What's coming in ASP.NET 2?

ASP.NET 2 or "Whidbey" will be released with the next version of the Microsoft .NET framework. It will be a major release including a number of significant changes providing a large increase in the level of functionality. For developers who do not plan to upgrade all their application to the latest version of .NET, the good news is that this release is 100% backward compatible with the current version.

Some of the new features include:

Master Pages
Themes
New Data Controls
Better Data Binding, including Business Objects
Login Controls
Membership and Role Management Services
Site Navigation Controls
Personalization Services
Web Part Controls
Integrated Mobile Support
Pre-Compilation of Applications
New MMC Snap-In
Configuration APIs
Richer Application Tracing
Heath Monitoring
Auditing

For more information on the new features available, and for beta information, check out the Whidbey home page at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/whidbey/default.aspx.