This is the latest news about Beta 2 release date. The Beta 2 will be released next year and before the final ship.

To not make this post a little bit more interesting, I can let you know that the DeclarativeCaltogPart for the WebPart framework for Beta 2, will have a property for specifying a file with webparts instead of declare them on the page.

To fill out this post, I will give a very simple tip, as you may know you can know use the Eval or Bind expression for binding a field to a data control. If you want to make a call to a method and pass the bounded item as an argument you can write something like this:

<%# MyMethod(Eval("myField")) %>

public object MyMethod(object item)
{
     ...
     return newValue;
}

In the current build (Not beta 1) the Membership class is not sealed. This will make it possible for us to extend the Membership class with our own functions. It's not sure it will stay unsealed in the final release, but it’s most likely the class will still be unsealed.

The Access provider for the Roles, Membership and Profile feature will be removed from the product, the source code will be available on the www.asp.net after the final release of .Net 2.0.