One of the things previewed at the BUILD Day 2 Keynote was ASP.NET MVC 4, and Microsoft wasted no time in releasing a preview for developers to begin using.

I haven’t gone through the preview entirely, but there are a couple of features I should note. First, the default template actually looks good now.

I’m not a UI designer, and for my custom websites I always feel like it somehow looks rather plain. With this template, I at least feel as though my site doesn’t look dated.

Another really cool feature is bundling and minification. It’s incredibly easy to find yourself dropping in a CSS or JavaScript file and forgetting to link them in the layout file. We tend to expect it to work by convention, and the unwary developer can be caught off-guard when it doesn’t work that way. This is no longer the case. Dropping a CSS or JavaScript file in configurable locations (typically Content or Scripts) causes them to be automatically picked up and minified to preserve bandwidth.

There are many more features such as better support for mobile websites and asynchronous controller methods. Browse the release notes to see what you can expect from ASP.NET MVC 4!