"ASP.NET 2.0 makes it even better by making you more productive, reducing the amount of code you have to write, making your Web sites easier to manage, and improving your Web site's scalability, reliability, and performance." - Dino Esposito

With over 50 new controls for security, navigation, data, and web parts, all of which increase developer productivity and introduce fewer bugs in the design process, ASP.NET 2.0 will make development faster and make the long term cost of ownership less.   ASP.NET 2.0 adds some significant enhancements, including an improved and simplified data access process using data sources which includes database caching for better performance of the web sites.  Additionally, there is now an option to pre-compile the web site so that users do not experience slow page loads when the system has to compile them.  The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 makes deploying, configuring, monitoring, and maintaining Web applications easier.  Furthermore, Microsoft has created new tools that can help you set up web sites with the correct configuration changes.

Here are some of the quick reasons that ASP.NET 2.0 has improved over 1.x.  There are many more reasons depending on the type of sites, but these are the major reasons that I see for asking your employer to move from ASP.NET 1.x to 2.0.

1. Compile on the fly; this allows the developer to create an ASPX page and the code page and put them on the server.  ASP.NET 2.0 does not make you compile the page ahead of time, so you can make a bug fix and push the file out without having to recompile the entire site.
2. Datasource controls will allow for better performance and less bugs due to the data access layer.
3. The new improved View State in ASP.NET 2.0 will increase the performance of the time it takes to deliver a page to the end user.
4. 100% backwards compatibility, so any page written in 1.x will work in 2.0
5. Cross page post backs so you can send information to another page.
6. Create caching based on the new SQLdependency which will allow you to monitor the database for changes
7. Post-Cache Substitution so that you can cache parts of pages but not the content that changes, which will increase the performance of the web servers
8. With Master Pages you can now create one template for an entire site and only have to change information in one place to make a change to every page that uses the Master Page.
9. Visual Studio has been enhanced to let you connect to a web site with many protocols now instead of just FrontPage Extensions.  Also you can open a single page in VS2005 and have the ability to edit it without opening the entire project
10. ASP.NET 2.0 allows for partial classes which will allow you to have business logic in multiple files.
11. We can now get information to the page without the user seeing a full postback with a feature called Script Callbacks.  This allows the javascript to make a call to the server for more information without refreshing the page.
12. You can now SetFocus on an object when the page starts up.
13. New controls such as the WizardControl, DynamicImage Control, FileUpload Control, and the GridView control add a great deal of built in functionality that will help prevent bugs.
14. Intellisense everywhere has been added to help developers more quickly create and debug applications.
15. The new Heath and Monitoring API will allow us to be notified if there are problems on a web page or on a web server.
16. The Panel Control is now scroll able, so you can have the web page scroll and not the browser window

— Brendon Schwartz and Matt Ranlett

Posted with BlogJet