.NET Blog

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Introducing the .NET Framework 4.5 RC

May 31, 2012 May 31, 2012 05/31/12
Brandon Bray
Update (2017): See .NET Framework Releases to learn about newer releases. This release is now unsupported. Today, we are announcing the .NET Framework 4.5 RC. We are also announcing Visual Studio 2012 RC, as you can read on Jason Zander’s and Soma’s blog. Please visit the Visual Studio 2012 RC downloads page to install both products. We ...

.NET for Metro style apps

April 17, 2012 Apr 17, 2012 04/17/12
Brandon Bray
.NET is now a core part of several Microsoft platforms, and each has focused on specific subset of APIs. A lot of thought has been put into crafting each API surface area. Many of you have asked how the .NET APIs available for Metro style apps were chosen. In the following post, Immo Landwerth – a program manager on the CLR’s Core ...

April 2012 Update for Visual Studio 11 Beta

April 6, 2012 Apr 6, 2012 04/6/12
Web Development Tools Microsoft
April 2012 Update for Visual Studio 11 Beta is available.    For Visual Studio 11 Beta Ultimate, You can install it through Tools->Extension Manager: (image)   For Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Web, you can download it directly and install: April 2012 Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Beta.  Due to a ...

Async in 4.5: Worth the Await

April 3, 2012 Apr 3, 2012 04/3/12
Brandon Bray
Developers often ask for guidance on how to write responsive user interfaces. Reading most books about the .NET Framework over the past ten years, you’ll see coverage of the asynchronous programming model which requires a lot of careful attention while coding. That’s why the async features in the latest versions of C# and Visual Basic are ...

Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Web new features

March 22, 2012 Mar 22, 2012 03/22/12
Web Development Tools Microsoft
In earlier blog, we mentioned that Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Web is available to download. Besides the common features seen in Visual Studio 2010 Web Express, it provides some new functionalities.   TFS support VS11 Express Beta for Web added TFS support which including all of the TFS client features, such as source control, ...

Improving Launch Performance for Your Desktop Applications

March 20, 2012 Mar 20, 2012 03/20/12
Brandon Bray
Application performance is something we hear about all the time. It almost always falls into one of the top three issues when we aggregate all of the feedback channels from .NET developers. While performance has many characteristics, application startup time is something that everyone can easily relate to. With the .NET Framework 4.5 Beta and ...

Visual Studio 11 Beta HTML/CSS editor features

March 12, 2012 Mar 12, 2012 03/12/12
Web Development Tools Microsoft
Visual Studio 11 Beta has some more improvement in HTML and CSS editors over the Developer Preview time. You can see the major feature descriptions through www.asp.net/vnext .  In this channel9 video, Mads Kristensen demonstrated a few great HTML/CSS editor features in VS11 Beta (The video also demos Page inspector features by Jorge ...

Optimizing the .NET Framework Deployment Experience for Users and Developers

March 7, 2012 Mar 7, 2012 03/7/12
Brandon Bray
Rapid development has been one of the enduring themes behind the design of the .NET Framework. We know that authoring application installers is particularly difficult and could be improved. The following post is by Richard Lander from the program management team on the Common Language Runtime. He explains our motivations for introducing a ...