The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 builds on the success of the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.0 and 1.1 to provide the best runtime environment for Web and Microsoft Windows client applications.

Creating a beautiful user interface for your Windows application is a complex process In the past it required skills in many disciplines: Windows Forms, Visual Basic, C++,GDI, GDI+, DirectX and more.

"You're programmers. You're almost all college graduates and none of you know what the f**k "Alphabetical" means. You should all be ashamed. If any of you are using your language's default sort algorithm, which is almost guaranteed to be ASCIIbetical (for good reason) to get alphabetical sorting you proceed to the nearest mirror and slap yourself repeatedly before returning to your desks and fixing your unit tests that didn't catch this problem."

"One of the trickier aspects of development is working with sensitive data such as social security numbers, employee identification numbers, and so forth. The .NET Framework includes cryptography functionality, but it is often overkill for smaller applications.

Krzysztof Cwalina (co-author of Framework Design Guidelines) recently did a talk for the Microsoft Research Group on great framework design. It took place at the Redmond’s Microsoft Research Center. They recorded and posted it on the Research Channel.

A large collection of 3rd-party .NET controls for spicing up your Windows Forms application.

ClickOnce is a Microsoft technology for deploying Windows Forms or Windows Presentation Foundation -based software, also called Smart clients. ClickOnce is only available in .NET 2.0. A less advanced technique can be obtained with the Microsoft Updater Application Block. It is similar to Java Web Start for the Java Platform.

It is very common among the developers of previous generations to choose web applications over rich Windows UIs because of the deployment challenges associated with deploying a Smart Client Windows Forms application.

Over the past few years, businesses have begun to favor deploying web applications instead of Windows applications. One of the major attractions of the web application is its ubiquitous access--anyone with a web browser can access the application, and there are no setup issues to worry about. However, network latencies and server delays are just some of the problems that are preventing developers from reaping the full benefits of the Web. Common frustrations over web applications include slow response time from web sites and limited functionality (due to the stateless nature of the HTTP protocol).

Application architects often struggle with two important but competing goals. They want to write a Windows®-based rich client application that runs on the desktop because that provides the best stateful, interactive experience for the user. However, they also want to minimize the effort required to deploy and update their apps—a goal best accomplished using a thin client model. Users care about applications that are easy to use and that will not interfere with other apps on their machine.