Question

Hi i just downloaded MVC 3 and found an new view engine called “RAZOR”. How is it useful?

What benefits does it provide?

How is different from ASPX pages?

Where should one use RAZOR view engine?

Answer 1

Scott Gu covered most of your questions in his Razor introductory blog post:

The new view-engine option we’ve been
working on is optimized around HTML
generation using a code-focused
templating approach

…

• Compact, Expressive, and Fluid: Razor minimizes the number of
  characters and keystrokes required in
  a file, and enables a fast, fluid
  coding workflow. Unlike most template
  syntaxes, you do not need to interrupt
  your coding to explicitly denote
  server blocks within your HTML. The
  parser is smart enough to infer this
  from your code. This enables a really
  compact and expressive syntax which is
  clean, fast and fun to type.

• Easy to Learn: Razor is easy to learn and enables you to quickly be
  productive with a minimum of concepts.
  You use all your existing language and
  HTML skills.

• Is not a new language: We consciously chose not to create a new
  imperative language with Razor.
  Instead we wanted to enable developers
  to use their existing C#/VB (or other)
  language skills with Razor, and
  deliver a template markup syntax that
  enables an awesome HTML construction
  workflow with your language of choice.

• Works with any Text Editor: Razor doesn’t require a specific tool
  and enables you to be productive in
  any plain old text editor (notepad
  works great).

• Has great Intellisense: While Razor has been designed to not require
  a specific tool or code editor, it
  will have awesome statement completion
  support within Visual Studio. We’ll be
  updating Visual Studio 2010 and Visual
  Web Developer 2010 to have full editor
  intellisense for it.

• Unit Testable: The new view engine implementation will support the ability to unit test views (without requiring a controller or
  web-server, and can be hosted in any unit test project – no special
  app-domain required).