John Lamansky

I’m just getting into .NET Framework 3.0 development (that is, I will be, as soon as I’m able to get the SDK to actually install :roll:), and I found Microsoft’s “Ready for a New Day” page (intended to help developers get started with .NET Framework 3.0, Office 2007, and ASP.NET AJAX development) very helpful.

It includes links to, among other things, download the .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package (which is for running .NET Framework 3.0 applications), the Windows SDK (which is for developing them), and the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (which is for integrating .NET Framework 3.0 with Visual Studio 2005).

This .NET Framework 3.0 stuff is very exciting, especially the XAML stuff.

By the way, considering that this post contains 7 instances of “.NET Framework 3.0″, anyone know if there’s some sort of acronym that I can be using?

I was reading about the new System.Speech namespace in the .NET Framework 3.0 and I thought, “Cool, it looks like I’ll be able to do another version of my BERT program.”

Here’s how my BERT test works in 3 easy steps:

1. You speak a sentance into your attached microphone.
2. BERT uses Windows’ speech-to-text functionality to try to figure out what you said.
3. BERT uses Windows’ text-to-speech functionality to say what Windows thinks you said back at you.

Windows XP, in short, fails miserably; although it does make for a good laugh.

We’ll see if Vista fares better.

Though being a relatively old article (February 2006), I thought this MSDN New Zealand newsletter article was worth mentioning. While Googling to see if there was a way to use XP’s text-to-speech capabilities using the .NET Framework, I stumbled across this article that talked about the System.Speech namespace that will debut in .NET Framework 3.0 (a.k.a. WinFX):

System.Speech… allows developers to easily speech-enable Windows Forms applications and apps based on WinFX in both Vista and Windows XP. In addition, there’s an updated COM Speech API (SAPI 5.3) to give native code access to the enhanced speech capabilities of the platform.

Speech technology encompasses two technologies: synthesizers and recognizers. A speech synthesizer takes text as input and produces an audio stream as output. Speech synthesis is also referred to as text-to-speech (TTS). A speech recognizer, on the other hand, does the opposite. It takes an audio stream as input, and turns it into a text transcription.

Microsoft has a webpage titled “Deploying Microsoft .NET Framework Version 3.0″ that has oodles of info about the new product that was previously known as WinFX.

Here’s what I found really exciting:

Because .NET Framework 3.0 is an additive release and uses the core run-time components from .NET Framework 2.0, it is completely backward compatible with the earlier version. Your existing .NET Framework 2.0 based-applications will continue to run without any modifications and you can safely continue your investments using the technologies that shipped with .NET Framework 2.0.

In addition:

The .NET Framework 3.0 is installed by default on Microsoft Windows Vista.

I’m assuming this means that .NET Framework 2.0 applications will be Vista-compatible. Cool!

According to a post on “Somasegar’s WebLog”, WinFX has been renamed to .NET Framework 3.0.

When speaking to developers about WinFX one question that repeatedly comes up is, “WinFX sounds great, but what happens to .NET?” .NET Framework has becomes the most successful developer platform in the world. Developers know and love .NET.

The .NET Framework has always been at the core of WinFX, but the WinFX brand didn’t convey this. The WinFX brand helped us introduce the incredible innovations in terms of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and the newly christened Windows CardSpace (WCS) formerly known under the codename “InfoCard.” The brand also created an unnatural discontinuity between previous versions of our framework and the current version.

With this in mind we have decided to rename WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. .NET Framework 3.0 aptly identifies the technology for exactly what it is – the next version of our developer framework.

The change is in name only and will not affect the technologies being delivered as part of the product. The .NET Framework 3.0 is still comprised of the existing .NET Framework 2.0 components, including ASP.NET, WinForms, ADO.NET, additional base class libraries and the CLR, as well as new developer-focused innovative technologies in WPF, WCF, WF and WCS:

The .NET Framework 3.0 will still ship with Windows Vista, and will be available down-level for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as planned. This change doesn’t affect in any way the ship schedules of either Windows Vista or the .NET Framework 3.0 itself.

What I find weird is that .NET Framework 3.0 doesn’t seem to be a new version of the framework per se, but it seems to be an extention to the existing .NET Framework 2.0.

I think Microsoft is trying to encourage developers to utilize WinFX by marketing it as the next version of the .NET Framework. To me, “.NET Framework 3.0″ certainly does sound a lot more “friendly” and approachable than “WinFX.”

But is WinFX really a new version of .NET?

It depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, WinFX seems more like an “add-on” package to the .NET Framework than an upgrade. But on the other hand, some program upgrades do indeed just add new features while for the most part leaving pre-existing components of the program alone.

For me, and I’m guessing for many other developers, this news was strange and unexpected. I think it’s probably because we had a different mindset of what we thought WinFX was going to be.

But this name change has let me know that I’ll be able to use my existing .NET Framework knowledge and experience to harness the power of WinFX. And that is very exciting news.