. NET 4 new features: tables, SEO, and extensible output caching

Chart control

Microsoft provides developers with a large number of free downloadable chart controls that can be used in. NET 3.5 asp.net or WinForms projects. To use these controls in Visual Studio 2008, you will need to install a plug-in that provides the VS toolbox and intelligent integration features. Now that these controls are integrated into. NET 4.0, there is no need to download additional plug-ins. Samples environment for MS Chart controls provide examples of how these controls are used.

asp.net 4 SEO

Microsoft has released an SEO toolkit and integrated it into IIS 7, which can be run in Iismanager. In addition to creating site maps and map indexes, the toolset is able to analyze the site from an SEO perspective and generate a report when an SEO rule violation occurs: Create an error description and give further improvement tips. The rules are: duplicate files, duplicate headings, no content, too much content, and so on. The toolset analyzes the site from a performance perspective, identifying pages that are slow to run or that can access many resources. We can also extend the toolset by adding custom rules.

Although the SEO Toolkit needs to run on IIS Manager, there is no need to install anything else on the server. In addition, it can analyze all Web servers on all operating systems.

Scott Guthrie summarizes the new features of ASP.net 4, which can further enhance SEO, as follows:

· Page.metakeywords and Page.metadescription

· asp.net Web forms URL Routing Support

· Response.redirectpermanent ()

We can programmatically set the site's keywords and descriptions through the Metakeywords and Metadescription properties of the page class. Guthrie illustrates the significance of doing so:

Asp.net4 server-side controls use them when outputting portions of the page, which is useful for sites that use a master page-partly in the. master file, which is independent of the. aspx file that contains the specific page content. You can now set new Metakeywords and Metadescription properties in the. aspx page and automatically generate their values from controls in the master page.

The URL routing converts an external URL to an internal. In this way, sites can expose SEO-friendly URLs, but they can use different links internally. This is useful for legacy sites.

We should use the Response.redirectpermanent () method rather than the Response.Redirect (), because the latter generates a temporary redirect, which causes the search engine to jump between multiple redirects, reducing the level of the page. Guthrie explains how Redirectpermanent () works:

ASP.net 4 introduces a new response.redirectpermanent (StringUrl) helper method that can be redirected through an HTTP (movedpermanently) response. In this way, search engines and other useragents that can identify permanent redirects store and use the new URLs associated with the content. Doing so will index the content of the page and increase the PR (page ranking) value of the search engine on the page.

asp.net 4 output cache

Since 1.0, ASP.net has an output cache to store pages and resources to provide faster response times, but the storage location can only be in memory. ASP.NET4 provides an extension point that can add multiple caches to local/remote disks, databases, distributed cache engines such as velocity, memcached, and even clouds.