June 2006 - Posts

The .NET Framework 3.0 is here folks...
06-10-2006 1:26 AM

Microsoft has always had quite a bad rep with screwing up utterly cool product names (think Avalon and Indigo just to name a few) into very dull and boring names. But this time they have really outdone themselves. Not by thinking up a bad name, no sir... by thinking up a completly illogical name.

The wise people at Microsoft have decided to rename all the WinFX technologies to "the .NET Framework 3.0"... And to get back to the dull and boring naming conventions, they have decided to rename InfoCard to "Windows CardSpace (WCS)"... that even tops "Windows Communication Foundation".

So the .NET Framework 3,0 actually contains technology which requires the .NET Framework 2.0 to run... like the CLR 2.0, C# 2.0, Visual Studio 2005.... etc, now isn't that werid? To install the .NET Framework 3.0 you need the ,NET Framework 2.0.

The thing is that having the .NET Framework 3.0 isn't bad per sé but renaming a product to just that out of nowhere isn't the smartest thing to do. They claim they have done this to reduce confusion amongst customers... I say it will only create more confusion...

It will be interesting to see if the next version of C# will skip the 3.0 version and go straight to 4.0 so that they can get their act together on the product versioning schemes. Bad move Microsoft.

Oh well, in the end we will all just adjust and live on.

by Waseem Sadiq | with no comments

WinFX runtime beta2 installation fails
06-03-2006 6:11 PM

I am upgrading my WinFX installation (including the VS tools, the SDK, etc... quite a painful process) to the latest version, which at this time is the beta2 version. But the runtime fails to install and crashes!

When looking at the error message that the installer wants to send to Microsoft you see something about a file not being signed correctly (this message can also be found in the logfile the installer wants to attach). Seems that the WinFX installer wants to install the localized dutch files for the WinFX runtime... but Microsoft is saying they will only support German and Chinese until RTM. Weird stuff.

Anyway, if you run into a failing install, try downloading the full WinFX redistributable (I didn't even knew this one existed). It can be found on the same download page as the regular internet install, under the heading "Instructions" and is called "winfxrc.exe".

by Waseem Sadiq | 1 comment(s)