.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 contain a bunch of feature
improvements targeted at web application development.
The VS Web Dev Tools team has more details (including
specific bug fix details) on some of the VS specific work here. Below are more details on some of the work in
the web-space:
ASP.NET Data Scaffolding Support (ASP.NET Dynamic Data)
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support for a rich ASP.NET data
"scaffolding" framework that enables you to quickly build functional
data-driven web application. With the ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature you can
automatically build web UI (with full CRUD - create, read, update, delete - support) against a variety of data object models (including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, REST
Services, and any other ORM or object model with a dynamic data provider).
SP1 adds this new functionality to the existing GridView,
ListView, DetailsView and FormView controls in ASP.NET, and enables smart
validation and flexible data templating options. It also delivers new
smart filtering server controls, as well as adds support for automatically
traversing primary-key/foreign-key relationships and displaying friendly
foreign key names - all of which saves you from having to write a ton of code.
You can learn more more about this feature from Scott
Hanselman's videos and tutorials here.
ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing)
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes a flexible new URL routing engine that
allows you to map incoming URLs to route handlers. It includes support for both parsing parameters from clean URLs (for example: /Products/Browse/Beverages),
as well as support to dynamically calculate and generate new URLs from route
registrations.
This new routing engine is used by both ASP.NET Dynamic Data
as well as the new ASP.NET MVC framework. It will support both WebForms
and MVC based requests.
ASP.NET AJAX Back/Forward Button History Support
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds new APIs to ASP.NET AJAX to allow you to
better control the history list of a browser (enabling you to control the
behavior of the back/forward button of the browser).
You can learn more about this feature in the article here and the screencast here.
ASP.NET AJAX Script Combining Support
.NET 3.5 SP1 introduces a new <CompositeScript>
element on the <asp:ScriptManager> server control, which allows you to
declaratively define multiple script references within it. All the script
references within the CompositeScript element are combined together on the
server and served as a single script to the client, reducing the number of
requests to the server and improving page load time for ASP.NET AJAX
applications.
The script combining feature supports both path based
scripts and assembly resource based scripts, and dynamically serves up the
combined scripts using the ScriptResources.axd handler.
Visual Studio 2008 Performance Improvements HTML Designer
and HTML Source Editor
In February we released a HotFix roll-up that included a number of performance
improvements and bug fixes for the VS 2008 Web Designer. VS 2008 SP1
includes all of these fixes, as well as a number of additional performance
improvements.
Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Script Formatting and
Code Preferences
Visual Studio has for several releases supported rich source code formatting options for VB and C# (spacing, line breaks, brace
positions, etc).
VS 2008 SP1 adds richer source code formatting support for JavaScript as well (both inline <script> blocks and .js files). You can
now set your JavaScript coding preferences using the Tools->Options dialog:
Figure 1

These preferences will be automatically used as you type new
Javascript code in the source editor. You can also select existing code,
right-click, and choose the "Format Selection" option to apply your
style preferences to existing JavaScript code. You can learn more about
this new feature here.
Better Visual Studio Javascript Intellisense for
Multiple Javascript/AJAX Frameworks
VS 2008 includes JavaScript Intellisense support in source view. The
intellisense support with the initial VS 2008 release works well with vanilla
JavaScript as well as code written using the ASP.NET AJAX JavaScript type
patterns. JavaScript is a very flexible language, though, and many
JavaScript libraries use this flexibility to full advantage to implement their
features - sometimes in ways that prevented the intellisense engine from
providing completion support.
VS 2008 SP1 adds much better intellisense support for popular JavaScript libraries (we specifically did work to support JQuery, Prototype,
Scriptaculous, ExtJS, and other popular libraries). You will get better
default intellisense when you reference these libraries. We are also
looking at whether we can maintain additional intellisense hint files that you
can download to get even better intellisense and documentation support for some of the more popular libraries.
Below is an example of using a JQuery startup function with
the VS 2008 SP1 JavaScript intellisense engine:
Figure 2

Notice below how VS 2008 SP1 can now provide
method argument completion even on chained JQuery selectors:
Figure 3

Visual Studio Refactoring Support for WCF
Services in ASP.NET Projects
VS 2008 SP1 adds better refactoring support for WCF services included within both ASP.NET Web Site and ASP.NET Web Application
Projects.
If you use the refactoring support to rename the class name, interface contract, or namespace of a WCF service, VS 2008 SP1
will now automatically fix up the web.config and SVC file references to it.
Visual Studio Support for Classic ASP
Intellisense and Debugging
Previous versions of Visual Studio included support for intellisense and debugging within classic ASP (.asp) pages. The file and
project templates to create classic ASP pages/projects hasn't been in VS for a
few releases, though, and with the initial VS 2008 we incorrectly assumed this
meant that people weren't still using the classic ASP support. We heard
feedback after we shipped that indeed they were.
With VS 2008 SP1 this support for classic ASP
intellisense and debugging is back:
Figure 4

Visual Web Developer Express Edition support for Class Library and Web Application Projects
The Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition (which is
free) is being updated in SP1 to add support for both class library and ASP.NET
Web Application project types. Previous versions of Visual Web Developer
Express only supported ASP.NET web-site projects.
Among other benefits, the support of class library and web
application projects will enable ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight projects to be
built with the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. All of the above
JavaScript, Dynamic Data, Classic ASP, and AJAX improvements work with Visual
Web Developer Express as well.