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. "

Comments

Icredible

[reydelamirienda]

Wow, how innovative! I wish the PHP documentation had user contributions too...

Re:Icredible

[Reality Master 101]

The PHP docs have an unedited "comment" system which is completely different from a Wiki. I wish the PHP docs were a Wiki so that wrong information could be cleanly removed and whatever debate about it could go on a "discussion" page.

Re:Icredible

[reydelamirienda]

Sure, the PHP documentation comments are far form perfect and a wiki would be great, but they have had it for at least 6 years now, and many O.S. projects have their own documentation wikis too, so it isn't that innovative anyway.

Re:Icredible

[BigCheese]

Seems ironic they don't have a wiki when most of the wikis out there are written in PHP.

Web 3.0

[PhreakinPenguin]

I'd like to propose that the first standard of Web 3.0 be to stop coining stupid phrases for every day things. Web 2.0, Dot Com's, etc.

Re:Web 3.0

[castoridae]

But then how can blogging nobodys make a name for themselves?

Re:Web 3.0

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

They can't. But it doesn't matter anyway, now everyone's reading eDiarist 4.0 Beta...

Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[Anonymous Coward]

.NET 1.3 to .NET 2.0 was practically an entire different platform, and I can't get any of my .NET 1.3 software to compile and run right under .NET 2.0.

And now .NET 3.0 is literally an entirely different platform family from .NET 2.0?? Kind of like how JavaScript has nothing to do with Java?

Given that they're the most powerful platform vendor in the world, with the ability to force adoption of virtually any programming environment, language or library that they choose, Microsoft sure does seem to act desperate sometimes.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[rakslice]

Yeah...

From the article: "Microsoft has decided to avoid any confusion in the naming scheme for its core developer technology [...]"

Before my brain shuts down in order to protect itself and I start drooling on myself, I should say that it's one thing for tech journalists to be clueless and incoherent; it's another entirely for them to report something that's exactly the opposite of what's happening just because it's in the corporate press release.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[AaronBrethorst]

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.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[baadger]

'Entirely different platform'? I thought WinFX was based on what MS started with .NET. Renaming it to .NET sounds alot more sensible than 'WinFX', which just sounds corny and gimmicky. Atleast when people hear '.NET' they think of the Internet and everything it's done.

Interesting to note that the WinFX Wikipedia article is now redirecting to '.NET Framework 3.0'

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[alexmipego]

Obviously you don't have any clue about what you're talking about. There is no .Net 1.3; .Net 2.0 is backward compatible and 3.0 is just the 2.0 CLR, Libraries and C# 2.0/VB 8 with the addition of Windows Presentation, Communication, Workflow and InforCard Foundations. Nothing in the .Net CLR will change, just add some new libraries.
Some more details on my blog: http://www.alexandre-gomes.com/

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[baadger]

He may be muddled because of 'Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP3 Developer' which comes with MS Visual Studio 2005. I think it's the equivalent of the .NET 1.0/1.1 SDK...then again maybe not, I never do .NET development.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

*coughshillcough*

Given that his .sig says "Yes, I do work for Microsoft" and has done for ages, and also that his comments are generally informed and relevant, I'm not sure how you can call him a shill. :-)

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get a chance to pass along my comment (below) to someone in Microsoft's marketing department I would appreciate it.

I have largely avoided Microsoft products over the past 20 years because I couldn't easily figure out what is what. It seems like every six months or so Microsoft renames their technologies in an effort to make them sound new. The actual result (in my case anyway) has been to think "Crap! I just got through learning FOO and now they're dropping it for BAR! I'm going to forget about Microsoft as it is clearly a technological treadmill and the people involved have no long term vision of where they are going!".

The fact that BAR is just FOO with a new name and a few tweaks doesn't change things. Now I can't tell when I am reading a three month old article about FOO if *any* of it still applies. It is all incredibly *DAMN* frustrating!

What I want are products with major, minor, and patch version numbers. The product name should never EVER change. Patch number changes should be fixes and only break existing code that depended in some way on the bug. Minor number changes should be enhancements with zero breakage of existing code. Major number changes can break existing code but should try not to.

Thank you for reading and I hope someone in marketing will get the message. I like what I have seen of the latest crop of Microsoft development tools but I am too spooked by Microsoft marketing to believe investing my time in learning the ins and outs won't ultimately be wasted.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[xbrownx]

Maybe he was talking about upgrading from Java 1.3 to .NET 2.0, I can see how that would cause many problems...

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[mycall]

Yeah right. How many years has Win32 and DirectX been in use?

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[AaronBrethorst]

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.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[BalanceOfJudgement]

Ok so this is totally the wrong place to ask this question, but you being a Microsofty and all you'd be the quickest way for me to get an answer to this question...

Is .NET 3.0 REALLY just the next version of .NET? Meaning, can I open up my 2.0 app and only need to change a few things to make it work on 3.0? Or will it be something migrating from MFC to .NET 1.1, where you had to basically completely rewrite everything?

I ask because this actually might impact my job and this is the first I have ever heard of .NET 3.0..

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[russryan]

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.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[shayborg]

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.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay.

So, what are the implications for Mono and portability? Does incorporation of entirely proprietary WinFX essentially make alternate, cross-platform implementations of .Net 3.0 virtually impossible?

I'll put it this way: if it does, I'm alot less interested.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[amliebsch]

Since the .NET dll's live peacefully with each other across versions, you could still be writing .NET 1.0 applications if you really wanted to.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[Trepalium]

The decision to include the WinFX APIs in the .Net framework is a solid decision. The decision to call it the .NET Framework 3.0 is not. It really ought to be 2.1 or 2.5 or something. A lot of new APIs are being added, but all the old stuff is still there, unchanged.

This numbering scheme will make people think this version will have the same impact as the 1.1 -> 2.0 migration, and help further the perception that Microsoft is doing this for Fire and Motion reasons.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[xamomike]

While the guy from Microsoft wrote an informative post (so I can't blame him for anything), I do agree with the parent about confusing updates and ever-changing technologies. There is nothing more frustrating than relying on a code base that changes drastically (hint: DirectX), especially when finding the right documentation for the right version can even be a challenge. 1.1 to 2.0 documented? Sure, to a point. But try to find code to do the same things in MDX1 that will work the same in MDX2. The changes are drastic, I'm sure for the better, but there seems to be little long term vision/shared goals within the company. Just a constant upchurning of changes. I mean really, if you can't get your product structure right the first two revisions, maybe you should let someone else do it.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[TheNetAvenger]

And now .NET 3.0 is literally an entirely different platform family from .NET 2.0?? Kind of like how JavaScript has nothing to do with Java?


I love how the well informed respond...

Actually, .NET 3.0 is .NET 2.0 with all the new Vista stuff strapped on it, like WinFX, etc. .NET 3.0 STILL USES THE 2.0 CLR. (Get where I am going here?) It is .NET 2.0 with new features that also run under the same .NET 2.0 CLR...

This time they didn't change the .NET 2.0 platform, they just added new stuff to it, and new features that also run on the same CLR.

So instead of changes in the CLR, you just a bunch of new features and technology to use, like 3D application desing using XAML as an example.

Understand?

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[JebusIsLord]

Not true at all... why is this modded insightful? WinFX (ahem, .NET 3.0) IS .NET 2.0, with some extra APIs added as well: Windows Presentation Foundation, which uses XAML (an XML dialect) to do form layout, some new SOAP IPC stuff, and some other things.

So the only reason .NET 3.0 isn't a good name is that it IS backwards compatible (which you shouldn't expect given the major number increase). For shame, Microsoft?

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[Vancorps]

You're definitely new to the .Net world and appear to have completely missed the whole existence of Mono which works with Apache on Linux. I believe other platforms are getting it soon as well but your statement is already out of date. A lot of apps will work in mono without much if any trouble. So where's the vendor lock-in exactly?

Of course with us we were running a web server with the 1.1 framework on a 32bit server when we ran into performance issues because we were more than 1000 times the traffic we regularly get. Fortunately this was an Opteron box so we popped on 64bit Windows and the 2.0 framework since 1.1 isn't available. Everything worked without having to make a single change to any of our code.

That is not to say their aren't some funky things that won't transfer over but you speak out of just plain ignorance or prefer to focus on minor details that affect but a few people. With that said I've never had a Windows update break any .Net app unless you chose to code around bugs which were later fixed. That should be easy to determine since every update tells you what is changed and in the case of a framework update which occur rarely you are told exactly what it will break so it should be easy. Your code is documented right?

Of course this is all moot considering updates in any corporate setting don't occur automatically but after happen after approval and testing so you'll know if it'll break your app assuming you have a proper testing environment which I definitely know a few don't. Of course I don't know any development houses which don't since staging on a production server is well, you know, not wise ;)

Don't mean to be harsh but realistic here. You're gripes are completely inaccurate so if you really want to gripe go ahead and find valid gripes. I'm not sure what they would be with the framework but I'm sure there are some out there.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[baadger]

On the other hand, marketing it as a 'minor version' could also impact the products perception ;)

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[AaronBrethorst]

Yes, this is absolutely correct. Mods? This is definitely an informative post.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[AaronBrethorst]

Hey Mike - that's good feedback for the DirectX team to hear. They're not a part of the Developer Division, and I tend not to interact with them on a day-to-day basis. If you ask a question of someone who's involved with DirectX, they'd be much more able to act upon your feedback and give you a sense of where Managed DX is heading than I can. Thanks for passing that along!

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[AaronBrethorst]

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

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[eggsovereasy]

The web server I deal with at work has .NET 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 web apps all running side by side. I even have .NET 2.0 apps in a virtual directory inside a .NET 1.1 app and it all works perfectly. I also have not had a problem with a windows update breaking anything.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[earache]

Well you certainly have proven that you know nothing about .NET, and I hope you can overcome your attitude about it.

If I was your client, I wouldn't want to know that someone on the team is so smug in their lack of understanding and knowledge about the toolset I'm paying them to use. It's not a professional attitude.

Here's a hint, you're working in a services industry Your client is hiring you to perform services. They are defining the parameters of a problem and hiring you to come up with the solution. If there is no wiggle room on the platform, then there is surely a good reason, that or your tech leads have poor client management skills. More than likely there is a back office integration, or their IT department is really dictating the platform, or this new solution needs to fit into a prexisting system, there are a million reasons why and I'm almost positive your client has a good one.

I do tech spec consulting for a living. Basically, VC's hire me to consult on the tech for something they are about to dump a ton of dough in. It's usually guys like me that dictate the platform, and guys like me, that are professionals, don't carry any slant on which platform is better than the other, because making that sort of generalization is pointless and worthless to our clients. We look at our client's problem, break it down into manageable chunks and then see which platform is a best fit. The last 3 projects I worked on all ended up in BSD/Linux + PHP/Java recommendations, but the 4 prior were .NET recommendations.

So, I guess what I'm saying, is that to help out your career, I'd try to steer you towards platform agnosticism. I would urge you to be open minded and eager about broadening your knowledge about all the major platforms out there. I would urge you to turn that frown upside down. There are no politics in client/services work. Platform zealotry or fanatacism will only narrow your career choices, not expand them. Adaptability insures survival.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[Vancorps]

Actually they can and do provide documentation for this since the framework is a development platform. That's what Microsoft's technet and MSDN are all about.

As for Samba that's a poor example since since its interfacing with proprietary technology that Microsoft developed. The .Net Framework is not a proprietary standard despite what you seem to think. Also, in addition to this I seem to recall current versions of Samba work flawlessly with current Windows systems. The only times MS changes CIFS is when there are new security concerns that need to be addressed. So people bash MS for not securing their product and then bash then for securing it at the cost of compatibility. Which is it?

I come for a Novell background mostly but I've always been into Linux and Windows as well, as many platforms as I can get my hands on, the BSDs, OS X, BeOS, and countless others just to see how everyone else does it. Personally I don't think the platform changes you, I think you change the platform. A lot of great things can be done with both Linux and Windows but only if there are creative people that try new things in either of them. Fortunately for both platforms there are tons of people always trying to new things.

With that said I'll agree with another person that responded here in saying that expanding your horizon's just plain makes sense and deminishes your abilities in no way, odds are your previous experience will help you in writing clean code since you come from an environment which is historically been known for not being very forgiving to develop for.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[AaronBrethorst]

Thanks! Although, do bear in mind that I live in Seattle, and am on Pacific time as a result (in fact, as I post this, it's 6:45PM). I posted my original response this morning while drinking my morning cup of coffee and eating granola (I'm out of Cap'n Crunch, sadly); I'm sure there are a lot of people who take an hour or so on a Saturday morning to read through Slashdot and post comments on stories that go up. I haven't spent the entire day on Slashdot, though. I went off to a housewarming barbecue for one of my former developers on the Visual Studio IDE, and came back a couple hours ago, at which point I posted another flurry of comments. As soon as I'm done with this post, I'm out the door again! (so I won't be spending the rest of the evening on /., IAC. :-)

Anyway, most of the people I work with at MS are very dedicated to their jobs and to helping out members of the broader developer commmunity be successful with the tools and libraries that we produce. Since we spend 50-60 hours a week, 48 or 49 weeks a year working on this stuff we have every reason to ensure that the most people receive the most benefit from the time we put into them.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[LegendLength]

I have largely avoided Microsoft products over the past 20 years because I couldn't easily figure out what is what. It seems like every six months or so Microsoft renames their technologies in an effort to make them sound new.

That used to piss me off, but now I just remind myself that the more complex the API is the better. Allow me to explain my reasoning:

Take the old Win32 API for example. It is very ugly and badly designed, I'm sure not many would disagree with that. Try making a reasonably bug free user interface with it, obeying general guidlines from offical software like iexplore & explorer. Toolbars, menu, maybe a list that looks like explorer's file list too.

You'll find that it takes even a seasoned programmer months to fiddle around with the bugs, incompatibilies, undocumented functionality *even when using the built in controls*! (toolbar, menu and listview controls). They are both badly designed and made, just like the API itself.

So why is this good? Because many rival companys or programmers will likely give up after a few weeks/months of wasting time with such a frustrating thing. Sure, many will and do continue to struggle through it, but think of the competition for me if it was a well laid out API that was perfectly understandable and worked as expected.

It relates to the problem of programmers becoming commoditized by easy newer and higher level languages such as vb, access. From the small glimpse I have seen of .net, it does look re-designed from the ground up and much more in the direction of a good API.

I realise there is more to programming than technical knowledge of an API. A non-programmer who knows an API well will still have bad general design ideas, for example. I don't disagree with that at all. But whenever trying to decide what a good new project would be, I would recommend that programmers look for software that is just too hard, or too boring to write. That is where the money is imo.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[SpryGuy]

I switched from Java to .Net, and actually I like it. The Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 development environments kind of suck compared to what I'm used to in the Java world (Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA), but you can add Jetbrain's "Resharper" add in, and it makes it a lot better.

As for C#, it's actually a very decent language. I actually like it better than Java once I got used to it.

Sometimes it annoys me how much "magic" happens under the covers, but for the most part, it's pretty slick. And they solved the "DLL Hell" problem as far as I'm concerned... side-by-side versions of the same DLL can exist, with different applications using the versions they were compiled against. No need to update, and things don't break when you DO upgrade if you don't want them to. You only run into the incompatabilities when you want to upgrade, say, your .Net 1.1 app to .Net 2.0.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[Helldesk Hound]

> So the only reason .NET 3.0 isn't a good name is that it IS backwards
> compatible (which you shouldn't expect given the major number increase).
> For shame, Microsoft?

I am not convinced that major version increments should mean something designed to work on the earlier version should not be able to work on the newer version.

Older versions of Adobe Photoshop can read any file written by any newer version - provided it is saved with compatiblity in mind.

Also, if the software was well planned in what would be in each major release, then it would be easy to provide backwards compatiblity.

The problem is that a certain Redmond based software developer is not capable of this sort of development.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[AaronBrethorst]

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.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[AaronBrethorst]

Hey Spry - can you give me your thoughts on why you think Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 suck? We're in the process of developing the next version of Visual Studio (codenamed Orcas) right now, and this is the perfect time for your feedback to be heard. You refer to Resharper, which makes me think that you're primarily dissatisfied with the extent of the Refactoring support that we have built into VS today. Is there more?

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[SpryGuy]

Is there more?

MUCH more, actually. I've already mentioned most of this stuff to some other MS employee here on Slashdot the last time this subject came up, but I'm perfectly willing to repeat it here.

As far as I'm concerned, Visual Studio is worthless without ReSharper installed. It's like using stone knives and bear skins in a world where I'm used to modern conveniences. Look at Eclipse. Look at IntelliJ IDEA. Look at all the standard features that I, as a developer, have been used to for four or so years. Two years ago when I changed jobs and became a .Net developer, it was like going back to the stone age. Visual Studio 2005 didn't even help that much. I actually turn off most of Visual Studio 2005's additions and use Resharper 2.0 because VS2005's implementations are so vastly inferior.

And it goes way beyond refactoring, but before I leave refactoring, I have to say that VS2005 refactoring "looks" cool (I like the tags that pop up when you rename a variable), but beyond that, the function is barbaric. After repeated problems with me renaming a local variable and having VS2005 try to rename variables in OTHER methods (i.e. acting more like a global search and replace than a true refactoring) I finally gave up on it. And a bunch of my standard and favorite refactorings are just missing.

But the most important things include:

1) Syntax coloring highlighting as I type. No need to compile to see if there are errors. No need to compile to fix the errors. It's always there, all the time, right on the screen. MAJOR time savor. I can't imagine why this isn't in there yet.

2) Code navigation. There's no GO TO type function in Visual Studio. This is unbelievable to me. In Resharper, it's just Ctrl-N and then type the first few characters (or use capital casing for long class names... type FBB to narrow down the completion list to classes like "FooBarBaz") and wild cards to go directly to classes. Jump directly to a class by name without having to remove the hands from the keyboard. No having to search through potentially HUGE tree-view lists, or numerous tabs, or long lists. The Go-To definition and navigating up and down the inheritance hierarchy is also much, much better with Resharper. Go directly to a method name using the "File Structure" pop-up or window.

3) Code restructuring/formatting. VS2005 finally handles adding using statements, but not as well as Resharper. No over view that shows you the file structure with regions and methods (collapsable) allowing you to drag methods around and move them to the proper regions, or keystrokes to move methods up and down a class hierarchy, or before or after the current method.

And let's be honest... the 'code snippets' feature of 2005 is a laughable joke. Compare it to Resharper's, where it can accurately guess appropriate variables and types and names for the various subsitution points. I took one look at the 'foreach' snippet and after laughing and rolling my eyes in disgust, never looked back. It saved me almost zero effort. Meanwhile, resharper's foreach "live template" as see how it should be done.

I could go on and on and on. Developing with VS2003 was a chore. Developing with VS2005 is annoying. Developing with IntelligJ IDEA or Eclipse or VS with Resharper is a pleasure. I can concentrate on the ideas and the functionality and not have to constantly worry about the petty details that computers are typically so good at keeping track of.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[SpryGuy]

I'm guessing you don't experience the 'grouped buttons' phenominon very often then. Take an example: I have half a dozen IE windows open, three instances of Visual Studio, a few command windows, and some other miscellaneous apps, tools, utilities, and what not. Every window has its own indivdual button (my taskbar is two buttons high).

Now, I open one more app, and suddenly all the apps with multiple windows/instances collapse all their buttons into grouped buttons. UGH. Okay, so I close the app I just opened ... but do the buttons spring back the way they were? Nope. In fact, I can continue closing and closing and closing, and the grouped buttons remain grouped. It's a royal pain in the arse.

Like I said, there isn't a SINGLE DAY that goes buy that I am not wishing, praying, and screaming for a way to tell one of those damn grouped buttons to ungroup already. The whole grouping/ungrouping algorithm is just gorped in the extreme.

I'll check out those links you provided. But really, why isn't this annoying people AT MS? Why should it take someone like me to point out an omission so glaringly obvious?

Back on topic: so, when a new revision of the CLR comes out, it won't be CLR 3.0? And when a new revision of C# comes out, it won't be C# 3.0? Or will the version numbers become a jumble, i.e. "The .Net framework 4.0 consists of the CLR 3.0, C# 3.0, WPF 2.0, etc)? Or will everything skip and sync version numbers (i.e. CLR 3.0 will never exist and will jump straight to CLR 4.0 to match the .Net 4.0 nomenclature). Has any thought been given to the future strategy of naming/versioning these things?

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[cakoose]

Older versions of Adobe Photoshop can read any file written by any newer version - provided it is saved with compatiblity in mind.

Yeah, and since raster images are as complex as program source code, the analogy is perfect.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[cakoose]

IF software is well designed, and has followed a proper design process then its complexity is not a factor in how its APIs respond - because those APIs have been determined to provide a given response for a given input even before any coding was ever done in the first place. Any deviation from this is a flaw in the software and should be corrected before it is released.

You might want to read "The Old New Thing" blog; it recounts many instances where developers relied on more than the APIs stated contract (mostly Win32 stuff, but there are .Net examples in there too). And Microsoft does go to great lengths to avoid breaking popular software, but they can't control the development process employed by 3rd-party developers.

Have you taken a look at the list of breaking changes? They're mostly design and bug fixes. They could have created new functions (with the suffix "_New", or something) but I prefer fixing the functions in-place. Not allowing such changes is just going to cause a build-up of cruft. If you just want your older app to continue working, you can still use an older version of .Net, since multiple versions can be installed side-by-side on the same machine.

It's not that Microsoft is particularly incompetent. These problems come up a lot. The C and C++ standards, the Java API, the Linux kernel, Apache module API, etc. You're just not going to get it right on the first try. The reason Photoshop can do backwards compatibility is because the data it deals with is much more restricted than program code. It's easy for Photoshop to automatically upgrade old file formats. It's harder to do the same thing for source code (though Micrsoft has released migration tools that help).

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[cakoose]

You miss my point - which is that the APIs of *well-designed* and then *well-written* software should provide output that conforms to its design specification.

So any API with implementation bugs can't be considered well-designed and well-written? Doesn't that rule out almost everything out there? Is there a library of comparable complexity to .Net that you believe is well-designed and well-written?

Also, part of the problem is that developers end up relying on unspecified behavior. One example (from The Old New Thing blog, I believe) is a querying function that returns some system information in a list. In .Net 1.1, the list was in sorted order. The fact that it was sorted was a side-effect of the implementation and wasn't stated in the function contract, but some developers ended up (probably inadvertently) relying on that behavior. In .Net 2.0, the list was no longer sorted. The output is still according to the specification, but the client application no longer works properly. This is not Microsoft's fault, but they might end up taking the blame in a generic "I tried running on .Net 2.0 and my app broke" kind of way.

With photoshop - it's file format was designed so that all versions of Photoshop can open any photoshop file saved by any other version of Photoshop. It was deliberately designed to be able to do that.

Older version of Photoshop can read the newer file formats? If so, how do they add new features and make them still work? Having to degrade gracefully is severly limiting. If it's only backwards compatibility, then I think Microsoft seems to be able to do that in MS Word. If there are, in fact, any backwards compatibility problems in the design itself, then yes, I consider that to be a screw up.

One difference between something like a Photoshop/Word documents and program source code is that nobody was ever supposed to read the former. They can add ugly-looking hacks (such as version numbers on each data structure) to make things work because end users don't have to look at the raw data. With source code, there is the occasional version numbering suffix, but doing that too frequently will make things worse than just fixing the API in-place and temporarily inconveniencing the developers that relied on the broken behavior.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[cakoose]

My troll-o-meter reads "probable", but I just can't help myself. Here we go again...

So any API with implementation bugs can't be considered well-designed and well-written?

Agreed!

Doesn't that rule out almost everything out there? Is there a library of comparable complexity to .Net that you believe is well-designed and well-written?

I have no idea about Dot Net - I have never used it - I don't use M$ software.

What's the largest piece of software you know of that is free of implementation bugs? Photo$hop[1] definitely has bugs.

Well who is the silly sausage in that case! If it is not specified then there are no guarantees. Assumption is the mutha of all stupidities.

The point is that this isn't Microsoft's fault, but they'll get the blame for "breaking" things between versions.

But older versions of Photoshop can indeed open and read Photoshop files saved by newer versions of photoshop that contain data that relate to features contained only in the newer version.

This is why software is more complicated than a Photoshop file. What would you do in .Net? Tell the JIT to insert no-ops for unresolved function calls?

"End users" generally never see software source code.

But programmers do and when you're talking about a library, they're the end users. Adding fine-grained version numbering to function names affects the programmer; it's ugly and I prefer a breaking change if it is enough of an improvement over the old API.

[1] OMG! I can't believe how hard I just pwned Adobe by replacing the 'S' with a dollar sign. They may never recover.

Re:Microsoft just seems to be kind of flailing.

[Siberwulf]

I'm confused. As a developer, versioning software is an important issue. I've always held that if you're redoing a whole system, or changing a significant portion of it, then it is appropriate to increment a major release number. (1.1 - 2.0)

However, if you are fixing bugs, rounding out features or something that will not break previous versions, then you increment a minor release number (1.0 -> 1.1)

This seems to be neither. If this really is .NET 2.0 + WinFx, it should be labeled as such. It should be called "WinFx for the .NET 2.0 Framework", or something along those lines. It is not grounds for a new version, as the actual framework per se is not changing, but rather just getting an addition.

My .02

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[DavidLeblond]

Huh? If the website uses .NET Framework 3.0, you don't need to download the .NET Framework. Do you need to download it now for ASP pages?

You can use .NET as a backend for "Web 2.0" you know... "AJAX" != PHP. You can use ASP too, whether it be .NET 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[phdhell]

Hmmm, until they package the runtime with IE 7.0, which they distribute automagically to anyone using Windows Update...
(of course this'll be a security update for IE6...)

Suddenly you need this Net 3.0 to view your messages just so on hotmail....

Sounds horribly familiar...

Re:First post

[Spy der Mann]

Can it really be true?

Sorry, that post has a bug.

Here's "First Post v2.0"! :)

Makes perfect sense

[suv4x4]

I mean see how much better Netscape 8 is compared to Firefox 1.5.

And seriously, it does make sense to align it with their .NET brand since after killing the "cool code names" (Avalon, Indigo) and turning then into indecypherable abbreviations (WPF, WCF, WTF and so on), people got confused, and slap WinFX on top of all that.

Of course .NET also is not a great way to describe it since it's an OS programming framework, not just network related, but what the hell..

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[Philoushka]

From TFA: it's about the .Net Framework (the programming object model), not about the nebulous "web 2.0" bullcrap. No digg.

Re:First post

[__aaclcg7560]

Sure!

Windows Vista .NET 3.0 is the product everyone is just dying for!

Or, Revenge Of The Marketing Department Nerds .NET 3.0!

Pick your poison, drink up and be happy.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[MarkByers]

That sounds very exciting, but will .NET 3.0 actually embrace Web 2.0, and make it easier to write Web 2.0 applications? If not, then people who want to use Ajax will continue to switch to things like Ruby on Rails.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[adolfojp]

Please, educate yourself before trolling utter rubbish like the one in your comment. Some people might believe it.

The .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.

You don't need to download .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.

Active WinFX 3.11 for Workgroups.

[MULTICS_$MAN]

With dynamic OLE licensing 6.23.0 That's my vote.

Not News

[Anonymous Coward]

WinFX was a technology code word for the new .Net based replacement to the Win32 API. It's ALWAYS been .Net from the get go. Move along ... nothing to see here

Re:Not News

[cnettel]

It's not a replacement. It's also news that it would be called .NET Framework 3.0, as the framework already contains different components (like the "actual" framework, including the VM and other APIs) and there have also been other plans already presented for what most of us assumed would be .NET 3.0 (LINQ and all, probably tied to VS.NET "Orcas").

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[Philoushka]

The .NET Framework does not currently have Ajax enabled features intrinsicly built in, but Microsoft does have a project in developement to enable your ASP.NET applications with Ajax capabilities - Atlas.NET http://atlas.asp.net/

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[adolfojp]

It already does. There are a couple of excellent AJAX libraries available for ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0.

Microsoft has also released Atlas beta, which in my opinion is very elegant and effective. (It currently only works with Firefox and IE but should support everything else when it reaches 1.0)

Re:First post

[codequak]

It didn't say anywhere that .NET 3.0 is meant to be a replacement for Web 2.0 ... since .NET is a framework and Web 2.0 is a collection of technologies behind a new way of thinking about web applications. .NET 2.0 existed before Web 2.0 was even coined, so they are not playing the feature number game.

Cool Aid

[truthsearch]

I went to the main "WinFX" page and followed the first link about the rename. Right there in black and white I see all I need to know:

".NET Framework has becomes the most successful developer platform in the world."

I'm going to put down my cup of coffee, pick up the cool-aid and jump right on it! Just another Microsoft developer blogger trying to market for them. And they wonder why only current customers listen.

On a related note, I thought WinFX was originally just the replacement for WinForms, the original .NET objects for laying out application windows. One reason I dropped Windows development is because I got sick of all the ever-changing libraries. And I don't mean gradual improvements. I mean every year they tell you to drop a whole library and switch to something completely different.

Re:Cool Aid

[sjelkjd]

Soma is not a random blogger, he is the VP of developer division. How did this get modded insightful?

Re:Cool Aid

[Firehed]

And as the diagram would indicate, they've done nothing but change the name appearance - the featureset remains identical. Hey - that's just like Windows Vista!

S.O.P.

[scottsk]

"purely a branding change" -- Standard operating procedure for MS -- they rename their stuff like clockwork. Trace the history of DDE, OLE, COM, DCOM, ActiveX, .Net etc etc etc (same basic stuff) or their alphabet soup of database access methods which all boil down to that incredible confusing ODBC control panel doodad. (And you have to install the drivers on EVERY DESKTOP, too, or at least you used to...) If MS is not renaming their techologies, they're reorganizing the company.

Re:S.O.P.

[bladesjester]

Thankfully, the odbc control pannel isn't so bad anymore. You do, however, have to configure the odbc stuff for either:
1) Every User on the machine that's going to use it if the database lives in their account
or
2) The machine that the database runs on if you want it to run on the machine and not in the user's account (say a server or an app on a box that several users may use)

Oh, and if your program is in java and you want to connect to an Access database with the JDBC-ODBC bridge, there's another quirk. If you want to change data in the database, you have to use a PreparedStatement instead of just a Statement or it won't work. Nobody really knows why. You just do.

Re:S.O.P.

[cnettel]

Minor correction, DDE and OLE1 were closely related. OLE2 was the first use of what was then called COM. .NET maintains a fairly good compatibility layer to COM, but so it also does to C/Pascal style of DLL (or even static) linking, but fact is of course that the COM part was what the VB fans cared about.

I detest this change (WinFX => .NET 3.0), as the CLR, the actual VM of the environment, hasn't changed. On the other hand, it's still fairly consistent compared to Java version numbers... I guess :-)

Re:S.O.P.

[labreuer]

If you're a Linux developer you don't change the name, you just create a new distribution!

*ducks*

Re:S.O.P.

[Jugalator]

For once I like the renaming, especially if MS do internally consider this to be an update to the .NET Framework. Then it's just confusing to call it something as obscure as "WinFX" (many believed FX was for "effects" too, which it wasn't). The only unfortunate thing I can see about this rename is that they picked a bad brand in the first place.

Re:This could represent a step forward

[Afroblanco]

So long as you know what function you're looking for, it's great.
 
Bingo.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[chriseyre2000]

The dotnet framework already has something very much like ruby on rails: monorail (you can google for it)

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[adolfojp]

.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.

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 .NET framework you will notice that there are not any plans to embed it into the browsers like Java or Flash plugins currently do.

Re:One-upsmanship

[Tim C]

Troll, huh? One fairly major part of the whole Web 2.0 buzz is AJAX. AJAX (at least as it's usually implemented) relies on the XMLHttpRequest object, which was created by MS.

Now it's true that noone really used it for a long time, partly because it was only implemented by IE. It's also true that you can simulate asynchronous requests using hidden frames (something my company did back in 99), but that also never really took off (and probably won't now).

I think it's fair to say that MS were ahead of everyone else. I think it's also fair to say that they completely squandered their lead, sitting on a technology that they didn't have the vision to use to the full.

More confusing

[HalAtWork]

As if people weren't confused enough as to what .NET was anyway... At first Microsoft had named their future version of their OS "Windows.NET", they have .NET My Services web services, there's a .NET conference, a ".NET Enterprise Server", a .net TLD.

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.

Now they're bringing this same confusion to WinFX? WinFX used to be the three pillars to the new Windows API to be included in Vista, encompassing Avalon (presentation layer), Indigo (communications layer), and WinFS (metadata database for the filesystem). Then some of these pillars were dropped, and now apparently according to Wikipedia there are four pillars. I'm not sure if these will still be available for Windows XP, and where Windows 2000 stands. Not only that, but will Mono have to re-implement major parts of Windows just to be .NET 3.0 compliant?

Anyway, all this makes me wonder, what is MS trying to accomplish with this moving-target definition of WinFX and .NET? They should just hold all announcements until they ship a product, IMHO.

Re:More confusing

[AstroDrabb]

what is MS trying to accomplish with this moving-target definition of WinFX and .NET? They should just hold all announcements until they ship a product, IMHO.

MS is the spoiled child that always needs all the attention. MS will always tell customers that the next "great" version is coming. However, once that time comes, the date always slips. When was the last time MS released one of its core products on time with all promised features? MS only makes these "announcements" because they want to keep their customers eyes on them instead of having them possibly look to Linux or Mac or some other company.

I have done C#/.Net under MS for a while now. I recently started using Mono/C#/Gtk# under Linux and find it very solid for C#, ASP.NET v1.1 work. Mono's .Net 2.0 support is almost complete. Monodevelop has a new Gui builder named Stetic that is usable. Stetic is still very new and certaily needs more work. However I was able to use it to do my Gui building without issues. As you build the Gui, you just click on a widget/control and click the "Bind to field" button to have Stetic create the widget/gui instances for you. Then you can get to doing all your coding like you would with Visual Studio. Pretty nice so far and with more people from the community getting involved, Monodevelop/Stetic will be a great C#, VB.Net, and ASP.Net development IDE.

Re:More confusing

[AJanuary]

"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."
I've not seen any official word that .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).
WinFX, or .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.

Re:More confusing

[thallgren]

I work as a consultant and my boss and the sales persons here have asked many times "what .net is" over the last years. Especially when everything was ".Net" it was really hard to explain. Windows.Net, Passport.Net and so on. Sometimes it feels like MS deliberately want people to have a very FUD'ish and fuzzy picture of their stuff. I remember a discussion when Java was pretty new and a fellow consultant argued that ActiveX would do much the same. He is far from dumb, and that makes the point how fuzzy MS marketing really is.

Re:More confusing

[Jugalator]

I'm not sure if these will still be available [about.com] for Windows XP, and where Windows 2000 stands.

WCF and WPF will be backported, yes. I doubt to 2000, but definitely to XP and Server 2003.
(actually, they already have been and is downloadable if you wish to check them out)

Name Changes

[Joebert]

Last minute name changes seem to be getting popular at Microsoft.
I wonder if it has anything to do with domain name scalpers &or the typo/bogus/phishing-domain stuff they've got going on.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[MarkByers]

Slashdot is my education!

Thanks for the correction, though I hope you understand that the concern of accessibility I have is valid rather than dismissing it as a troll. It cannot compete with Web 2.0, but it can enable it, as other posts as well as yours have pointed out.

Let's hope they can release something innovative.

Vista?

[kripkenstein]

TFA says, "Microsoft is continuing to roll out--slowly but surely--new branding that will be part of its overall Windows Vista campaign". So, supposedly, this is part of the marketing strategy for Vista.

I guess when your product isn't good enough, you need other ways to get it sold.

Re:Vista?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

I guess when your product isn't good enough, you need other ways to get it sold.

Or Microsoft could just give away their product for free, like other vendors who make products that aren't "good enough" to sell to the public.

Re:Vista?

[InsertCleverUsername]

> Or Microsoft could just give away their product for free, like other vendors
> who make products that aren't "good enough" to sell to the public.

Actually... They do give it away for free, along with coding tools:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default. aspx

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[suv4x4]

Please, educate yourself before trolling utter rubbish like the one in your comment. Some people might believe it.

That's ironic...

You don't need to download .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.

That's where you're wrong. While .NET is a great technology on the server side where it can send HTML to the browsers, it does act as a client too, especially in Vista, where it has a new rich graphical UI framework (Avalon) and is basically the equivalent of Java's applets. The graphical UI of older .NET apps is called WinForms. .NET apps can run in the browser or as standalone exe files.

Moderation

[Asztal_]

Maybe they should have moderation. (Score: -1, This deserves to be on http://thedailywtf.com/)

Oh well. Think of it as an opportunity, nay, an encouragement, to feel smug and/or point and laugh :-)

Re:This could represent a step forward

[Embedded2004]

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.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[adolfojp]

Slashdot is my education too. I am sorry for snaping at you like I did. I have learned a lot from this community, however, it seems to be completely anti MS to the point of having people wilfully spreading misinformation.

I believe using the right tool for the right job. Every tool shines in a particular situation. I like Debian for database, file, print and domain servers. I like Ubuntu and SuSE for bussiness clients. I like .NET servers for web services. I like Windows for games and engineering apps and Macs for... well... "cool people", mainly graphic artists and 14 year old girls. ;-)

Silent installs

[nurb432]

Umm how many people got Net2 runtimes via autoupdate, while they are on 24/7 broadband? Few people will even know it came, so the raw size of it wont matter to most people in the long run.

Re:Silent installs

[PuddyT]

*shrug* ... Ah, I know I had to specifically go in and select it since it was not a mandatory install.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[adolfojp]

Yes, .NET targets rich client apps and browser apps. However, to use the web you use a web browser, not a rich client. The only way that they could break compatibility and force you to download the .NET runtime is to convert IE into a rich client platform. Could they do that? Yes they could. Are they giving any indication that they are going to do that in the near future? Not at all.

About rich clients with .NET web services. While they work great with winforms they also work great with GTK. I developed a live scoreboard that transfers data from a rich WinForms client to .NET web services. I am currently developing linux GTK# clients for Windows .NET web services with mono.

Re:This could represent a step forward

[mugnyte]

  The MSDN documentation is lacking, but it exists. I don't think the developer base ignores it. But there are numerous sites already devoted to dev-level sharing (code exchange, the o'reilly pages, etc).

  MS already has too many channels for information sharing (TV productions, podcasts, engineer/team blogs, forums, help pages, etc).

  It would be nice if they consolidated, and improved the partitions of the information. MS has long been neglecting their help-searching algorithms. If they got their act together with their "improved search" on MSN and a consolidated info database, i'd be able to see reference, examples, RW usage patterns, bugs and workarounds all from a single dashboard.

Re:This could represent a step forward

[AstroDrabb]

The searching function will often point you some random topic like Windows Mobile when you're looking for something related to SQL Server.

Just search MSDN with Google! The first thing that should be done with this MSDN-Wiki thing is someone should make a Javascript created search box on MSDN that uses Google to search MSDN. ;-)

Re:One-upsmanship

[mycall]

Lets say Outlook Web Access, released in Exchange 2000, was the first fully AJAX application (it even used WebDAV to access the message store).

Re:This could represent a step forward

[mycall]

check out http://www.koders.com/ http://www.codefetch.com/ http://www.codase.com/ http://www.bigbold.com/snippets/ and http://swik.net/ sometime.. plenty of source code out there to learn from.

going offtopic

[heinousjay]

There's almost never a good reason to use a plain Statement anyway. PreparedStatements handle proper parameter escaping automatically, and most drivers will cache them for reuse. There's a slight increase in complexity for creation, but there are a ton of libraries to ameliorate that for you.

I don't allow Statements to be used in any code that falls under my responsibility as a matter of course. I don't get why anyone would use them.

Re:going offtopic

[bladesjester]

I agree. It's just one of those little quirks though - X works, Y doesn't.

I think my only complaint about writing prepared statements is that I have to double check to make sure I have the right number of question marks in the statement. This is no problem at all, but it does occasionally mess with you if you're tired =]

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[suv4x4]

Yes, .NET targets rich client apps and browser apps. However, to use the web you use a web browser, not a rich client. The only way that they could break compatibility and force you to download the .NET runtime is to convert IE into a rich client platform. Could they do that? Yes they could. Are they giving any indication that they are going to do that in the near future? Not at all.

Yea "not at all", they've only allowed .NET appplications to run in Internet Explorer 7 right off the web (in sandboxed mode, like applets and Flash), and you "only" can intermix it with existing HTML pages and you can "only" communicate from .NET to JScript that operates within HTML and back.

If it's a matter of download numbers...

[tchernobog]

...I wonder why they hadn't renamed it to "nude pics", or even "fr33 p0rn 4U". Downloads would have reached a bizzillion in far less than week.

On a more serious note, I wonder if this is just the old renowned way to force something down users' throat: just one more occasion to make users agree on a if-we-blow-your-computer-you-can't-sue-us, will-send-your-private-infos-to-third-parties, your-old-programs-won't-work-after-this EULA.

Since a lot of spam I received through the ages tries to have you to download some (fake) patch to protect you to some non-existant virus, exploiting your trust on a well-known trademark, it could be that this time it is the vendor that is (again) trying to make you "buy" something you don't need.

Nothing new in this, I know. Just pointing it out.

Search is crap but the content is not so bad

[Lonewolf666]

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.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[adolfojp]

This is some very interesting information. Maybe I am wrong. Some more research might alter my perspective on the technology.

Could you provide some links or examples please? :-)

Re:This could represent a step forward

[blowdart]

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!).

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[heinousjay]

Oh, you mean the same way ActiveX, Java, and Flash have done it for years?

Re:This could represent a step forward

[jrumney]

The search at the MSDN is nearly useless.

Not just the search, even if you know where on MSDN to find the information you are looking for, it is next to impossible to navigate. Clicking on "Platform SDK" in this list of topics takes you to some legal bullshit page in the preface for that manual, with no interesting child nodes and seemingly no way out other than the back button. Until one day you figure out by accident that clicking the "Up One Level" link takes you not back to the main list of topics, but to the table of contents for the Platform SDK manual.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[suv4x4]

Oh, you mean the same way ActiveX, Java, and Flash have done it for years?

Yes, in exactly that way :D

I'm not arguing it's not been done before. I'm personally making my money with JS and Flash coding, among other things.
But it also has to be noted that WinFX has the advantage if being preinstalled with Windows Vista, which is very important given how huge it is.

Flash also came with Windows 2000 and XP and I hope Microsoft cheats itself into delivering Flash 8 with Vista as well, but it's not guaranteed. Even if doesn't god bless Flash is a pretty small download (Flash 9 will be 1MB or less still).

Adobe knows WinFX and Vista are their enemy that can kill Flash, up to the community to wake up and realize it too (actually a lot of people already realize it).

Re:One-upsmanship

[Jugalator]

Micorsoft just wants to stay ahead of everyone else, so Web 2.0 means .Net 3.0, Web 3.0 will mean .Net 4.0 and so on. This is their cheeky way of making it seem like they are ahead of the game. Branding doesn't make up for crappy products.

How can you even compare .NET to the AJAX of "Web 2.0"?

And how can this Slashdot article do it?

The only relationship I can see is that .NET *can* do web "stuff". It has no focus specifically on asynchronous XML though, or even the web. (well, ASP.NET has, but we're talking about the .NET Framework in general here) The .NET Framework is just a more updated framework to let developers write apps that run in a sandbox like Java. You can write an offline console application in .NET if you like, and actually that's an explicitly supported application type among others.

Re:One-upsmanship

[Jugalator]

One more thing, .NET 3.0 is to succeed 2.0 which succeeded 1.1 and in turn 1.0. So this is more about natural version progression (WinFX/.NET 3.0 has *major* additions applied to the framework) more than anything else, like version pumping. I'd say it's just coincidence, and wouldn't be surprised if WinFX has internally been versioned 3.0 for some time already.

Call it whatever.

[miffo.swe]

People are enough confused as it is so the chance of anyone getting a grip about what dotnet really is supposed to be is slim to none.

Ajax is where i place my bet because it works. Ajax is being implemented by multiple sources and have shown to perform well. For the untrained eye dotnet seems like all hype and no show. A slew of marketing hype with nothing tangible in it.

Re:Call it whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if the 'untrained eye' thinks it's all hype and no show then that's good enough for me. Who needs people with experience and expertise when we can evaluate merit by letting ignorant people look at things.

Re:One-upsmanship

[JebusIsLord]

It has been versioned 3.0 for some time now... the WinFX framework beta is called "WinFX Framework 3.0 beta". They just added the ".NET" back.

Re:One-upsmanship

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"Exactly. It's the same as when they went from Word 2 to Word 6 because of the release of WordPerfect 5."

Idiot, Microsoft went from WinWord 2 to WinWord 6 to get in sync with the version number of MacWord (MacWord was introduced well before WinWord).

Exactly! (where did my mod points go?)

[mr_tenor]

This is the first thing I thought of as well. Mono's largely compatible with Microsoft's .NET implementation. Having something completely different AND more proprietary than .NET 2.0 called .NET 3.0 is a royal kick in the balls. "Not .NET compatible" is something that simple minded people might yap on about now, and I don't guess that Microsoft would discourage such confusion.

Of course, I seem to recall some of the original explanations behind Mono being "We just think the language and runtime are a good idea, regardless of MS .NET" and "They can't change the standardised part" (not so sure about the latter, actually).

(I personally wouldn't care if Windows programmers choose to inflict pain and suffering upon themselves with MS APIs, but every now and then I need to do Windows programming, and thus am exposed to the world of pain...)

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[Overly Critical Guy]

Microsoft's goal is to use Internet Explorer to deliver apps through the browser, so having client-side .NET installed will be a requirement in the future. They want to tie the web to Windows and Internet Explorer by making it a Windows application delivery platform (Avalon and other technologies can run right in an Internet Explorer window). You're talking only about web pages, not full web apps. The push will happen, just wait and see.

Personally, I'm not really excited about anything Microsoft is doing anymore, especially with .NET which is far too slow compared to speedy native frameworks like Cocoa.

Re:One-upsmanship

[Overly Critical Guy]

I think it's fair to say that MS were ahead of everyone else.

Doesn't seem like it if they never used it, and you could do the same thing through other alternatives.

It's not like Microsoft invented the idea of a client-side dynamic web page before anyone else.

Re:One-upsmanship

[Overly Critical Guy]

Wikipedia says in Word's version history:

1993 - Word 6 for Windows (renumbered "6" to bring Windows version numbering in line with that of DOS version, Macintosh version and also WordPerfect, the main competing word processor at the time)

I think you've have to be pretty naive to ignore what was going on with the version jump.

Unwanted fringe benefits

[Zantetsuken]

I think those 700 subscriptions must be (I hope no real person is dumb enough - unfortunately they are) M$ employees given subscriptions instead of health-care benefits...

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[XMyth]

It's really very rarely done because it's such a PITA to get working...but here's one (old) article on it...

http://devcenter.infragistics.com/Articles/Article Template.Aspx?ArticleID=1264

just googled for it right quick

now is the .NET 3.0 MS was working on become 4.0?

[thisislee]

I mean the features I've seen mentioned like the XQuery-ish syntax to query data structures. Will this still be part of 3.0 or is that slated for a later version no longer called 3.0

Not always a bad idea.

[SanityInAnarchy]

You know, I like my stripped down Linux desktop. I don't usually install the KDE or Gnome libs, and avoid programs that would require me to.

But you know what? Dependencies aren't always bad. My system, like most, comes bundled with glibc. And, in a proprietary world, a virtual machine (compile once, run anywhere) makes a lot of sense, especially if you can make it as common on a Windows system as glibc is in the Unix world.

I like the idea of .NET being bundled with Windows. If MS can reasonably keep to the standard, and keep the standard reasonable, I could develop apps on my Linux box, test them on my Mac, and deploy them on Windows, and people would just double-click the EXE and never know it used .NET, or that it was written for anything other than Windows. I doubt that would become a reality -- pretending to support a platform you don't test against is suicide -- but bundling .NET is a step in the right direction, technologically.

Sucks for Java, but I don't like Java much right now. .NET makes it easier to call out to the standard environment, and other languages. And while it does make it easier to tie yourself to a platform, it also makes it easier to use nice cross-platform libraries like sdl, wxwindows, opengl...

So, technologically, bundling is the right thing here. But MS isn't a technology company, so this is probably motivated at least partly by their ongoing war against Java.

Re:One-upsmanship

[bruckie]

AJAX (at least as it's usually implemented) relies on the XMLHttpRequest object, which was created by MS.

Now it's true that noone really used it for a long time, partly because it was only implemented by IE. It's also true that you can simulate asynchronous requests using hidden frames (something my company did back in 99), but that also never really took off (and probably won't now).

Actually, hidden frame requests are still used (e.g. in Gmail), and for good reason: they don't break the back button. XMLHttpRequest communication has no notion of page transitions, and so the back button doesn't go back to the previous state; instead, it usually exits an AJAX app completely.

In contrast, IFRAME navigation does implement page transitions, which can make web apps more user friendly since the back button does what people expect.

Re:now is the .NET 3.0 MS was working on become 4.

[AaronBrethorst]

You're referring to LINQ, right? LINQ is part of the 3.5 stack (previously called WinFX 3.5, and now, I assume, .NET FX 3.5), as described in this chat on MSDN.

Mads Torgersen[MSFT] (Expert): Q: This is a repeat in case it got lost: Can you give us a sense of the timing on working with C# 3 vs WinFX? If I were writing a book on each, which shoudl come first, and to what degree is one dependent on the other?
A: WinFX 3.0 is a Windows Vista timeframe release. We then release WinFX 3.5 which contains the LINQ libraries in the VS Orcas timeframe with C# 3.0.

Re:Web 2.0 beats Net 3.0

[AJanuary]

WPFe - http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1933 67

.NET is a top level domain name...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's just about time Microsoft gave it up. I can't even understand what versions of windows ship with what services or their silly licensing. I can have a linux box up and running in the time it would take me to understand Microsofts delusional products strategy. Here's to the MS marketing folk, all my decisions are easier thanks to your efforts (-:

Easy is good.

[cakoose]

That used to piss me off, but now I just remind myself that the more complex the API is the better. Allow me to explain my reasoning:

[snip]

So why is this good? Because many rival companys or programmers will likely give up after a few weeks/months of wasting time with such a frustrating thing. Sure, many will and do continue to struggle through it, but think of the competition for me if it was a well laid out API that was perfectly understandable and worked as expected.

Great. Now everyone is wasting time beating crappy APIs into submission instead of working on useful functionality. Makes you wish Win32 only came with Intercal bindings.