We need help in reducing the amount of time to code for Azure Table Storage and deal with table storage in the IDE. I'd like to see and modify entities and tables right from the IDE ... building the functionality of software like ClumsyLeaf's TableXplorer right into VS. Also, it would be nice to have more/better support in data source controls and data-bound controls for table storage data and keys. It's all very LOW level right now and takes quite a while to code for Azure Table Storage relative to coding against SQL/SQL Azure storage. [Also, btw ... can you get the CEO to fire the marketing guy who changed "SQL Azure" to the dumb new name "SQL Database," which means **nothing** to anyone. It should be called by its original name "SQL Azure," which everybody likes and still uses.]

More and more it's becoming a common practice to detect browser features and capabilities. There are even libraries and or tests used by many sites. Libraries such as Modernizr come with a slew of such tests.

It would be nice to issue the client a token/url for the scripts and css specific to that browser after doing feature detection.

This prevents ever subsequent page running the same test and doing the same conditional loading of scripts. Otherwise, another ugly alternative is to have a bunch of bundles for common browsers, but this seems more like doing browser sniffing rather than feature detection.

Would love to hear if this is something that could be in the product instead of having to hand roll using Web Optimization intrinsics.

When using an inbult ASP.Net control you're stuck with the default rendered HTML output and changing the output is a tedious and time consuming task.

Allow the user to create a template to be assigned to a control, so when this control (for instance something as simple as the HTML rendered by using a ASP.Net Panel control, could be used) - this would also allow you to assign CSS defaults, control properties etc to the control whenever it's used.

This would eliminate the need for the user to manually assign a class or specific property to the control whenever it's used.

This should be set on a global and/or per project scale (eg. be a editable property of the project).

The AspNetCompiler task has a great many features, and among them is the ability to specify a particular version of the ASP.NET compiler to use via ToolPath. Websites inside solution files contain constructs similar to AspNetCompiler tasks, but these seem to be missing support for ToolPath, and I suspect support for other properties as well. My solution looks like this:

ProjectSection(WebsiteProperties) = preProject

SccProjectName = "SAK"

SccAuxPath = "SAK"

SccLocalPath = "SAK"

SccProvider = "SAK"

TargetFrameworkMoniker = ".NETFramework,Version%3Dv4.0"

Debug.AspNetCompiler.VirtualPath = "/MyPath"

Debug.AspNetCompiler.PhysicalPath = "MyPath\"

Debug.AspNetCompiler.TargetPath = "PrecompiledWeb\MyPath\"

Debug.AspNetCompiler.Updateable = "true"

Debug.AspNetCompiler.ForceOverwrite = "true"

Debug.AspNetCompiler.FixedNames = "false"

Debug.AspNetCompiler.Debug = "True"

Debug.AspNetCompiler.ToolPath = "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_compiler.exe"

Release.AspNetCompiler.VirtualPath = "/MyPath"

Release.AspNetCompiler.PhysicalPath = "MyPath\"

Release.AspNetCompiler.TargetPath = "PrecompiledWeb\MyPath\"

Release.AspNetCompiler.Updateable = "true"

Release.AspNetCompiler.ForceOverwrite = "true"

Release.AspNetCompiler.FixedNames = "false"

Release.AspNetCompiler.Debug = "False"

Release.AspNetCompiler.ToolPath = "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_compiler.exe"

VWDPort = "62641"

EndProjectSection

In the sln.metaproj file that is generated by MSBuild this maps to:

<AspNetCompiler Condition="(false) or ('$(AspNetConfiguration)' == 'Debug') or ('$(AspNetConfiguration)' == 'Release')" VirtualPath="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetVirtualPath)" PhysicalPath="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetPhysicalPath)" TargetPath="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetTargetPath)" Force="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetForce)" Updateable="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetUpdateable)" Debug="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetDebug)" KeyFile="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetKeyFile)" KeyContainer="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetKeyContainer)" DelaySign="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetDelaySign)" AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetAPTCA)" FixedNames="$(Project_E6D3E448-55BC-48DC-9D7F-98782DE8AFF6_AspNetFixedNames)" ToolPath="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319" />

Note that MSBuild is not generating a property for ToolPath at all. Anything I enter for ToolPath value in the solution file is simply ignored.

MSBuild should support all of the parameters for the AspNetCompiler task when performing the solution->metaproj conversion.

I really like what you guys have done and I'm very impressed. But there are some areas that seem a little confusing to me or could be improved. Can you guys all get together and coordinate to build an enterprise family of .Net WCF Data Tier, Business Logic Tier that will all work together and integrate with the various .Net Presentation Tiers? They should serve as a quick way to get a system running and allow people to add their own POCs, DAL, etc. Every once in a while I get some idea I want to implement, but it takes so long to figure out the .Net framework tool that I've forgotten what my idea was. We need to be able to whip these tiers our with minimum effort.

I recently went to a user group event where I learned that WCF Data Services and WCF RIA Services are similar but overlap. Originally, I thought WCF Data Services was going to utilize EF and together serve as the Data Access Layer. I thought RIA Services was going to serve as the Business Tier that would sit on top of the WCF Data Services. Then I thought we would simply bind MVC, Silverlight controls to RIA Services.

This is how I thought the technologies would sit on top of each other.
Database->WCF Data Services->WCF RIA Services->MVC/Silverlight/WPF/Metro.

Each of the technologies have significant advanages. But when you choose one of the technologies, it seems you have to do significant coding to make up for the short fall. And it's painful because you know that the code you are writing is an availble if you had used the other technology.

It seems such a shame that RIA Services is made for Silverlight and that it takes a lot of work to work with MVC, ASP.Net, Win Forms, WPF, Metro, jQuery, etc. It's also a shame that RIA Services doesn't sit on top of WCF Data Services. Web API should also be able to sit on top of WCF Data Services. Why aren't these technologys hot swapable and utilizing each other and all reinventing the wheel? Isn't that the whole point of having multiple tiers of abstraction? Why can't I decide later to swap out my middle tier and with Azure?

Hopefully, you can keep all the functionality you currently have in each product so you don't break the code. But if you have to create a new product, you might want to rename it something simple like WCF Tiers and have different Tier Types. (For example, Data Tier Type, Busines Tier Type, Domain Tier, Validation Tier, Proxy Tier, Custom Data Tier Methods Type, etc.) Also, it would be nice if the Proxy Tier or Presentation Tier would work with various Javascript libraries such as JQuery, Knockout, etc. If the plumbing was easier to create, people could focus on the real business issues, cosmetic design, usabliity, processflow, etc.

Another tools that should work with these technologies is Light Switch. All the tools should be able to swap in and out seemlessly. We could use Light Switch as the RAD tool, then discover that we need to modify or integrate with other systems and thus expand and/or swap out the tiers as needed. I'd even want to swap out the presentation tiers, such as ASP.Net to MVC or Silverlight to MVC, or Lightswtich to MVC, WPF or Metro, HTML5...

The other issue I have is that if the Schema changes, you have to regenerate the Proxy. I wish there was a better way to keep everything in sync in automatically while in RAD phase, then when you are sure the schema design is stable, you set a configuration flag and lock down the Prox so it isn't always automatically regenerated.