Goodbye WinFX, Long live .NET and Hello Windows CardSpace (tm) :-)

Well the brand guys are at it again. It is with mix emotions that Microsoft decided to rebrand WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. The bad side for me is that we have been putting a lot of investment into the WinFX brand over the last few years since we announced Windows "Longhorn", but on the good side, we are hopefully making it a little bit simpler for developers to get it. It did not make sense that ASP.NET was part of .NET, yet WCF was part of WinFX!! Your thoughts?

 

So what has changed technically... Not a lot really, as this is a change in name only that will not affect the technologies being delivered as part of the product. The .NET Framework 3.0 will still be comprised of the existing .NET Framework 2.0 components, including ASP.NET, WinForms, ADO.NET, base class libraries, and the CLR, as well as new technologies Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow (WF). Secondly, which I think is more important is that we have changed the codename of "InfoCard" to Windows CardSpace (WCS). Windows CardSpace will also be a component of the .NET Framework 3.0: Very cool.

I guess that this now makes it clear that

.NET Framework is a strategic brand. While at the same time we will continue to innovate and support un-managed code through our Win32 API’s and our development tools, I believe that .NET Framework 3.0 is the strategic bet which partners and customers should be making when developing their next generation of applications or modules for Windows Server "Longhorn" - which has .NET 3.0 in the box.

 

Will there still be references to WinFX in the code base for the next 10 years? That is anyones guess, but I think I would bet 10$ on it, so long live WinFX!!!

For more information on this head to Soma's blog on the subject.

https://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/