14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is offering a massive update to .NET Framework 4 designed to introduce no less than six new features and provide fixes for no less than 35 issues. .NET Framework 4 KB2468871 is now available for download from the software giant, offered to customers running the 32-bit flavors of supported Windows releases, including Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
What the Redmond company is saying is that KB2468871 is designed as the most consistent upgrade to .NET Framework 4 since its RTM.
“The .NET Framework 4 update provides cumulative roll-up updates for customer reported issues found after the release of the .NET Framework 4,” the software giant revealed.
Essentially, KB2468871 is described as a General Distribution Release (GDR) update for.NET Framework 4.
Microsoft initially released .NET Framework 4 back in April 2010, concomitantly with the RTM Build of Visual Studio 2010.
Almost a year later, the software giant also provided .NET Framework 4 Platform Update 1. A first for the .NET Framework, Platform Update 1 was offered after Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) as an upgrade.
Somewhat similarly, KB2468871 also provides new features, just like the PP1 upgrade, with the added bonus of fixing a range of problems.
Customers can read about all the issues that KB2468871 is designed to repair in the Knowledge Base article accompanying the update. The new features that the refresh introduces are also detailed there, but I also included them below for your convenience:
“Feature 1 - This update rollup enables ASP.NET to support multiple IIS configuration systems in a design mode. Therefore, Visual Studio Web Designer supports IIS Express. Additionally, Visual Studio Web Designer lets different Visual Studio Solution projects target different versions of IIS.
Feature 2 - When a shadow cache assembly that is turned into a symbolic link to the same file is validated, the size of the assembly is not checked. Therefore, ASP.NET uses Optimization for Shared Web Hosting.
Feature 3 - New syntax lets you define a TextBox control that is HTML5 compatible. For example, the following code defines a TextBox control that is HTML5 compatible: <asp:TextBox runat="server" type="some-HTML5-type" />
Feature 4 - A new switch is added for the Visual Basic compiler that allows for server control output of HTML5-friendly elements. For example: <asp:TextBox runat="server" type="some-HTML5-type" />
In earlier versions of the .NET Framework, all Visual Basic applications automatically had a runtime dependency added. The dependency was with the Visual Basic Runtime library file, Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll. With this update, a command-line option can be set to remove this dependency. Some functionality of the Visual Basic Runtime is embedded in the application, and other functionality is no longer available with the switch set.
Feature 5 - Changes to the support portable libraries. These changes include API updates and binder modifications. This update enables the CLR to bind successfully to portable libraries so that a single DLL can run on the .NET Framework 4, on Silverlight, on Xbox, or on the Windows Phone. This update adds public Silverlight APIs to the .NET Framework 4 in the same location. The API signatures will remain consistent across the platform. All modifications are 100 percent compatible and will not break any existing code.
Feature 6 - The update extends the support of the portability files to compile Silverlight 5 XAML files.”
.NET Framework 4 is available for download here.