.NET is Microsofts attempt to make its programs platform independent. All Microsoft Visual Studio languages have been modified to output the same intermediate language. This intermediate language can be compiled and linked at run time on whatever platform and operating system Microsoft decides to support in the future. In theory at some future time Visual C++, Visual Basic, C#, etc. code could even run on a Mac or UNIX platform. All it will take is a compiler/linker that will take the intermediate language code and produce a native executable.

This has little benefit on code that will only run on one computer. The greatest benefit will be for client/server and other applications that can potentially run on different platforms.

Hisory of Dot Net

Version	Version Number	Release Date	Visual Studio	Default in Windows
1.0	1.0.3705.0	2002-02-13	Visual Studio .NET
1.1	1.1.4322.573	2003-04-24	Visual Studio .NET 2003	Windows Server 2003
2.0	2.0.50727.42	2005-11-07	Visual Studio 2005	Windows Server 2003 R2
3.0	3.0.4506.30	2006-11-06		Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008
3.5	3.5.21022.8	2007-11-19	Visual Studio 2008	Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2
4.0	4.0.30319.1	2010-04-12	Visual Studio 2010

.NET Framework 1.0

This is the first release of the .NET Framework, released on 13 February 2002 and available for Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP. Mainstream support by Microsoft for this version ended 10 July 2007, and extended support ended 14 July 2009.

.NET Framework 1.1

This is the first major .NET Framework upgrade. It is available on its own as a redistributable package or in a software development kit, and was published on 3 April 2003. It is also part of the second release of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET (released as Visual Studio .NET 2003). This is the first version of the .NET Framework to be included as part of the Windows operating system, shipping with Windows Server 2003. Mainstream support for .NET Framework 1.1 ended on 14 October 2008, and extended support ends on 8 October 2013. Since .NET 1.1 is a component of Windows Server 2003, extended support for .NET 1.1 on Server 2003 will run out with that of the OS – currently 14 July 2015. .NET 1.1 is the last available version for Windows NT 4.0.

Changes in 1.1 on comparison with 1.0

Built-in support for mobile ASP.NET controls. Previously available as an add-on for .NET Framework, now part of the framework.
Security changes – enable Windows Forms assemblies to execute in a semi-trusted manner from the Internet, and enable Code Access Security in ASP.NET applications.
Built-in support for ODBC and Oracle databases. Previously available as an add-on for .NET Framework 1.0, now part of the framework.
.NET Compact Framework – a version of the .NET Framework for small devices.
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support.
Numerous API changes.

.NET Framework 2.0

Released with Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk 2006.

The 2.0 Redistributable Package can be downloaded for free from Microsoft, and was published on 22 January 2006.
The 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK) can be downloaded for free from Microsoft.
It is included as part of Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
Version 2.0 without any Service Pack is the last version with support for Windows 98 and Windows Me. Version 2.0 with Service Pack 2 is the last version with official support for Windows 2000 although there have been some unofficial workarounds published online to use a subset of the functionality from Version 3.5 in Windows 2000.[18] Version 2.0 with Service Pack 2 requires Windows 2000 with SP4 plus KB835732 or KB891861 update, Windows XP with SP2 or later and Windows Installer 3.1 (KB893803-v2)
It shipped with Windows Server 2003 R2 (not installed by default).

Changes in 2.0 in comparison with 1.1

Generics
Language support for generics built directly into the .NET CLR.
Full 64-bit support for both the x64 and the IA64 hardware platforms.
Numerous API changes.
SQL Server integration – .NET 2.0, VS 2005, and SQL Server 2005 are all tied together. This means that instead of using T-SQL, one can build stored procedures and triggers in any of the .NET-compatible languages.
A new hosting API for native applications wishing to host an instance of the .NET runtime. The new API gives a fine grain control on the behavior of the runtime with regards to multithreading, memory allocation, assembly loading and more (detailed reference). It was initially developed to efficiently host the runtime in Microsoft SQL Server, which implements its own scheduler and memory manager.
Many additional and improved ASP.NET web controls.
New data controls with declarative data binding.
New personalization features for ASP.NET, such as support for themes, skins, master pages and webparts.
.NET Micro Framework – a version of the .NET Framework related to the Smart Personal Objects Technology initiative.
Membership provider
Partial classes
Nullable types
Anonymous methods
Iterators
Data tables

.NET Framework 3.0

.NET Framework 3.0, formerly called WinFX,[19] was released on 21 November 2006. It includes a new set of managed code APIs that are an integral part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems. It is also available for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 as a download. There are no major architectural changes included with this release; .NET Framework 3.0 uses the Common Language Runtime of .NET Framework 2.0.[20] Unlike the previous major .NET releases there was no .NET Compact Framework release made as a counterpart of this version. Version 3.0 of the .NET Framework shipped with Windows Vista. It also shipped with Windows Server 2008 as an optional component (disabled by default).

.NET Framework 3.0 consists of four major new components:

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), formerly code-named Avalon; a new user interface subsystem and API based on XML and vector graphics, which uses 3D computer graphics hardware and Direct3D technologies. See WPF SDK for developer articles and documentation on WPF.
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), formerly code-named Indigo; a service-oriented messaging system which allows programs to interoperate locally or remotely similar to web services.
Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) allows for building of task automation and integrated transactions using workflows.
Windows CardSpace, formerly code-named InfoCard; a software component which securely stores a person's digital identities and provides a unified interface for choosing the identity for a particular transaction, such as logging in to a website.

.NET Framework 3.5

Version 3.5 of the .NET Framework was released on 19 November 2007, but it is not included with Windows Server 2008. As with .NET Framework 3.0, version 3.5 uses the CLR of version 2.0. In addition, it installs .NET Framework 2.0 SP1, (installs .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 with 3.5 SP1) and .NET Framework 3.0 SP1 (installs .NET Framework 3.0 SP2 with 3.5 SP1), which adds some methods and properties to the BCL classes in version 2.0 which are required for version 3.5 features such as Language Integrated Query (LINQ). These changes do not affect applications written for version 2.0, however.

As with previous versions, a new .NET Compact Framework 3.5 was released in tandem with this update in order to provide support for additional features on Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded CE devices.

The source code of the Base Class Library in this version has been partially released (for debugging reference only) under the Microsoft Reference Source License.

Changes since version 3.0

New language features in C# 3.0 and VB.NET 9.0 compiler
Adds support for expression trees and lambda methods
Extension methods
Expression trees to represent high-level source code at runtime.[22]
Anonymous types with static type inference
Language Integrated Query (LINQ) along with its various providers
LINQ to Objects
LINQ to XML
LINQ to SQL
Paging support for ADO.NET
ADO.NET synchronization API to synchronize local caches and server side datastores
Asynchronous network I/O API.[22]
Peer-to-peer networking stack, including a managed PNRP resolver[23]
Managed wrappers for Windows Management Instrumentation and Active Directory APIs[24]
Enhanced WCF and WF runtimes, which let WCF work with POX and JSON data, and also expose WF workflows as WCF services.[25] WCF services can be made stateful using the WF persistence model.[22]
Support for HTTP pipelining and syndication feeds.[25]
ASP.NET AJAX is included.

Service Pack 1

The .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 was released on 11 August 2008. This release adds new functionality and provides performance improvements under certain conditions,[26] especially with WPF where 20-45% improvements are expected. Two new data service components have been added, the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services. Two new assemblies for web development, System.Web.Abstraction and System.Web.Routing, have been added; these are used in the ASP.NET MVC Framework and, reportedly, will be utilized in the future release of ASP.NET Forms applications. Service Pack 1 is included with SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. It also featured a new set of controls called "Visual Basic Power Packs" which brought back Visual Basic controls such as "Line" and "Shape". Version 3.5 SP1 of the .NET Framework shipped with Windows 7. It also shipped with Windows Server 2008 R2 as an optional component (disabled by default).

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Client Profile

For the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 there is also a new variant of the .NET Framework, called the ".NET Framework Client Profile", which at 28 MB is significantly smaller than the full framework and only installs components that are the most relevant to desktop applications.[27] However, the Client Profile amounts to this size only if using the online installer on Windows XP SP2 when no other .NET Frameworks are installed. When using the off-line installer or any other OS, the download size is still 250 MB

.NET Framework 4

Key focuses for this release are:

Parallel Extensions to improve support for parallel computing, which target multi-core or distributed systems.[29] To this end, they included technologies like PLINQ (Parallel LINQ),[30] a parallel implementation of the LINQ engine, and Task Parallel Library, which exposes parallel constructs via method calls.[31]
New Visual Basic .NET and C# language features, such as statement lambdas, implicit line continuations, dynamic dispatch, named parameters, and optional parameters.
Support for Code Contracts.
Inclusion of new types to work with arbitrary-precision arithmetic (System.Numerics.BigInteger) and complex numbers (System.Numerics.Complex).

Main Differences between ASP.NET 3.5 and 4.0

ASP.NET 3.5 is having the following main features which are not available in the prior releases

1) AJAX integration
2) LINQ
3) Automatic Properties
4) Lambda expressions

I hope it would be useful for everyone to know about the differences about asp.net 3.5 and its next version asp.net 4.0

Because of space consumption I'll list only some of them here.

1) Client Data access:

ASP.NET 3.5: There is no direct method to access data from client side. We can go for any of these methods

1) Pagemethods of script manager
2) ICallbackEventHandler interface
3) XMLHttphanlder component

ASP.NET 4.0: In this framework there is an inbuilt feature for this. Following are the methods to implement them.

1) Client data controls
2) Client templates
3) Client data context

i.e we can access the data through client data view & data context objects from client side.

2) Setting Meta keyword and Meta description:

Meta keywords and description are really useful for getting listed in search engine.

ASP.NET 3.5: It has a feature to add meta as following tag

meta name="keywords" content="These, are, my, keywords"
meta name="description" content="This is the description of my page"

ASP.NET 4.0: Here we can add the keywords and description in Page directives itself as shown below.

< %@ Page Language="C#" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="_Default" Keywords="Keyword1,Key2,Key3,etc" Description="description" %>

3) Enableviewstage property for each control

ASP.NET 3.5: this property has two values "True" or "false"

ASP.NET 4.0: ViewStateMode property takes an enumeration that has three values: Enabled, Disabled, and Inherit.
Here inherit is the default value for child controls of a control.

4) Setting Client IDs
Some times ClientID property creates head ach for the programmers.

ASP.NET 3.5: We have to use ClientID property to find out the id which is dynamically generated

ASP.NET 4.0: The new ClientIDMode property is introduced to minimize the issues of earlier versions of ASP.NET.

It has following values.

AutoID - Same as ASP.NET 3.5
Static - There won't be any separate clientid generated at run time
Predictable-These are used particularly in datacontrols. Format is like clientIDrowsuffix with the clientid vlaue
Inherit- This value specifies that a control's ID generation is the same as its parent.

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