What view engines for ASP.NET MVC are people finding better than the default?

Question

It's been a year since this question and I'd like to know now - what view engines are people finding very good and why?

Answer 1

NVelocity view engine is good if you're used to NVelocity syntax. The MVC Contrib project already contains MvcContrib.Castle.NVelocityViewFactory.

You can download from www.codeplex.com/mvccontrib

I read this out of a book I'm learining from, but I hope it helps since no one else responded.

Answer 2

I believe the most active one is the Spark View Engine. It is very well documented including videos on certain topics. I have personally used the NHAML View Engine for a project and I liked it but the documentation is almost non-existent. I also think NHAML is not very active as far as adding features and fixing bugs.

I am planning on using the Spark View Engine in future projects.

Answer 3

I find NHAML a move in the positive direction and am using it in a pet project to see what its limitations are.

Spark may have it advantages, but I dislike how it is basically piggy-backs on existing syntax. It looks uncomfortable to me, but that's just personal.

What I'm worried about is that new view engines possibly won't be able to profit from the forthcoming helpers in MVC2.

Answer 4

As alternative, you also could take a look at SharpDOM view engine - http://sharpdom.codeplex.com/ - it combines the simplicity of pure HTML code and C# logic expressed in rather consistent manner