Microsoft reaches out beyond .Net
Officially live since its soft launch in July, the site brings together existing content in a format designed to be accessible to software engineers with experience in non-Microsoft platforms, frameworks and languages, such as PHP, Java, JSP and ColdFusion. With few developers working in a single-platform environment throughout their entire career, Microsoft saysthe site will help boost interoperability throughout the industry.
The.Net Framework Developer Centerfeatures a five-step plan to help developers get a basic grounding in .Net, along with a selection of links to articles, books and tutorials, some of which are drawn from the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and some of which are independent. The .Net Framework itself, including Asp.Net web-development technology, is available free alongside the Express edition of Visual Studio.
Core to the ideology behind a resource of this kind, according to Microsoft, is the belief that many developers don’t realise that the entire .Net Framework, and specific versions of the Visual Studio IDE and compilers, are free to download and use commercially.
