I ran into an exception “Could not load type ‘System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage” or something along those lines while trying to implement “Areas” for Asp.Net MVC 2.

So if you are coming up against this issue, you might be having that same issue.

The solution, drop in a copy of the web.config from the views folder into the folder for your areas folder (i.e. Areas/AreaName or Areas/AreaName/Views). Refresh. That should solve that exception. Hopefully.

Looking for the method ValidationMessageFor() ? Or at least wondering what happened to it? Same here.

I see the example of it’s use on Scott Gu’s Blog for Asp.Net Mvc 2.0 preview 1. Yet I have not been able to google/bing a blog, tweet, or official mention of why this was dropped.

I checked the bits using reflector, source code, and release notes for Asp.Net Mvc 2.0 Preview 2. The bits and source code do confirm one thing. The extension methods for ValidationMessageFor() are not available in Preview 2.

Unfortunately I do not have a bat phone (or a direct message on twitter) to anyone that works on Asp.Net Mvc. But I’m sure someone will pick up on this.