The advent of .NET 3.5 marks a turning point in how .NET developers approach programming. "It is our belief that .NET 3.5 in general, and Silverlight in particular, will change programming more significantly than anything that has come from Microsoft for a least a decade," state bestselling author Jesse Liberty and industry expert Alex Horovitz in the preface to their new book, Programming .NET 3.5 ( O'Reilly, US $44.99 ).

.NET 3.5, is designed to help programmers create better Windows applications, build Web Services that are more powerful, implement new Workflow projects and dramatically enhance the user's experience. But it does so with what appears to be a collection of disparate technologies. In Programming .NET 3.5, Liberty and Horovitz uncover the common threads that unite the .NET 3.5 technologies, to help experienced .NET programmers benefit from the best practices and architectural patterns combined in this newest generation of Microsoft frameworks.

While single-topic .NET 3.5 books delve into Windows Presentation Foundation and the other frameworks in greater detail, Programming .NET 3.5 offers a grand tour of the release, describing how the four principal technologies can be used together, with AJAX, to build modern n-tier and service-oriented applications. Developers have struggled to implement these patterns with previous versions of the .NET Framework, but this guide uses real-world examples and fully annotated source code to demonstrate how .NET 3.5 can make it easy.

The concepts and technologies that this book covers include:

• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF): Achieve Vista-like effects with this presentation frameworks and graphics subsystem
• Windows Communication Foundation (WCF): Use this standards-based system to help applications communicate across a network
• Windows Workflow Foundation (WF): Define, execute, and manage workflows
• Windows CardSpace: Manage the identities of your users with this new system
• XAML: Use Microsoft's XML-based markup language with WPF for user interfaces
• AJAX: Learn these ASP.NET extensions to implement client-side functionality

Readers will learn how to use each of the four frameworks alone and in concert to build a series of meaningful example applications. Examples are written in C#, and all of the source code will be available for download at both the O'Reilly and the authors' site, which offers access to a free support forum.

Between them, Liberty and Horovitz have nearly forty years of experience in delivering commercial applications for companies such as Citibank, Apple, AT&T, NeXt, PBS, Ziff Davis, and dozens of smaller organizations. Their combined experience is valuable for telling the story of .NET 3.5 and how it will shorten the development life cycle for applications developers, and enhance productivity.

"Over the last few releases, Microsoft has introduced some major advances to the .NET Framework that transform the way developers write managed applications," says Tim Sneath, Group Manager, Client Platform Evangelist, Microsoft. "This book provides the brain upgrade you need to harness the full power of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5."