“.Net 3.0?! Didn’t we just get 2.0?!” you ask. Well you’re right! less than a year ago microsoft released .net framework 2.0, so why would they make a major release like that in under a year, especially as microsoft! Aren’t they a slow sloth like creature that takes 6 years to release an operating system? You’re right, they are. But 3.0 isn’t exactly another “2.0” nor is it another “1.0” it’s something completely different.

<- Framework 3.0 in all it’s glory. What we’re looking at is microsoft’s 4 tiered architecture to unify the desktop to the browser.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPL) is literally the “presentation” layer for microsoft’s new strategy. What we’ve got is an API that allows the programmer to use XAML to build the UI and visual aspects across platform.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) allows the developer to create data sources that either web or desktop applications can recieve updates, or push data to.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) funny thing is, this is really “WWF” or World Wrestling Foundation (now known as WWE), but I f igure microsoft doesn’t want to be connected with hulk hogan. Anyway, WF is what allows the developer to basically offload the functionality of a UI to the a workhorse application. As a crzy programmer, this is really exciting. What we’re talking about it the ability to create a standalone UI that interacts with a multithreaded, remote (possibly), persistant (don’t worry about computer restarts), monitorable (you can monitor execution), dynamic updates (update workflow during execution) application. Likewow… If what microsoft is promising with the WF comes true, this could allow me to spend less time writing this myself (AJAX etc.) and get the job done sooner, and with better results. Crazy cool, like the hulk.

Windows CardSpace (WC) brings an “Identity Metasystem” to the table. This allows the developer to build a user system on top of a nice and neat API. It seems like you’ll have to take some leaps and bounds to become an “Identity Provider” but the details I’m reading are a little sketchy. We’ll have to follow up on this one.

So That’s the .net 3.0 framework. Not so much of an overall upgrade like 1.1 to 2.0 was, but a very interesting and provacative set of tools for developers to use. You can download the framework at microsoft’s site, or you can buy Windows Vista. It comes with that too. Anyway, I’m not sure when 3.0 stuff will creap into my releases, but I can tell you now, if everything works out like they say it will, it’s going to be an interesting 2007 (as if ’06 wasn’t web 2.0y enough).

note: now they just need to make .net cross platform 🙂