Difference between .NET Framework 4.5/4.0/3.5/3.0/2.0

.NET Framework 4.5 Features:

Windows Workflow Foundation(WF)

• State machine workflows Enhancements
• Enhanced Workflow Designer features
• Storage of the view state information for a workflow in a single element in the XAML file
• Versioning enhancements

Windows Communication Foundation(WCF)

• Support for a UDP transport that enables developers to write services that use “fire and forget” messaging. A client sends a message to a service and expects no response from the service
• Support for WCF services that use internationalized domain names (IDNs).
• Ability to support multiple authentication modes on a single WCF endpoint when using the HTTP transport and transport security
• New HTTPS protocol mapping to make it easier to expose an endpoint over HTTPS with Internet Information Services (IIS).

Windows Presentation Foundation(WPF)

• New features for the VirtualizingPanel and Dispatcher classes.
• Improved performance when displaying large sets of grouped data, and by accessing collections on non-UI threads.
• Ability to set the amount of time that should elapse between property changes and data source updates
• The new Ribbon control, which enables you to implement a ribbon user interface that hosts a Quick Access Toolbar, Application Menu, and tabs

Networking

• Support for Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) parsing
• Support for Email Address Internationalization (EAI)
• Improved IPv6 support.
• Dual-mode socket support.

Web

• Support for content distribution network (CDN) fallback in the ScriptManager control.
• Support for asynchronous modules and handlers
• Support for new HTML5 form types
• Support for unobtrusive JavaScript in client-side validation scripts
• Integrated encoding routines from the AntiXSS library (previously an external library) to protect from cross-site scripting attacks
• Enhancements in Parallel Computing

Tools

• Resource file Generator(Resgen.exe) – Used to creat a .resources file to .resw file for use in Windows Store apps
• Managed Profile Guided Optimization (Mpgo.exe) – Enables you to improve application startup time, memory utilization (working set size), and throughput by optimizing native image assemblies

.NET for Windows Store apps

• Windows Store apps are designed for specific form factors and leverage the power of the Windows operating system. A subset of the .NET Framework 4.5 is available for building Windows Store apps for Windows by using C# or Visual Basic. This subset is called .NET for Windows Store apps.

.NET Framework 4.0 Features:

• Common Language Runtime (CLR)  – The following sections describe new features in security, parallel computing, performance and diagnostics, dynamic language runtime, and other CLR-related technologies
• Base Class Libraries
• Networking  – Enhancements have been made that affect how integrated Windows authentication is handled by the HttpWebRequest, HttpListener, SmtpClient, SslStream, NegotiateStream, and related classes in the System.Net and related namespaces
• Web  – The following sections describe new features in ASP.NET core services, Web Forms, Dynamic Data, and Visual Web Developer.
• Client  – The following sections describe new features in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF).
• Data
• Communications  – Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides the new features and enhancements described in the following sections.
• Workflow – Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in .NET Framework 4.0 changes several development paradigms from earlier versions. Workflows are now easier to create, execute, and maintain.

.NET Framework 3.5 Features:

• Language Integrated Query (LINQ)  for SQL, XML, Dataset, Object
• Addin system
• p2p base class
• Active directory
• ASP.NET Ajax
• Anonymous types with static type inference
• Paging support for ADO.NET
• ADO.NET synchronization API to synchronize local caches and server side data stores
• Asynchronous network I/O API
• Support for HTTP pipelining and syndication feeds.
• New System.CodeDom namespace

.NET Framework 3.0 Features:

Also called WinFX,includes a new set of managed code APIs that are an integral part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems and provides

• Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) – formerly called Indigo; a service-oriented messaging system which allows programs to interoperate locally or remotely similar to web services
• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) –  formerly called Avalon; a new user interface subsystem and API based on XML and vector graphics, which uses 3D computer graphics hardware and Direct3D technologies.
• Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) allows for building of task automation and integrated transactions using workflows.
• Windows CardSpace, formerly called InfoCard; a software component which securely stores a person’s digital identities and provides a unified interface for choosing the identity for a particular transaction, such as logging in to a website

.NET FrameWork 2. 0 Features:

• Generics
• Anonymous methods
• Partial class
• Nullable type
• The new API gives a fine grain control on the behavior of the runtime with regards to multithreading, memory allocation, assembly loading and more
• Full 64-bit support for both the x64 and the IA64 hardware platforms
• New personalization features for ASP.NET, such as support for themes, skins and webparts.
• .NET Micro Framework
• Data Tables