Should I support ASP.NET 1.1? - asp.net

I've just started working on an ASP.NET project which I hope to open source once it gets to a suitable stage. It's basically going to be a library that can be used by existing websites. My preference is to support ASP.NET 2.0 through 3.5, but I wondered how many people I would be leaving out by not supporting ASP.NET 1.1? More specifically, how many people are there still using ASP.NET 1.1 for whom ASP.NET 2.0/3.5 is not an option? If upgrading your server is not an option for you, why not?

Increasingly I think not.
The kind of large rigid organisation currently still clinging to 1.1 (probably because they're only just upgraded to it) is also the kind that's highly unlikely to look at open source solutions.
If I were starting a new ASP.Net project right now I'd stick with .Net 3.5 and probably the new MVC previews.

Remember that .NET 1.1 is going out of general support in October of this year (and that includes ASP.NET 1.1).

I think you would be perfectly fine with targeting just 2.0 and above, someone who would use your library would most likely be doing new development and using at least ASP.NET 2.0. I think it would be a very small group of people doing new development in 1.1.

Related

When Web Forms won't be supported from Microsoft

We are going to create new application using Web Forms and we want to know when Web Forms (ASPX pages) Technology going to be obsolete or not be supported from Microsoft.
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy/aspnet
So WebForms is part of .Net Framework.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/migration-guide/versions-and-dependencies
“.NET Framework 4.8 is the last version of .NET Framework. .NET Framework is serviced monthly with security and reliability bug fixes. .NET Framework will continue to be included with Windows, with no plans to remove it. You don't need to migrate your .NET Framework apps, but for new development, use .NET 5 or later.”
So it's baked into Windows at this point if you want to use it. Everyone will discourage you from using it, as you are essentially mastering out-of-vogue and increasingly obsolete technology, and maybe not doing your career any favors. But if, like me, you have some huge WebForms app for which there is no time nor money to rewrite, then you can at least rest assured that it will continue to run on Windows.
Microsoft will be continuing to support ASP.Net WebForms for some time to come since much of it's functionality is based into the core .Net Framework. There are several locations to get information on which ASP.Net features/technologies such as ASP.Net MVC 4 will be going out of support soon. https://www.asp.net/support lists many of the technologies. For ASP.Net Webforms, it's tied to the Framework versions as best as I understand. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/search?alpha=.net%20framework
Support policy for ASP.NET is documented here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/platform/support/policy/aspnet

migration from .NET1.1 to 3.5

I am currently using .NET 1.1 but my client wants to move application from .NET 1.1 to .NET3.5.
So client wants know how they will be benifited if migrate from 1.1 to 3.5.
What are the benifits of 3.5 over 1.1 for clients who is using that application?
With every version upgrade in .NET there's a bunch of new features these features might be language / compiler enhancements which are not visually regocnizable by the end user.
However these features makes it easier for the developer to create solid and manageable applications, then one might wonder; What is really benefiting the end user?
If it is easier for you to create readable code that is much easier to test and quality ensure, then it will most likely benefit the end user.
It's also become much easier to create trivial things in later .NET versions which will save you some development time which benefits the client of yours.
From a developers perspective there are a handfull of reasons why you should use .NET 2.0+ instead of 1.1 and all these reasons will in the end most likely give you a more trustworthy application which is to more value for your client.
it's a higher number? :-)
no serious, i think as long as you don't implement new features, the upgrade vom 1.1 to 3.5 will bring him few benefits. some security updates are included, and he will can deploy also asp.net-mvc applications on the same server.
but i don't see any great advantages for clients.
cheers
Migrating from 1.1 to 2.0 (and higher) is a must.
The most obvious benefit I see on top of my head, without much thinking is the use of generics which was introduced by the CLR 2.
And don't forget support for 1.1 has simply ended, see here: .NET 1.1 mainstream support ended in 2008
So the question would better be "what are the risks"? Here is a document on this subject: Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 and 2.0 Compatibility.

Web Site Upgrade from ASP .NET 2.0 to 3.5

We have a web application that runs on IIS using .NET 2.0 developed and built with Visual Studio 2005.
We're going to upgrade to .NET 3.5 and begin using Visual Studio 2008. Here are my questions:
I note the runtime is still 2.0-based.
When I loaded the solution in Visual Studio 2008, I was asked to convert, and I did. I then checked the target framework for the default project, and it was set to 3.5. However, all of the other target frameworks for the other projects are set to 2.0.
Do I need to manually set the target frameworks from 2.0 to 3.5 for each of the projects in the solution?
Are there any "gotcha's" anyone can think of to be concerned with a web-application conversion?
As I understand it, the 1.1 to 2.0 migration was a much more difficult issue due to the massive runtime and web-page design changes. However, 2.0 to 3.5 isn't such a big change.
I was not at my current job for that upgrade, but I understand there was a problem with some textarea tags using a deprecated attribute that failed to function correctly after the upgrade.
Can anyone think of any similar issues I might encounter?
Any other issues or thoughts anyone has after having done such a conversion themselves?
Thanks, I appreciate the input.
---Dan---
Do I need to manually set the target
frameworks from 2.0 to 3.5 for each of
the projects in the solution?
Not necessary, but I would recommend you to do so. Visual Studio actually filters the assemblies you can reference based on the target framework version.
Are there any "gotcha's" anyone can
think of to be concerned with a
web-application conversion?
Not any that I am aware of when migrating from 2.0 to 3.5. You don't even need to modify the CLR version of the host application pool. When you need to migrate to 4.0 there might be more issues.
If you're also upgrading your own target server, from my own experiences, be patient with the installer.
It does quite a lot including uninstalling the existing .NET 2.0 and 3.0 frameworks and replacing it pretty much wholesale.
It can look as if the installer is stuck. On one of our production servers it ran for nearly 20 minutes. I was almost ready to pull the plug then it magically jumped into life.

Any issues converting ASP.NET applications from 1.1 Framework to 2.0?

We are migrating many ASP.NET 1.1 web applications to new servers. We would like to convert all of them to 2.0 in the process. Ideally, in the end, the 1.1 framework will not even be installed on the new servers. We've never had major issues converting applications to 2.0 from 1.1. Our biggest issue has always been changing ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings to ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.
Has anyone else ever had major issues?
Are there any major things to look out for or consider up front?
Here is a good resource on how to convert asp.net applications from 1.1 to 2.0 using visual studio 2005.
Converting an ASP.NET Website from Version 1.1 to 2.0
Edit: Here is the MSDN step by step guide for converting apps:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479567.aspx
When converting to 2.0 the only major issue I've run across was performance of compiled Regexes got much worse the way we were using it. Switching it to use the static Regex.Replace() method solved much of the problems.
I can't find the article that I found this in back then, but if I do I'll add it to this post.
The bottom line is make sure you test it not just for functional equivalence but for performance too.
The biggest problem I've seen is that the new default is to use Web Site "projects". This should not be a problem if you're running Visual Studio 2005 SP1, where they corrected this problem.
I also had some odd problem that I think may have involved the vwd.webinfo file. Our web service application worked perfectly on my computer, but on the build server, it tried to become a web site "project", so it didn't compile. No compile == no symbols.

Upgrading ASP.NET from version 1.1 to 2.0 - Any Gotchas?

I know we are really behind the times here, but we are just about to upgrade from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0.
Thank you for your sympathy.
Anyhow, are there any gotchas we should look out for?
Do you have any general advice before we jump in?
Please do not post telling me to go straight to 3.5: 2.0 is all we're allowed!
We're using mostly C#.
Yes. The most important thing for you to know is to use a Web Application Project, not a Web Site. Web Sites use a totally different compilation model and migration is pretty much a disaster. Web Application Projects are much more similar to how things worked in 1.1.
We also had an intermittent problem with redirecting from the login screen, but according to Google, we were basically the only ones who had that problem - we've since resolved it.
Most of the other problems we ran into were small and easy to navigate, and the overall experience was a net improvement.
Here is my recommendation before upgrading:
If you are used to use Visual Studio 2003, you will need to go for VS2005. You will have to convert the old solutions and projects so that it will be compatible with VS2005. Make sure to have a backup of the project you're going to convert so that you can roll back or even use it as source for any modification you may need to the converted projects.
If you're developing web applications using .NET 1.1, make sure that all the virtual directories and applications in the IIS is configured to work with ASP.NET 2.0. You may need also to configure a new Application Pool for your .NET 2.0 applications.
If you're using any third party libraries in your .NET 1.1 projects, you may need to confirm its compatibility with .NET 2.0 projects. Some old libraries used in .NET 1.1 are not compatible with 2.0.
One gotcha is home-grown 1.1 implementations of .NET 2.0 stuff (that was missing in 1.1) like RegistryHandler and so forth. Sometimes your newly-ported 2.0 code will look like it's properly using a 2.0 class when it's really using the home-grown version.
Deployment is another gotcha, if you're upgrading an already-deployed app. You have to switch the .NET version in IIS from 1.1 to 2.0.
I remember we had to change some client scripts, because the way ClientIDs are generated for server controls changed from ASP.NET 1.1 to 2.0.
I don't remember the exact circumstances, but some IDs which previously wer prefixed ctl0_ became ctl00_...

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