.NET Framework

The .NET Framework is a piece of software for Microsoft Windows. It enables for applications created in .NET Programming languages to run on the computer.

Information
Several .NET Framework versions are available

.NET Framework 1.0
The first version of the .NET Framework was released in January of the year 2002.

.NET Framework 1.1
Version 1.1 is the first major revision of the Framework; including the following changes:


 * Built-in support for mobile ASP.NET controls. Previously available as an add-on for .NET Framework 1.0, now part of the framework.
 * Security changes - enable Windows Forms assemblies to execute in a semi-trusted manner from the Internet, and enable code access security in ASP.NET applications.
 * Built-in support for ODBC and Oracle databases. Previously available as an add-on for .NET Framework 1.0, now part of the framework.
 * .NET Compact Framework - A version of .NET Framework for mobile devices; such as Microsoft Windows CE
 * IPv6 support.

.NET Framework 2.0
Introducing a major change in the Framework, the version 2.0 has the following changes:
 * New API features
 * Programming support for x86_64 processor architechtures.

.NET Framework 3.0
The new version of .NET Framework, previously called WinFX is a fundemental part of Windows Vista and is available on Windows XP.

The Framework contains four major new features:
 * WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation, codenamed Avalon
 * WCF - Windows Communication Foundation, codenamed Indigo
 * WF - Windows Workflow Foundation
 * WCS - Windows CardSpace, codenamed InfoCard

.NET Framework 3.5
The 3.5 version of the .NET Framework is the release of .NET Framework after version 3, adding a few new features and improvements, such as improvements to the C# language (3.0 specification), and VB.NET compiler.

.NET Framework 4.0
.NET 4.0 is the current release of the .NET framework, launched alongside Visual Studio 2010, including new features, such as language features for Visual Basic .NET and C, and improvements, such as Parallel Extensions to improve support for parallel computing.

Technical Details
.NET Framework contains the following namespaces:
 * System.Net
 * System.IO
 * System.Deployment
 * System.Drawing (GDI)
 * System.Data
 * System.Windows
 * System.Xml
 * System.Design
 * System.DirectoryServices
 * System.Management
 * System.Messaging
 * Microsoft.CompactFramework
 * Microsoft.DirectX
 * Microsoft.Win32
 * Microsoft.JScript
 * Microsoft.SqlServer
 * Microsoft.VisualBasic
 * Microsoft.VisualC

Cross-Platform
Certain solutions exist to run .NET applications on Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.