Update (2017): See .NET Framework releases to learn about newer releases. This release is no longer supported.

In September, we released the .NET Framework 4.5 Developer Preview. The Developer Preview was essentially a “feature complete” release, enabling you to “kick the tires” and otherwise get a good sense of what we were in the process of building for you. Across the many downloads of the Developer Preview, we expect that many of you tried a broad range of developer activities with the new pre-release version of the product, such as: using the new .NET Framework 4.5 features, trying out Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview and building proof-of-concept Windows Metro style apps. We send a big shout-out to the developers who submitted an app to the Windows 8 First Apps Contest. Thank you for all of your interest and support.

As you may have seen on Jason’s blog, we’ve now taken another step forward with .NET Framework 4.5, releasing .NET Framework 4.5 Beta and Visual Studio 11 Beta.

.NET Framework 4.5 Beta

At this point, most product features in the core of the .NET Framework are in a near-final state and are ready for you to take the proof-of-concept apps that you built with the Developer Preview and transform them into actual apps that you will make available to your customers. Obviously, you can update your existing .NET Framework 4 and 3.5 apps, too.

You can download .NET Framework 4.5 Beta now.

Take a look at What’s New in the .NET Framework 4.5 Beta to learn more about the new features.

Next on the .NET Blog

Over the next while, we will tell you the in-depth stories about a number of features that are included in the beta. We know that you will want much more inside information about the features that we’ve built, and what you can expect from them.

You can expect to see posts on the following topics shortly, and other topics will follow:

• .NET Framework 3.5 Feature on Demand, on Windows 8
• A response to the comments about in-place update releases
• [What you care about goes here – post suggestions in the comments]

As always, we would like to hear from you. Please don’t hesitate to post a comment on the blog or at one of the forums that we monitor: Connect (report bugs), UserVoice (request features) and MSDN Forums (ask for help).