Url: http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/a/3/4a…

I was reading through the new .NET 3.5 printable map (i.e. poster) to see if there was anything in .NET 3.5 that i’ve missed out on looking at. The attempt here is to show you what is new, what is in the Compact Framework and just generally try and map concepts to namespaces.  Here are some observations:

Layered Framework…Really?

In a small graphic in the bottom right they attempt to explain that .NET 3.0 and 3.5 are additive to 2.0.  It indicates that 3.0 is WCF, WPF, WF and Cardspace (remember WinFX?).  What is interesting to me is that 3.5 is indicated to be LINQ, AJAX and REST.  Huh?  AJAX 1.0 was an addon to ASP.NET 2.0 so saying 3.5 is about AJAX is a little wierd.  If REST is part of it, where is it?  I hope they don’t mean Astoria as it won’t be released until *after* .NET 3.5.  I couldn’t find it.  Anyone?

Changes to WinFX?

I scoured the WCF and WPF namespaces and couldn’t find any changes at all. I was hoping for a point release of some changes or some additional functionality (Converters for WPF and AJAX compatibility for WCF). This doesn’t mean there isn’t new functionality, it just wasn’t obvious from this list.  I am hoping to find a 3.0/3.5 changelog but I haven’t found it yet.

If you’re one of these people who like to have posters, get this PDF now and print it…but otherwise its worth a quick view.

UPDATE: Looks like I missed System.SerivceModel.Web and System.ServiceModel.Syndication.  These two namespaces do add some REST API support and probably fit into the Astoria/Silverlight story.  System.ServiceModel.PeerToPeer (et al.) are also interesting that might be fun to play with.  I will be prototyping some stuff this week with it.  Hopefully it will be something I can share with my readers soon.