Microsoft releases .Net Framework 3.0

07.11.2006
Microsoft's .Net Framework 3.0, featuring the company's latest innovations in Web services, presentation and workflow, is now available to developers, the company said on Monday.

The availability of the new developer framework will be a highlight of the evening keynote presentation Monday night at the conference. Formerly known as , .Net Framework 3.0 features: the Windows Presentation Foundation presentation subsystem, formerly known as "Avalon"; the Windows Communication Foundation platform for Web services, which had been known as "Indigo", the Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows CardSpace, for identity management.

"From a Windows developer perspective, this is probably the most exciting time to be a Windows developer since Windows 95 launched," said Scott Guthrie, general manager of the Microsoft Developer Division.

Officially, .Net Framework 3.0 has reached the released-to-manufacturing stage. Downloadable , .Net Framework 3.0 will be part of the Windows Vista OS, due to businesses later this year and to consumers early in 2007. Microsoft's Jay Roxe touted what he described as three pillars of Vista and the .Net developer story: building better user experiences, building better connected systems and having a more secure and reliable platform.

Building better user experiences, for example, is "about much more than just having a pretty user interface that looks like it was designed in 2006 instead of 1996," Roxe said. A better user interface provided by Vista makes it easier to offer better data visualization and helps users be more productive, he said.