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Web 2.0, Meet .Net 3.0
An anonymous reader writes to mention an eWeek article about Microsoft's move to rename WinFX to .Net Framework 3.0. Microsoft has also announced the availability of the beta version of the MSDN Wiki, the company's first step toward allowing customers to contribute to Microsoft's developer documentation. From the article: "It is purely a branding change, company officials said. The gist of the issue is that Microsoft has two successful developer brands in WinFX and .Net, and the company has seen 320,000 downloads of WinFX -- and 700 signed GoLive licenses -- since the December Community Technology Preview, and more than 35 million downloads of the .Net Framework since the November launch. "
From TFA: it's about the .Net Framework (the programming object model), not about the nebulous "web 2.0" bullcrap.
No digg.
Please, educate yourself before trolling utter rubbish like the one in your comment. Some people might believe it.
.NET technology that is used for web browsers is ASP.NET. ASP.NET produces standards compliant xhtml and JavaScript that is sent to your browser. The only place where you will need to upgrade to .NET 3.0 is in the web server. Server side browser technologies never leave the server. They translate its content to something that your browser will understand. When you click "view source" you are not viewing .NET, you are viewing its output.
.NET 3.0 to run .NET 3.0 browser apps in the same way that you don't need to download PHP, Python, Ruby or Perl to your computer to use Slashdot or Digg or Google, etc.
The
You don't need to download
I think you mean version 1.1 of the .NET Framework, not 1.3. Also, we published a very detailed list of breaking changes from 1.1 to 2.0 on MSDN. We never take a breaking change lightly, every single one of these would have been reviewed with a great deal of scrutiny to ensure that we really were doing the right thing under the circumstances.
With regard to .NET 3.0 (no longer WinFX 3.0), it's the next version of the .NET Framework. As a result, it includes new features, like WPF (Avalon), WCF (Indigo), and a ton of other cool, new things. This is merely a marketing change, no more.
No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
.NET 2.0 web technology is cross browser compatible. It produces standards compliant xhtml and JavaScript. Its beta AJAX Atlas library currently works equally well in both Firefox and IE.
.NET framework you will notice that there are not any plans to embed it into the browsers like Java or Flash plugins currently do.
The fact that they decided to make their hotmail service work "better" in IE is a child of the shameful proprietary Active X web that they tried to create.
Their current approach to web client technology is based on a completely different philosophy that embraces standards.
If you study the
You like the MSDN's search !??!!?
The search at the MSDN is nearly useless. It needs to be completely redone. Half the time I am looking for something on the MSDN I have to Google it.
It has one of the worst search algorithms I've ever seen. Whoever came up with it should be fired and replaced.
Actually, I can tell you how to do one better than that. Go to the weblog for my Corporate VP, S. Somasegar, and leave that feedback for him there, or by sending him mail through the Email page. He does read the feedback posted there, and tries to always respond back.
No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
The rebranded WinFX (now .NET Framework 3.0) contains the RTM release of .NET Framework 2.0 (the runtime) as well as WPF (Avalon), WWF, and WCF (Indigo). It represents a superset of the 2.0 runtime.
Yes, I work there too.
I agree that the MSDN search function is worthless, because it is way too inaccurate and will swamp you with lots of topics that are not really related.
But once you found the right article, it tends to be OK. Actually Google can help you there, the chance that it points you to a useful MSDN article is better than using the search function on microsoft.com.
C - the footgun of programming languages
You should have to change almost nothing to get a .NET 2.0 app working in .NET 3.0. The new version is essentially .NET 2.0 plus WinFx.
It's pretty much acknowledged that MSDN's search is awful, hence them changing it. You can test drive the new version and feed back comments onto the search blog (even if they can't get the ratings on blog posts done correctly!).
Yes, this is absolutely correct. Mods? This is definitely an informative post.
No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
Have you logged bugs against the problems you've run into? If you have found migration issues between ASP.NET 1.1 and ASP.NET 2.0 that are not reflected in any of our docs, we'd like to know about it. Please let us know through our feedback portal at http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?Si teID=210, or by posting a message on one of our ASP.NET forums
No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
Hey Spry - XP should automatically ungroup those buttons when you do close other windows and make more room. I can't speak for your exact scenario, and why exactly it wouldn't be ungrouping them when sufficient room exists. I was able to find this feedback link for Windows Vista; you should put forth your thoughts there. No guarantees of a response, but it's certainly better than not submitting feedback at all. Conversely, you may want to send your thoughts on through the Email link on the Windows Ux blog. I see they have no blog posts registered there at all (a pity), but the email link is pretty much guaranteed to be good.
Anyway, back on topic :-). I agree that this is somewhat confusing. We (everyone working in the Developer Division, and all of the people working on the rest of the next-gen Windows stack: WPF, CardSpaces, Workflow Foundation, etc.) live and breathe this stuff every hour of every day, but I can imagine that keeping on top of it under any other circumstances can be tricky. Russ, the Product Unit Manager for the DDCPX team, commented earlier on exactly this point, but I'll reiterate his high-level comments for posterity's sake. Essentially, .NET FX 3.0 is the .NET FX 2.0 (the Whidbey release, and likely what you already have on your computer today), along with a bunch of new frameworks and technologies, including the Workflow Foundation, the Communications Foundation (formerly Indigo), CardSpaces (formerly InfoCard), and Presentation Foundation (formerly Avalon).
In theory, an application written to target v2.0 of the Framework should work 100% as well on 3.0 as it did on 2.0. Of course, in reality it never hurts to double-check, but you shouldn't see any functional differences. It should run just as well.
With regard to Winforms, the technology is still very much alive and kicking. A few of our Product Managers have commented on this far more eloquently than I can, but essentially, we believe that the Windows Forms functionality in .NET will be critical for us and for ISVs for many years to come. Visual Studio uses 7.5 million lines of managed, CLR-using code, virtually all of which uses Windows Forms for its UI today. We'll be using Winforms in our product for quite a while yet. It certainly has not been abandoned. The new stuff (I am a huge fan of WPF) is incredibly cool, and the functionality and power it provides is truly remarkable. However, no one can move over to it overnight, and we totally recognize this fact. Please let me know if you have further questions, and I will be sure to answer them to the best of my ability.
No, but I used to work for Microsoft.
"Not only this, but .NET was supposed to be a common language runtime environment, and now it's encompassing APIs that are not specific to the environment but specific to a certain version of Windows." .NET is supposed to be fully cross platform. Whats more is that it will actually be limitedly cross-platform. They are developing a small subset of the .NET Framework and WinFX to be deployed on other OS's such as linux and OSX (primarily for use with the web but as I understand you should be able to create small desktop apps). .NET 3.0, will be (and the beta is) available on Windows XP (not sure about 2000). .NET has always encorperated Windows specific things, the entire WinForms namespace is predominately wrappers for Windows controls. If anything, WinFX is less specific in that if you can impliment WinFX, as Mono has .NET, you can run your apps on any platform and it will be alot easier to make the controls fit the OS it is running on.
I've not seen any official word that
WinFX, or