Search results matching tag 'iis news item'

Lots of new software for IIS, ASP.NET, AJAX and PHP this week

bills — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:13:00 GMT

Wow, what a week of innovation for the Microsoft Web Platform. This week we released a ton of new software which, if you haven’t already, you’ve got to check out. Here is a quick overview:

IIS Search Engine Optimization v1 final release!

The IIS team shipped the final release of IIS SEO toolkit which makes it easier to optimize your Website for search engines. It acts like a mini-search engine on your computer, scans your site and then provides useful tips for how to improve the relevance of your site to search engines. This tool is now out of beta and available for download through Web PI.

ASP.NET MVC 2 beta!

The ASP.NET team has been hard at work on the second release of MVC, which is now available to beta test. Phil has a great blog post on the release with links to the download page, readme notes and the source code. There are a bunch of new features in MVC 2 including AsyncController, expression based helpers, improvements with client validation, all new areas support, and more. Read more on Phil’s blog.

ASP.NET AJAX Library beta!

The ASP.NET AJAX team also has some exciting news with the release of the ASP.NET AJAX Library beta. James has a terrific blog post with the news This is the first project accepted into the new CodePlex Foundation! (more on that later) The ASP.NET AJAX Library has a new portal at www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary with tutorials, samples, and more. Read James’ post about the news and check it out!

IIS Application Request Router 2 final release!

The IIS team also released the final version of the IIS Application Request Router v2. This is a super powerful module that provides routing and load balancing capabilities for Windows and IIS. It makes it easy to create and manage an entire cluster of Web servers. Mai-lan has a lot of info on the release in her blog post and you can download ARR v2 using Web PI today.

PHP WinCache module final release - faster PHP on Windows!

The PHP team announced today the final release of the Windows Cache Extension for PHP, or WinCache for short, which makes PHP run much, much faster on Windows. The iBuildings guys released a benchmark showing how the WinCache extension speeds up PHP by as much as 2x over standard PHP. The other exciting part of this announcement is that the sources for the extension are now available under an open source BSD license and the source code is maintained and host on http://pecl.php.net/packages/wincache/ If you install PHP using Web PI, you automatically get WinCache.

Windows Cache Extension for PHP (aka, “WinCache”) 1.0 General Availability Today

mailant — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:21:59 GMT

Today we announce the general availability of the Windows Cache Extension for PHP 1.0 (affectionately known as “WinCache”), which is an open source built-for-Windows caching extension to the PHP engine. You can view, contribute and download the source code for WinCache at the PHP repository for extensions (http://pecl.php.net/package/WinCache), where we have joined other Linux-based PHP caches.

I wanted to thank Pierre Joye for his invaluable help in helping connect the IIS product team with PECL, and for agreeing to host the WinCache binaries on http://windows.php.net.

We cordially invite the PHP development community to join us in development of this caching extension for PHP on Windows. We already have gotten one contribution from the community in our pre-release mode and are very excited to have others join this new PHP on Windows caching community. The IIS team at Microsoft is going to start off the v2.0 development by adding a user cache and lazy class loading to the opcode cache, file cache, and relative file cache that is available today in WinCache 1.0.

I am proud of the WinCache project for many reasons, including:

WinCache solves a real customer problem. WinCache provides a Windows PHP caching extension that is free and part of the PECL extension library, and can accelerate the performance of all PHP applications on Windows.
WinCache is our first big open source contribution to the PHP on Windows community. The IIS team has made several code contributions (big fixes) to the PHP 5.3 release, as well as provided support for the Windows Installer for PHP community (John Mertic rocks) and the Windows documentation on the PHP website. This WinCache release is a substantial amount of code that we are open sourcing on the PECL extension library. We hope others join this new community to help accelerate PHP performance on Windows.
WinCache represents a series of “firsts” for Microsoft…first time Microsoft has contributed to the PECL repository, first Windows-based PHP cache, first joint community project between Microsoft and the PHP development community, first BSD license for the IIS team….and the list goes on. The WinCache feature team of Ruslan, Kanwal and Don are incredibly passionate about PHP on Windows, respond to their blog and forum comments, and lurk on the PHP on Windows mailing list if you want to connect with them.

Here’s some more information about WinCache.

What is WinCache?

WinCache is actually a collection of three caches:

An opcode file cache, just like the one that APC provides to cache compiled PHP code
A file cache to help when your PHP scripts run on remote servers. This is net new functionality that is not available in other caching modules at the time of this blog.
A relative file cache to cache relative file paths for when you are running PHP scripts on remote servers.

WinCache itself was designed, written, and tested by the IIS engineering team that also brings you FastCGI, the core PHP hosting platform in IIS. We are planning to add more caches to WinCache in 2010.

What is the WinCache license?

WinCache is licensed under BSD.

How do I get WinCache?

You can compile WinCache as part of your PHP compilation from the PECL library.

If you download any PHP application from Web Platform Installer and/or the Windows Web Application Gallery (WordPress, Moodle, SilverStripe, SugarCRM, Acquia Drupal, Gallery 2, and any other new PHP app in the Web App Gallery), you will automatically get WinCache installed on your IIS computer as part of the PHP application install. We want to make sure that your PHP application deployment and hosting experience is great on Windows.

How do I learn more about WinCache?

You can learn more about WinCache’s features and how to get started on the http://php.iis.net community site. You can also check out the blogs for the feature team (Kanwal, Ruslan, Don) or visit the community forum which is supported by the feature team and WinCache community.

How much faster is it to run WinCache with my PHP application?

We are seeing quite a significant increase in performance. But don’t take our word for it. Check out the perspective of other members of the PHP developer community:

Cal Evans’ benchmark results
TechPortal at iBuildings.com benchmark results

We hope that others try WinCache and publish their findings as well.

Why is Microsoft investing in making PHP run faster?

IIS is all about making apps run at their finest on IIS. We have a built-in advantage with ASP.NET apps because we can walk down the hallway in our building here in the Seattle area to talk to the ASP.NET team about how to make the ASP.NET on IIS experience better. But we also care deeply about the PHP experience on IIS – there are some amazing applications like WordPress and Drupal that form the foundation of many a Web site on the Internet. We are committed to making those applications run great on Windows, which is the primary motivation for our WinCache project.

How do I learn more about WinCache?

To learn more about WinCache, you can check out:

The PECL documentation on WinCache
The PHP on Windows feature team (Kanwal, Ruslan, and Don) blogs
The WinCache community forum
The IIS.NET documentation on WinCache
The source code of WinCache on PECL, licensed under BSD
How to file bugs on WinCache in PECL

Thanks,

Mai-lan

IIS SEO Toolkit 1.0 Final Release Available Today

mailant — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:06:19 GMT

Today, IIS launched the IIS SEO Toolkit 1.0, a free, fully supported extension to IIS7 that makes it easy for you to build and maintain Web sites optimized for search engines and site quality. In a world where thousands of new Web sites appear on the Internet every month, it is more important than ever to provide a Web destination that is easily discoverable by search engines. Users have a tremendous amount of choice on Web sites today, and poor site quality, like slow response time and broken links, will end up costing you site visitors and visits. Developers and site administrators can download the IIS SEO Toolkit today using Web Platform Installer or directly from the Microsoft Download Center, and start optimizing any Web sites on Windows (ASP.NET, HTML, ASP, or PHP).

The IIS SEO Toolkit installs and runs on IIS 7.x, which is the Microsoft Web server shipped as part of Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

If you are a site administrator, you will love using the IIS SEO toolkit because you don’t have to write code to improve your Web site’s “searchability” by Bing, Google and other Web sites, and you can directly impact the quality of your Web site. You can find and fix-up site issues by running reports that:

analyze everything from broken links to load times on Web pages
discover common browsing paths through your Web site taken by customers
duplicate files and other issues with site quality

If you are a developer, you will be interested in the IIS SEO toolkit because it can simplify your development process for new Web sites and help you maintain existing sites. You can use the same Web server administration console that you use for managing your site to:

run reports to report on broken links across your Web site
control robots crawling behavior on your site
build custom site analysis reports for site administrators
add and edit sitemaps and sitemap indices

One of the most powerful features in the IIS SEO toolkit is the built-in site analyzer that lets you run detailed reports on web sites that are hosted on external Web sites or your localhost environment.

The “dashboard” for the Site Analysis Report gives you a summary of violations and other built-in reports like pages with the most violations, or sort by violation categories or levels.

If you want to take a different “view” of your Web site, you can look at your site by content, performance or links. The query builder that comes with the Site Analysis tool lets you set up custom queries to get a detailed view of the content you care about. In this example below, you can see all the links to images on your site.

The IIS SEO toolkit is part of the IIS7 mission to provide the best Web application hosting platform for developers and administrators. We hope you enjoy using this extension and look forward to hearing your suggestions in our SEO Toolkit forum!

For more information, check out these sources:

Carlos’ blogs with many a post on the SEO toolkit
The public forum, monitored by the IIS product team, for SEO Toolkit
The SEO Toolkit extension page with a summary of features and links to more detailed articles

Improve Web User Experience with IIS SEO Toolkit RTW and IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Remember the scene in Diehard when he shoots the glass? That was cool. What’s even cooler is now you can fine tune your Web site for the search engine, thus improving the experience for your Web users.

Today, Microsoft announced the releases of IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit RTW and IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC – both extensions for IIS.

Don’t take it personally – I know it can be hard when your significant other tells you how to make improvements on something you worked hard on, let alone a faceless piece of software. But really, they are both just trying to help. Think of the customers.

The IIS SEO Toolkit helps Web developers, hosting providers, and Web server administrators to improve their Web site’s relevance in search results by recommending how to make the site content more search engine-friendly. The IIS SEO Toolkit helps to improve the volume and quality of traffic to your Web site from search engines, control how search engines access and display Web content, and inform search engines about locations that are available for indexing.

We’ve all been to a cocktail party when you’re trying to impress that certain person, and they ask for the URL of the latest project you are working on. It’s embarrassing when you have to rattle off a long-winded URL with question marks, equal signs, random ID numbers, and ampersands. But with URL Rewriter, you don’t have to anymore.

IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 adds support for outbound response rewriting and enables Web administrators to create powerful rules to implement URLs that are easier for users to remember and easier for search engines to find. IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 can now replace the URLs generated by a Web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent, modify the links in the HTML markup generated by a Web application behind a reverse proxy, and fix up the content of any HTTP response by using regular expression pattern matching. IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 helps to easily define rules that match URLs or HTTP headers to generate more friendly and consistent URLs, protect content and assets from unauthorized linking and scanning, and integrate with existing IIS features to improve management, performance, and troubleshooting.

Did I mention it’s free? And it’s available to download and install today with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0, your one-stop shop to get everything for the Microsoft Web Platform – including IIS SEO Toolkit RTW and IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC. From IIS Extensions to the Windows Web App Gallery and beyond, there is sure to be something useful for your Web site endeavors.

Oh, if you run PHP, be sure to check out our learning section on Running PHP Applications on IIS. We have a ton of brand new and updated content to help provide PHP on Windows users a single source of end-to-end guidance. Pretty sweet!

For more information or to download, please visit the IIS SEO Toolkit RTW page and the IIS URL Rewriter 2.0 RC page.

Eric Rezabek

Senior Product Manager

IIS/Web

Download a powerful load balancer and caching solution free on Windows Server 2008 or later with Application Request Routing (ARR) 2.0

mailant — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:01:00 GMT

I am very pleased to announce the final release of Application Request Routing (ARR) 2.0, which provides a powerful load balancer and caching solution for free download onto Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2. As with all the IIS Web server extensions, ARR is built by the same engineering team that brings you the IIS Web server, fully supported by Microsoft Customer Support, and will soon be localized in French, Spanish, Russian, Korean, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Spanish, German, and Japanese.

ARR only installs on IIS 7.x, which means Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. ARR can be used to load balance requests to Windows Server 2003 and even other types of servers like Java in a Web farm but ARR itself has to be installed on a Windows Server 2008 or later server.

Once you download ARR (use Web Platform Installer for an easy install), you will see a new node called “Server Farms” appear in the left tree-view of our IIS Manager administration console. With ARR, we are adding Server Farms as an IIS Web server concept on the same level as Sites, Servers, and App Pools. ARR gives you the ability to load requests, monitor and manage servers and requests, set up proxying services, establish routing rules (using our URL Rewrite extension) and set up affinity relationships between servers and requests.

One of the innovative Web hosting providers that we work with, MaximumASP, has rolled out a new service called MAXEsp which provides high availability for shared hosting using ARR on top of Windows Server 2008 R2. This type of new offer is exactly what we like to see being built on our IIS platform of Web server + Web server extensions –-- customers either making money or saving money using Windows Server 2008 or later with IIS 7.x and our library of Web extensions.

In this second version of ARR, we introduce support for managing cache hierarchies, which is a requirement for ARR to manage requests in the data centers for Content Delivery Networks (like Akamai). ARR is an integral part of the IIS media hosting platform for high definition media delivery over HTTP. We introduce the ability for ARR v2 to be used on the edge of the network either as a parent node or a child caching node in a data center that can be geographically distributed. Pretty powerful stuff – and it’s free on Windows Server 2008 or later, fully supported by Microsoft and coming soon in 9 languages for international customers.

To learn more about ARR, check out these blogs:

Don has put together a nice collection of links to detailed documentation and walkthroughs to get started.
Eric provides a good summary of ARR on the Windows Server blog with a neat link to case studies for using ARR to replace SQUID.

URL Rewrite Module v2 – Release Candidate

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:42:00 GMT

The URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – Release Candidate is available for download. The release contains functionality and stability improvements and it is believed to have a quality level suitable for production deployments.

Overview

Microsoft URL Rewrite Module 2.0 for IIS 7 is an incremental release that includes all the features from version 1.1, and adds support for outbound response headers and content rewriting. More specifically, it can be used to:

Replace the URLs generated by a web application in the response HTML with a more user friendly and search engine friendly equivalent
Modify the links in the HTML markup generated by a web application behind a reverse proxy.
Fix up the content of any HTTP response by using regular expression pattern matching.
Modify HTTP request headers and IIS server variables.
Modify HTTP response headers

Install the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – RC

To install the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 – RC, use the download links at the module’s home page at http://www.iis.net/extensions/urlrewrite.

Note:

If a previous version of URL Rewrite Module, such as v1.0 and v1.1, is already installed then it will be upgraded to the v2.0 RC
If a beta version of the URL Rewrite Module 2.0 is already installed, then it has to be uninstalled before installing v2.0 RC.

Changes since the beta release

Here are the new features and changes that were added to the module in the RC release. For the complete list of the URL Rewrite 2.0 features refer to Using URL Rewrite Module 2.0.

Rewriting of HTTP response headers. Outbound rewrite rules can be used modify any existing HTTP response headers or to set new ones.
Logging of rewritten URLs. The rewrite rules can be configured to log the rewritten URL in IIS W3C logs as opposed to logging an originally requested URL.
Evaluating HTTP response headers from rewrite rules. The rewrite rules now can access and evaluate the values in the HTTP response headers.
Allow list for server variables. To prevent distributed rewrite rules from accidentally or purposefully modifying IIS server variables that may affect security or runtime behavior of a web application the modifiable server variables now have to be explicitly added to the allow list.
HtmlEncode function. Outbound rewrite may often use an un-trusted data (e.g. query string or HTTP headers) to build a replacement string to insert into the HTTP response. In those cases the HtmlEncode function should be used to prevent insertion of client-side scripts into the response, which could result in cross-site scripting vulnerability.
Updated user interface in IIS Manager. The user interface has been significantly improved to better represent the module configuration and to simplify such common tasks as configuring of rewrite rules and rewrite conditions.

Documentation:

Support

URL Rewrite Forum

Increase Web Application Scalability and Reliability with ARR 2.0 RTW

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft announced the final release of IIS Application Request Routing (ARR) 2.0 RTW.

Customers - such as hosting providers, Content Delivery Network (CDN) providers, and IT Professionals are changing the way they do business as a result of ARR 2.0. ARR 2.0 delivers cost savings, elastic scalability, and flexible deployment options. With IIS 7.5 and ARR 2.0, customers can create a native Silverlight infrastructure and configure their CDN so that it provides superior live and on-demand media offerings for their users. Customers can implement new capabilities in their CDN and as a result, can replace Apache Squid on their edge servers and cut costs. By deploying this new solution based on ARR 2.0, customers can provide a better viewing experience for Web consumers, boost the scalability and level of control they have over their CDN, and enhance the reports they can provide their users.

There are now several new scenarios available to the Microsoft Web Platform. My personal favorite is a media solution combining IIS Live Smooth Streaming with ARR 2.0 to deliver live HD video over a CDN – a scenario nobody else can do today. ARR 2.0 also adds support to enhance disk based cache and cache proxy for CDNs while increasing Web application reliability and scalability through rule-based routing and load balancing of HTTP server requests. ARR 2.0 is able to cache on disk any HTTP traffic that passes through the server. By combining the disk caching capabilities along with a hierarchy of IIS Web servers running ARR 2.0, CDNs and hosting providers are able to considerably reduce the network traffic that traverses up to the origin server.

In other words – get your free software load balancer with caching on top of Windows Server! And oh, if you want to stream live HD media across a CDN – we got you covered! Did I mention it’s free? And it’s available to download and install today with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0, your one-stop shop to get everything for the Microsoft Web Platform – including ARR 2.0 RTW. From IIS Extensions to the Windows App Gallery, there is sure to be something useful for your Web site endeavors.

If you still aren’t convinced that ARR 2.0 is the coolest thing since sliced bread, as LeVar from Reading Rainbow would say: “but…don’t take MY word for it”! Internap, an Internet Service Provider company based out of Atlanta, Georgia deployed ARR 2.0 and IIS 7.5 in the Windows Server® 2008 R2 operating system to implement new capabilities in its content delivery network. As a result, the company can replace Apache Squid on its edge servers, cut costs, and improve scalability, reporting, and the users’ Web experience. Be sure to check out their brand new case study.

For more information or to download, please visit the IIS ARR 2.0 RTW page.

Eric Rezabek

Senior Product Manager

IIS/Web

General availability of Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2, with IIS 7.5

mailant — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:22:00 GMT

As of today, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is generally available for purchase. This latest release of the Windows operating system contains IIS 7.5, which provides a set of enhancements and new functionality on top of the IIS 7 Web server platform.

Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 also marks the first release of a Windows operating system release that includes Web extensions built and refined in our rapid innovation model. See the IIS Web Extension library for the new functionality which ranges from an application request load balancer/proxy to URL rewriting to a deployment platform for Web applications and server.

If you are an administrator looking for a simplified but powerful management experience, IIS 7.5 brings you:

built-in, brand new FTP server and WebDav support that we initially shipped as Web extensions, revised with customer feedback and added to IIS in the Windows operating system
new management console support for administering request filtering rules, FastCGI settings, and ASP.NET settings, part of an Administration Pack that we initially released as a Web download that also includes…
a rich IIS configuration editor built-into the management console to simplify configuration management and generate administration scripts for automated configuration management
integration with Windows Server 2008 R2’s new Best Practice Analyzer with IIS-specific best practice rules
a Windows PowerShell snap-in for IIS, with a library of task-based and lower-level commandlets for IIS administration – shipped first as a Web download and now incorporated into the IIS server in the operating system.
quality enhancements -- otherwise known as bug fixes :-)
config tracing so you can audit changes to the IIS configuration system
application “pre-load” where you can decrease the response time for first requests to an application by pre-loading worker processes, using a Web extension called Application Warm-Up.

If you are a developer wanting to understand the implications of targeting an IIS 7.5 server, consider:

the Server Core installation option in Windows Server 2008 R2’s new support for applications built with the .NET framework 2.0, 3.0, 3.5.1, and 4.0. Your ASP.NET applications can run on the reduced footprint of Server Core installation option
implement IIS trace calls in PHP code, which is hosted via our FastCGI support, so you can used IIS request tracing for diagnostics.
Hostable Web Core, which you can use if you want host IIS in your own process without the full IIS server.
new delegation support for custom errors so that server administrators can give you control over custom error development for your site or app
the change we made to switch the default identity of the IIS app pool from Network Service to Application Pool. This change, driven by our commitment to providing the most secure Web server on the planet, has some implications for developers using SQL Server Express; see here for more information in a KB.
built-in support for .Net 4.0 for your ASP.NET applications

We hope you enjoy this release! We are hard at work now on adding new functionality to the IIS Web extension library for you to download onto Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Stay tuned for more free, fully supported downloads from the IIS server team that you can use to extend the functionality of IIS 7 and IIS 7.5.

Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – RC

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:45:47 GMT

The Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – Release Candidate is available for download. The release contains functionality and stability improvements and it is believed to have the quality level suitable for production deployments.

Install the Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP – RC

To install the Windows Cache Extension for PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3, use the download links at the extension’s home page at http://www.iis.net/extensions/wincacheforphp.

The installation with Web Platform Installer is the easiest as it will automatically place the extension binary into proper location and will update the PHP configuration to enable the extension. Also, if you have the beta release of the extension installed, then Web PI will upgrade it. If you install any PHP application by using Web PI then the Windows Cache Extension for PHP – RC will be offered as an optional component.

If you install the extension manually, then follow the instructions at “Using Windows Cache Extension for PHP“.

Note:

The extension can only be used with non-thread-safe builds of PHP
The extension can only be used when IIS is configured to run PHP via FastCGI
The Windows Cache Extension 1.0 for PHP 5.3 can only be used with the x86 VC9 build of PHP 5.3.

Changes since the beta release

Here are the features that are new since the beta release (for complete list of bug fixes and features since the beta release refer to the blog post by the WinCache developer Kanwaljeet Singla):

New API to refresh the cached files. If your PHP application updates some PHP files (for example files with configuration settings or template files) and then needs to load those files on a next request then this API can be used to refresh the cache for those files.
Disabling the file change checking. The Windows Cache Extension periodically checks if the cached files have been changed on a file system. By default the check happens every 30 seconds. If you do not expect the PHP files for your application to ever change then you can disable this check.
Enabling or disabling the opcode cache on a per-site basis. The new configuration setting wincache.ocenabledfilter can be used in conjunction with wincache.ocenabled to specify a comma-separated list of IIS web site identifiers that should have the opcode caching enabled or disabled.
Disabling the cache when PHP is run in command line mode. By default the cache will be disabled when PHP scripts are executed in a command line mode (CLI). If necessary the cache can be turned on by using the configuration setting wincache.enablecli.
Total cache uptime information. The API’s wincache_fcache_fileinfo() and wincache_ocache_fileinfo() now also report the total cache uptime.
Cache statistics web page. The RC installation package includes a PHP script that can be used to get the cache statistics.

More information

Use the Windows Cache Extension for PHP Forum to ask questions, report bugs and provide feature suggestions.

ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 are here!

bills — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:56:07 GMT

The ASP.NET and Web tools for Visual Studio teams have been cranking away on this release all year long and we’re excited to launch Beta 2 today! MSDN subscribers can download it today…it will be available for everyone on Wednesday.

There are a ton of new features in this release, this MSDN page gives a good overview. Here are some highlights for Web developers:

Numerous improvements to Web Forms including more control over viewstate, meta tag control, new browser support, routing support for clean URLs, more control over HTML with FormView and ListView controls, filtering support in data source controls, better Web standards support and accessibility
New Dynamic Data features including a RAD experience for quickly building a data-driven site, automatic validation, field template support for GridView and DetailsView controls.
Visual Studio has undergone a face lift and now supports simpler, code optimized view, multi-mon support, enhanced multi-targeting and more..
Visual Web Developer has better support for HTML, CSS and JavaScript including auto-completion for tag names, IntelliSense for HTML and Jscript snippets, and more…
Visual Studio also natively supports the Web Deployment Tool, a powerful new packaging and deployment model for Web applications. Check out Vishal’s blog (PM for these features) for a bunch more info on this as well.
Auto-start Web Applications
And much more…

All said this is an impressive release and now is a great time to try it out and provide your feedback!