Vista catching up with small businesses - Report

Vista is catching up faster with small businesses although most of the business are in the process.

Small businesses moving to Vista fastest, report says. Find the full story here.

Whats New in .Net Framework 3.5

.Net Framework 3.5 is an enhancement from 3.0 but there are a few interesting features and changes. Some of the new features are listed below.

.NET Framework 3.5
- Language Integrated Query (LINQ) support
- WCF Support for RSS, JSON, REST, POX, ATOM, several WS-* standards and Partial Trust
- New classes in .NET Framework 3.5 BCL
- etc.

ASP.NET 3.5
- Build in AJAX- New ListView and DataPager Controls
- etc.

VS.NET 2008- New Web Design Interface
- Full tooling support in Visual Studio 2008 for WF, WCF, and WPF- JavaScript Debugging and Intellisense- Multi-framework targeting Support- etc.

.NET Framework 3.0 Released

Finally the day has arrived.
The news is that the .NET Framework 3.0 is released & is available for downloading. For more information and download links click here.
Its targetted at Windows XP & Windows Server 2003. Visual Studio Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation has also been released. So, its testing time.........Enjoy the sensational Framework from Microsoft. All the Best.

Windows Workflow Foundation is an extensible framework for developing workflow based applications on windows platform. A Workflow can be defined as a series of steps performed in a specified manner.

A workflow is a model of a human or system process that is defined as a collection of activities. An activity is a step in a workflow, and is the unit of execution, re-use, and composition for a workflow. The map of activities expresses rules, actions, states, and their relations. Designed by laying out activities, a Windows Workflow Foundation workflow is then compiled to a .NET assembly, and is executed on the workflow runtime and the Common Language Runtime (CLR).

We can work on Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in Visual Studio 2005 by installing the Visual Studio Extension for WF (September CTP) released by Microsoft.

There are some very good Technical Articles like Getting Started with WF, Introduction to WF, & Programming Guide on MSDN now for WF.

Also we can have a look at WF Samples & Tutorials for quick learning.

The most interesting part of WF is the way one can design the applications business logic in the designer view & change it even at the run time, as & when required.

We also have a Forum on WF where we can discuss & find answers to our specific issues that we face by eminent Microsoft Guys & other WF experts.

Happy Learning Workflow.

An early look.....

Its exciting, its challenging, its worth venturing into & most of all its fresh from the gardens.......you can literally feel the freshness when you have a look at the new framework from Microsoft Dot Net family. Its called .NET Framework 3.0, formerly WinFX.

We have seen MS-DOS, Win16, Win32 & now WinFX.

To introduce .Net Framework 3.0, its the managed API for the windows platform & it extends the .NET Framework 2.0.

.Net Framework 3.0 September CTP is out this week & this means it has reached a more matured level. As we all are aware of the fact that this framework is to be shipped with the most awaited Microsoft Windows Vista operating system that is due to be released late this year or early 2007.

The framework supports Windows Server 2003 & Windows XP SP2 environment & we can use our very own Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 for building applications on this framework. Microsoft has been very modest this time in the sense that it has allowed us to use & test the upcoming technology that affect us very well in some ways or the other. They have followed the CTP (Community Technology Preview) cycle to release the different beta & Release Candidate (RC) versions of the Framework.

There are 4 main Technologies:

1. Windows CardSpace (formerly "InfoCard")
2. Windows Communication Foundation
3. Windows Presentation Foundation
4. Windows Workflow Foundation.

To know more about these technologies visit the link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/

All the technologies are as exciting as we can imagine & all have their own space in terms of an application development. At present I'm working on Workflow Foundation (WF) & I'll share more of my learning experiences from the Technology.

There are lot more resources on different sites today for anyone who wants to dive into the ocean.

To link a few :

Workflow Foundation

1. http://searchvb.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid8_gci1193920,00.html
2. http://wf.netfx3.com/



Windows Presentation Foundation

1. http://searchvb.techtarget.com/general/0,295582,sid8_gci1189329,00.html

2. http://wpf.netfx3.com/


Windows Communication Foundation

1. http://searchvb.techtarget.com/general/0,295582,sid8_gci1191213,00.html

2. http://wcf.netfx3.com


Windows CardSpace

1. http://cardspace.netfx3.com/content/resources.aspx

2. http://cardspace.netfx3.com/content/introduction.aspx