Before I worked for the ASP.NET team as I do now, I worked for MSDN. While I was over there, part of my time was spent working on the http://asp.net team. I led the charge to move the site over to Umbraco, and we did. Over the last two years, we have continually made improvements to the .NET (asp.net, silverlight.net, windowsclient.net) sites. In July, the MSDN team announced the release of a new Silverlight site, and today I'm happy to announce the Beta launch of a redesigned ASP.NET website at http://beta.asp.net.
This redesign is still a work in progress, but we wanted everyone to see where we are heading with not just a new look and feel, but also improved organization and navigation that will hopefully make content easier to find. We'll be collecting feedback on UserVoice.
What's new with the redesign
You'll notice that the top-level navigation is similar to the current site (http://www.asp.net/) to keep the familiarity, however we have significantly improved the site design and navigational framework around Learn and Community content in an effort to make it easier to discover and find information on the site. The issue is that there's piles of great content on the site but it's hard to find. Here are some highlights of the redesign:
- A newer Information Architecture (IA) that scales with different types of content. Trying to get you somewhere useful quickly.
- Content organized into relevant topic areas (Overview, Videos, Tutorials, etc.) to make information easier to find and to learn a technology.
- Improved on boarding experience – Developers new to ASP.NET should find it easier to get started and download what they need.
- Important Samples and Tutorials are positioned prominently in the structure of the site so that they are easier to find.
- Textual Tutorials are as important as videos - We've heard people want text tutorials more than videos, so we're finding balance between these two kind of content.
- Improved Social Integration – Community info, pulling from Twitter, Facebook and blogs.
- A less cluttered user experience to get you where you need to go in fewer clicks.
- Open Source and Samples - We're looking for new ways to showcase great open source projects and excellent samples.
Next Steps
Not all the content and features are in place yet! The ASP.NET Website team will continue to iterate over the information architecture, layout, and content (with lots of new video and text content) in the coming weeks, and we are targeting to launch the final site by the end of November.
I know, more than anyone, that the #1 piece of feedback has been that folks don't like the ads. You don't need to tell me, as you're preaching to the (powerless) choir. Instead, make yourself heard - both positive and negative - at the ASP.NET Website section of our User Voice site.
I hope you like the site and find it useful. It's at http://beta.asp.net.
© 2011 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.
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Thank's!