Microsoft Releases 'WinFX' as .NET 3.0
Since last January, Microsoft has used the term "on track" to describe how it delays its release dates for Windows Vista, most notably last March. But today's news from Microsoft that Vista RC1, announced last Friday, will be opened up to as many as five million participants for testing, included no mention of the now-infamous euphemism, thus giving hope to both users and developers that January may be the final kickoff date.
The new build - most likely numbered 5600 - will be released not only to TechNet subscribers but also members of the next Customer Preview Program (CPP), enrollments for which are expected to begin soon. With RC1 certain to become widely deployed in a short period of time, independent developers could soon find themselves with fertile proving grounds for Vista-oriented support products. For them, Microsoft released over the weekend another RC1: .NET Framework 3.0.
Like efforts in the past to extend a successful umbrella brand around multiple parallel projects (ActiveX Data Objects and the original Windows Server .NET both come to mind), this new edition of the .NET package isn't exactly an upgrade to the item for which it is named. Rather, .NET Framework 3.0 actually includes .NET Framework 2.0 - installed on many systems already - plus the four libraries which would redefine Windows as we know it: the Communications, Presentation, and Workflow Foundations, plus the CardSpace identity library.
Three of the four have been known by different, and arguably more endearing, names: "Indigo" is the Communications Foundation upon which Vista's new Web services model will be based; "Avalon" is the Presentation Foundation which may eventually be responsible for truly three-dimensional icons in your toolbars; and the "InfoCard" name had to be scrapped for CardSpace - Microsoft's new suite of unified identity and authentication services - reportedly due to a copyright tangle.
Windows Workflow Foundation - which, sadly, has never had a more endearing alter ego - has faced no similar copyright tangles thus far with the World Wildlife Fund, which made the World Wrestling Federation change its name in 2001. The entire foundations package had been referred to as WinFX up until some time after Microsoft's last CTP of the package in March.
"Indigo," as Microsoft's own developers still call it, will eventually replace the Component Object Model and its DCOM networked derivative, as the preferred system for remote procedure calls, or "remoting." The WCF replaces the DCOM system of Windows-centric communication of essentially free-and-clear data with a more standards-compliant, cross-platform approach that allows software to specify its own security requirements.
While "Avalon" (the WPF) will be responsible for changing how Windows looks, it will be the WCF, more than any other new component, that changes how Windows works. InfoCard will actually require the WCF for establishing the protocols necessary for it to exchange authentication data, in order to establish trusted identities across network domains and even forests.
While WinFX was released as a CTP in the past, this RC1 build could represent developers' first opportunity to utilize Vista's new foundations in a stable form. Also, the fact that they can be installed and used not only in Windows XP and Server 2003 but systems as old as the first edition of Windows 98 and Windows 2000, may have some users and developers asking what it is about Vista that justifies the $199 USD price tag - at least for first-time users of the Home Basic Edition. Microsoft released its official Vista price list this morning.