Microsoft's .NET and Visual Studio SP1: the wow starts now?

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 12 August 2008 13:00

Business IT - Technology

Developers and end-users stand to gain from Microsoft's SP1 editions of the .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 thanks to changes that dramatically speed things up while making things significantly easier for programmers. Has Microsoft actually done something cool?

Most of us don't need to worry about .NET apart from making sure it's installed if a program needs it. But for developers, it provides a whole heap of useful functions over and above those offered by Windows, along with the runtime system that allows programs written for .NET to work.

And don't panic if you don't know what Visual Studio is either - where you use Microsoft Office to create documents and spreadsheets, developers use Visual Studio to create software. Visual Studio has been around for over a decade, and successive versions have provided ever-increasing functionality.

Microsoft's .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 have been released to manufacture and are now available for download. Both updates come nine months after the release of the original software.

So what's new in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1?

A key feature is the inclusion of the .NET Framework Client Profile, which reduces the size of the .NET framework from 197M to 26.5M, speeding the download and installation of applications using the profile.

What else has changed? Find out on page two.