Professional ASP.NET MVC 3

Creating an MVC 3 Application

The best way to learn about how MVC 3 works is to get started with building an application, so let's do that.

Software Requirements for ASP.NET MVC 3

MVC 3 runs on the following Windows client operating systems:

• Windows XP
• Windows Vista
• Windows 7

It runs on the following server operating systems:

• Windows Server 2003
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008 R2

The MVC 3 development tooling installs in both Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express.

Installing ASP.NET MVC 3

After ensuring you've met the basic software requirements, it's time to install ASP.NET MVC 3 on your development and production machines. Fortunately, that's pretty simple.

Side-by-Side Installation with MVC 2

MVC 3 installs side-by-side with MVC 2, so you can install and start using MVC 3 right away. You'll still be able to create and update existing MVC 2 applications as before.

Installing the MVC 3 Development Components

The developer tooling for ASP.NET MVC 3 supports Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Web Developer 2010 Express (free).

You can install MVC 3 using either the Web Platform Installer (http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appid=MVC3) or the executable installer package (available at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=208140). I generally prefer to use the Web Platform Installer (often called the WebPI, which makes me picture it with a magnificent Tom Selleck moustache for some reason) because it downloads and installs only the components ...