Important Update
.NET framework is a multipurpose software application development framework developed by Microsoft. It provides a uniform set of tools and features that can be used to develop a variety of applications including desktop, web-based, and mobile applications. The best thing about the .NET framework is that you don’t need to learn much about application development techniques once you have a basic understanding of the frame.
There are two basic components of the .NET framework.
Common language runtime is a .NET runtime framework that is able to run all the .NET supported programming language. The .NET compiler does not directly compile source code to machined code; rather it converts into Microsoft Intermediate Language which also called managed code. Managed codes of all the .NET languages are the same such as C#, VB, and J#. Hence, the modules developed in one language can be integrated with each other.
Framework Class Libraries are set of already build modules containing built-in capabilities that we can reuse and modify according to our needs. FCL immensely reduces the amount of code required to develop an application. It provides built-in frameworks for developing web applications, networking, database capabilities, algorithms, and designs, etc.
During the development phase in the late 90s, the .NET framework was given the name “Next Generation Windows Services” shorthand notation was NGWS. Microsoft initially released the beta version of the first .NET framework in the year 2000. The basic purpose of developing was to compete with Sun’s JAVA which was at that time, the sole giant in the software development industry. The first version of the .NET framework was developed in the year 2002 and it was given the name .NET 1.0. The resource is here.
There are a lot of source samples with .NET Framework at ByteScout web-site, for example How to generate barcode image in Visual Basic 6 and save barcode in EMF.
Build web pages and websites using the ASP.NET tool on Microsoft’s .NET framework. You can explore HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as any .NET, supported languages to write web applications.
Microsoft has 11 programming languages supported on the .NET Framework. On top of the most popular C# .NET and VB.NET, there is F#.NET, C ++.NET, J#.NET, JSCRIPT.NET, IRON PYTHON, IRON RUBY, WINDOWS POWERSHELL, C OMEGA and ASML (Abstract State Machine Language). Overall, the .NET Framework supports over 60 programming languages, a majority developed by third parties.
You can download the .NET Framework version 4.5.2 down to the latest and recommended .NET Framework 4.8. The updates to .NET Framework 4.5 are all in-place updates, meaning they have support for the same CLR (common language runtime) version first released with 4.5. Applications that support the 4.x version of the .NET Framework can run on the current recommended version (.NET Framework 4.8). The .NET Framework 4.8 supports the latest version of Windows and was released on April 18, 2019.
If you want to run an application that supports .NET Framework 3.5 or older, you must download and install the appropriate version of .NET Framework.
It is possible to install and run multiple .NET Framework versions on your PC. Developers can find out what version of .NET Framework is on user computers by checking the registry.
To detect version .NET Framework 4.5 or later, a developer or user can check HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4\Full. You will tell that .NET Framework 4.5 or later is not installed on the computer if notice that the subkey “Full” is not included.
In-place updates of a .NET Framework version upgrade any installed version that has a similar CLR version. That means that if you install 4.8 on a machine with 4.7.2, the 4.8 will undertake an in-place update and replace the 4.7.2. But if you install 4.8 on a computer with .NET Framework version 3.5, then no in-place update will occur because the two versions do not share the same CLR version. Supported CLR versions on the .NET Framework include 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, and 4.0.
If you try to run an app where a .NET Framework version isn’t installed, or if you cannot get the specific version in <supportedRuntime> element, the app may try running on the latest.NET Framework on the computer. Failure will result in a prompt asking for the current version.
.NET Framework is one of the implementations on the .NET platform, Microsoft’s suite of tools and programming languages for building and running of all types of apps. The other implementations are .NET Core and Xamarin/Mono. The .NET platform supports the building of applications for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android.
.NET Framework supports Windows-only websites, applications, and services while .NET Core supports apps and websites that run across all major OS platforms, including Windows, Linux, and macOS. Xamarin/Mono is tailored for iOS and Android.
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