The next step in transparency

First we had the Beta, then we had the CTP (Community Technology Preview). Now we have the "Futures", which is basically a new step that Microsoft takes in terms of being transparent towards the developers community.

This interesting initiative is being tested by Microsoft with the release of Microsoft ASP.NET Futures (http://asp.net/downloads/futures) which contains an early preview of next generation functionality in ASP.NET and Silverlight. Among other things, this release of Microsoft ASP.NET Futures contains the following:

• ASP.NET AJAX Futures: support for browser history management, CSS selectors, and even stuff about accessing Astoria web data services (more to come on Astoria and Jasper in a future post)
• Silverlight controls for ASP.NET: media server control, XAML server control
• Dynamic Data Controls
• ASP.NET Application Services
• Support for Dynamic Languages in ASP.NET