How do I utilize the more recent Bing Maps style of tiles instead of the older ones? I'm speaking of the Bing Map cartography displayed by default in this web app:
The only way to do it now would be to create your own Bing layer and specify the mapVersion parameter in the querystring of the request but that seems like a waste of time to me given that it's only a month until it will default to the new style. If you really wanted to do that I'd just use reflector to get the current code and update the request url.
Since the change will happen very close to the next release of the API (and originally prior to), we are not planning on adding a parameter that is as good as outdated already.
Nevertheless, a version parameter could be useful to opt in right away when updates is made to the bing maps style, without having to wait in the future.
Unfortunately a version parameter would do no good, since the bing service doesn't expect a version number but a new enumeration value. Without an updated proxy (meaning a new build of the bing assembly), there's no way to set that value.
