At Build MVC4 was announced and shortly thereafter it became available for everyone to play with.

How Do I Get It?

You can get it three ways:

• Web Platform Installer – Installs the MVC4 Project Templates.
• nuget package – perfect for upgrading an existing MVC3 project.
• Stand Alone Installer - Installs the MVC4 Project Templates.

What’s In It?

MVC4 comes with many great new features including an updated face lift of the design:

Mobile rendering baked in:

You can see the side by side comparison of the old MVC default template and the new.  The newer template is just cleaner and easier on the eyes.

If you need more mobile then use the Mobile Project Template that uses jQuery Mobile!

Superficial?

These changes are just superficial.  True, but they do have more features such as recipes and task support for asynchronous controllers.  You can also install MVC4 side by side with MVC3 without issue.

Upgrading MVC3 to MVC4

No Problem.  At least in my case.  I did it both ways as described in the ASP.Net MVC 4 release notes.

The recommended approach is to create a new MVC4 project and move your controllers, views, etc… into the new project which works but if you have a large project that would be a pain.

The other option is to do it all manually (as described in the release notes) or use nuget to install the MVC4 bits and make a few less manual changes.

After installing the MVC4 package in your application, you will want to make all of the manual edits as outlined in Upgrading an ASP.NET MVC 3 Project to ASP.NET MVC4 section of the release notes with the folowing exceptions:

• You don’t need to do step 3.  The Nuget package takes care of this.
• On step 7, I had to add a binding for Razor
  
  <dependentAssembly>
    <assemblyIdentity name="System.Web.WebPages.Razor"
         publicKeyToken="31bf3856ad364e35" />
    <bindingRedirect oldVersion="1.0.0.0" newVersion="2.0.0.0"/>
  </dependentAssembly>

Should I Care?

Just the inclusion of mobile baked in is a big win and should be a good reason to watch MVC4 take shape over the next several months. 

I know this is early and I’m sure more features will make it’s way into MVC4.  At the pace that MVC has been maturing I am excited to see what’s next!

Happy Coding!

On my home pc the MVC4 developer preview installed on my box but at the office I tried a few different times with no success.

Visual Studio 2010 SP1

It’s required for MVC4.  Already have it on your box?  That’s likely the reason WPI is failing to install.

Reading the log didn’t really give me much information but I was very sure that I had already installed VS 2010 SP1 on my box.  Time to go around WPI.

WPI Installer Location

Aren’t sure where WPI installers are stored?

They are stored in your profile’s AppData\Local\Microsoft\Web Platform Installer\installers folder.

When I ran the MVC4VS2010 Installer by itself, outside WPI, the install worked.

Happy Coding!

I updated Adam Anderly’s SimpleMembershipMvc3.Sample application available as a nuget package and on GitHub.  The sample as is only hooks up the registration and login for the Account Controller. 

What I Added

In doing so I had to add the reset and forgotten models to the AccountModels class.  If you are interested in using this code please be aware of this and take the necessary steps to backup your AccountModels and/or merge the two.

How to get it

In talking to Adam he is likely going to create a new sample available via NuGet for those wanting this more complete solution.

For now you can get it via my GitHub Fork of Adam’s work.  Hopefully soon, either Adam or myself will create a nuget package for it.

Happy Coding!