Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.50131 Beta / 4.0.30319.1 Final - Changelog

What's new in Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.50131 Beta:

March 24th, 2012

.NET for Metro style Apps:
· Windows Metro style apps are designed for specific form factors and leverage the power of the Windows operating system. A subset of the .NET Framework 4.5 Beta is available for building Metro style apps for Windows by using C# or Visual Basic. This subset is called .NET APIs for Metro style apps

Portable Class Libraries:
· The Portable Class Library project in Visual Studio 11 Beta enables you to write and build managed assemblies that work on multiple .NET Framework platforms. Using a Portable Class Library project, you choose the platforms (such as Windows Phone and .NET for Metro style apps) to target. The available types and members in your project are automatically restricted to the common types and members across these platforms.

Core New Features and Improvements:
· The following features and improvements were added to the common language runtime and to .NET Framework classes
· Ability to reduce system restarts by detecting and closing .NET Framework 4 applications during deployment.
· Support for arrays that are larger than 2 gigabytes (GB) on 64-bit platforms. This feature can be enabled in the application configuration file.
· Better performance through background garbage collection for servers. When you use server garbage collection in the .NET Framework 4.5 Beta, background garbage collection is automatically enabled.
· Background just-in-time (JIT) compilation, which is optionally available on multi-core processors to improve application performance.
· Ability to limit how long the regular expression engine will attempt to resolve a regular expression before it times out.
· Ability to define the default culture for an application domain.
· Console support for Unicode (UTF-16) encoding.
· Support for versioning of cultural string ordering and comparison data.
· Better performance when retrieving resources.
· Zip compression improvements to reduce the size of a compressed file.
· Ability to customize a reflection context to override default reflection behavior through the CustomReflectionContext class.
· Support for the 2008 version of the Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) standard when the System.Globalization.IdnMapping class is used on Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
· Delegation of string comparison to the operating system, which implements Unicode 6.0, when the .NET Framework is used on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. When running on other platforms, the .NET Framework includes its own string comparison data, which implements Unicode 5.x.

Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF):
· The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) provides the following new features
· Support for generic types.
· Convention-based programming model that enables you to create parts based on naming conventions rather than attributes.
· Multiple scopes.

Parallel Computing:
· The .NET Framework 4.5 Beta provides several new features and improvements for parallel computing. These include improved performance, increased control, improved support for asynchronous programming, a new dataflow library, and improved support for parallel debugging and performance analysis.

Web:
· ASP.NET 4.5 Beta includes the following new features
· Support for new HTML5 form types.
· Support for model binders in Web Forms. These let you bind data controls directly to data-access methods, and automatically convert user input to and from .NET Framework data types.
· Support for unobtrusive JavaScript in client-side validation scripts.
· Improved handling of client script through bundling and minification for improved page performance.
· Integrated encoding routines from the AntiXSS library (previously an external library) to protect from cross-site scripting attacks.
· Support for WebSockets protocol.
· Support for reading and writing HTTP requests and responses asynchronously.
· Support for asynchronous modules and handlers.
· Support for content distribution network (CDN) fallback in the ScriptManager control.

Networking:
· The .NET Framework 4.5 Beta provides a new programming interface for HTTP applications.
· Support is also included for a new programming interface for accepting and interacting with a WebSocket connection by using the existing HttpListener and related classes.
· In addition, the .NET Framework 4.5 Beta includes the following networking improvements
· RFC-compliant URI support.
· Support for Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) parsing.
· Support for Email Address Internationalization (EAI).
· Improved IPv6 support.
· Dual-mode socket support.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF):
· In the .NET Framework 4.5 Beta, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) contains changes and improvements in the following areas
· The new Ribbon control, which enables you to implement a ribbon user interface that hosts a Quick Access Toolbar, Application Menu, and tabs.
· The new INotifyDataErrorInfo interface, which supports synchronous and asynchronous data validation.
· New features for the VirtualizingPanel and Dispatcher classes.
· Improved performance when displaying large sets of grouped data, and by accessing collections on non-UI threads.
· Data binding to static properties, data binding to custom types that implement the ICustomTypeProvider interface, and retrieval of data binding information from a binding expression.
· Repositioning of data as the values change (live shaping).
· Ability to check whether the data context for an item container is disconnected.
· Ability to set the amount of time that should elapse between property changes and data source updates.
· Improved support for implementing weak event patterns. Also, events can now accept markup extensions.

What's new in Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0.30319.1 Final:

April 13th, 2010

Improvements in Common Language Runtime (CLR) and Base Class Library (BCL) :
· Performance improvement including better multicore support, background garbage collection, and profiler attach on server.
· New memory mapped file and numeric types.
· Easier debugging including dump debugging, Watson minidumps, mixed mode debugging for 64 bit and code contracts.

· Innovations in the Visual Basic and C# languages, for example statement lambdas, implicit line continuations, dynamic dispatch, and named/optional parameters.

· Improvements in Data Access and Modeling
· The Entity Framework enables developers to program against relational databases using .NET objects and Language Integrated Query (LINQ). It has many new features, including persistence ignorance and POCO support, foreign key associations, lazy loading, test-driven development support, functions in the model, and new LINQ operators. Additional features include better n-tier support with self-tracking entities, customizable code generation using T4 templates, model first development, an improved designer experience, better performance, and pluralization of entity sets.
· WCF Data Services is a component of the .NET Framework that enables you to create REST-based services and applications that use the Open Data Protocol (OData) to expose and consume data over the Web. WCF Data Services has many new features, including enhanced BLOB support, data binding, row count, feed customization, projections, and request pipeline improvements. Built-in integration with Microsoft Office 2010 now makes it possible to expose Microsoft Office SharePoint Server data as an OData feed and access that data feed by using the WCF Data Services client library.

Enhancements to ASP.NET :
· More control over HTML, element IDs and custom CSS that make it much easier to create standards-compliant and SEO-friendly web forms.
· New dynamic data features including new query filters, entity templates, richer support for Entity Framework 4, and validation and templating features that can be easily applied to existing web forms.
· Web forms support for new AJAX library improvements including built-in support for content delivery networks (CDNs).

Improvements in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) :
· Added support for Windows 7 multi-touch, ribbon controls, and taskbar extensibility features.
· Added support for Surface 2.0 SDK.
· New line-of-business controls including charting control, smart edit, data grid, and others that improve the experience for developers who build data centric applications.
· Improvements in performance and scalabilit
· Visual improvements in text clarity, layout pixel snapping, localization, and interoperability.

· Improvements to Windows Workflow (WF) that enable developers to better host and interact with workflows. These include an improved activity programming model, an improved designer experience, a new flowchart modeling style, an expanded activity palette, workflow-rules integration, and new message correlation features. The .NET Framework 4 also offers significant performance gains for WF-based workflows.

· Improvements to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) such as support for WCF Workflow Services enabling workflow programs with messaging activities, correlation support. Additionally, .NET Framework 4 provides new WCF features such as service discovery, routing service, REST support, diagnostics, and performance.

· Innovative new parallel-programming features such as parallel loop support, Task Parallel Library (TPL), Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), and coordination data structures which let developers harness the power of multi-core processors.