Angus and dev.live.com announced on the 28th July 2008 that the July refresh of the Windows Live Tools would include the release of the much anticipated Virtual Earth ASP.NET control.

The control is a complete drag and drop experience from within Visual Studio 2008. Drag the map from your toolbox onto your design surface and resize to suit. As you would expect all Virtual Earth 6.1 properties can be set as properties of the control, there are a full set of server side and client side events for the map and a range of very cool client side extenders.

Through a series of videos we take you through the full experience of installing the control and coding with its basic features. Each video is fairly detailed and runs for about 5-7min. They are hosted by Silverlight Streaming so you will need to install the latest Beta2 Silverlight Client or download the wmv file directly.

Through the videos I hope to not only guide you through how I saw the control being used when I designed it but also share some tips and insights. The videos where recorded at 1024x768px @ 30fps and rescaled for this presentation. Every single sample shown can be downloaded as part of a single package that is also hosted online. It is my hope this sample will grow in time to include some complex examples. Your feedback is welcome.

Videos after the jump