refinements.

Read the entire article

Download an integrated ASP.NET MVC Preview setup package here.

Download the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 framework source code and framework unit tests here.

Most people concerned about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) know that search engines use the links on your pages to travel the depths of your site for content.  So how does a LinkButton fit into this strategy?  Take a look:

<asp:LinkButton ID="lbtnAbout" runat="server" PostBackUrl="~/About.aspx">About</asp:LinkButton> 

This tag renders like this:

<a id="lbtnAbout" href="javascript:WebForm_DoPostBackWithOptions(new WebForm_PostBackOptions(&quot;lbtnAbout&quot;, &quot;&quot;, false, &quot;&quot;, &quot;About.aspx&quot;, false, true))">About</a> 

Notice that the link is actually a JavaScript call.  At most, the search engine will extract the title of the hyperlink and include it as part of the body, but it won't touch the javascript.  What does this mean?  It means that the link is essentially invisible to search engines.  When thinking in terms of SEO this is BAD.

I won't argue that there won't ever be uses for LinkButtons (like when you need to execute server-side code on the postback), but if you're optimizing for SEO then it may make sense to just use a regular hyperlink, when possible.

In what areas does Google look for keywords?  There are 3 documented areas; URL, Title, and the body of your content.  How does Google find the keywords in URLs?  Does the order of the keywords matter?  Rob Howard answers these questions and more in his post SEO & ASP.NET: Put keywords in the URL.  If you're at all interested in SEO I recommend taking a look.  I haven't read the entire series yet but it appears to be extremely informative and an easy read.

I've recently discovered Matt Berseth's blog and can say, quite honestly, that it is full of excellent posts including this one which shows a bunch of very cool themes with which you can style the TabContainer control in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.  Be sure to check out the live gallery while you're there too.

I noticed on Scott Guthrie's blog that the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Service Pack Beta have been released into the wild.  This beta brings about a whole slew of bug fixes and throws in some performance improvements for good measure. 

The beta can be downloaded from here.

Before I talk about the features in this service pack I wanted to raise a little awareness about a potential issue with the install.  I noticed in the comments to Scott's post a few issues with installations.  Apparently, if you you have previously installed some other beta stuff, such as Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio, you want to be sure to uninstall that stuff before installing the service pack.  I've also read that the install is a long one.

This service pack is not just bug fixes, it contains several new items of note.  I'm just going to summarize since you can read the details on Scott Guthrie's blog.

First, in web development:

• ASP.NET Data Scaffolding Support (ASP.NET Dynamic Data)
• ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing)
• ASP.NET AJAX Back/Forward Button History Support
• ASP.NET AJAX Script Combining Support
• Visual Studio 2008 Performance Improvements in the HTML Designer and HTML Source Editor
• Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Script Formatting and Code Preferences
• Better Visual Studio JavaScript Intellisense for Multiple JavaScript/AJAX Frameworks
• Visual Studio Refactoring Support for WCF Services in ASP.NET Projects
• Visual Studio Support for Classic ASP Intellisense and Debugging
• Visual Web Developer Express Edition support for Class Library and Web Application Projects

Client Development:

• Application Startup and Working Set Performance Improvements
• New .NET Framework Client Profile Setup Package
• New .NET Framework Setup Bootstrapper for Client Applications
• ClickOnce Client Application Deployment Improvements
• New Windows Forms Controls (vector shapes, printing, and DataRepeater controls)
• WPF Performance Improvements
• WPF Data Improvements
• WPF Extensible Shader Effects
• WPF Interoperability with Direct3D
• Several VS 2008 for WPF Improvements

Data Development

• SQL 2008 Support
• ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities
• ADO.NET Data Services (formerly code-named "Astoria")
• WCF Development Improvements

There are also a few VB, C# and Team Foundation Server improvements.  Overall it appears to be a fairly comprehensive service pack with loads of goodies.  I haven't really messed with Silverlight yet and don't plan to until 2.0 is released, so for this service pack I'm particularly interested in the new ASP.NET Routing Engine and the ASP.NET Script Combining support.  Of course, all performance improvements are always welcome, too.