Introduction

The .NET Framework is just part of Microsoft s overall .NET platform strategy. The Framework is made up of the Common Language Runtime environment, Base Class Library, and higher-level frameworks such as ASP.NET and Windows Forms, as shown in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1: The .NET Framework Architecture

The complete documentation on the .NET Framework fills entire books. What we do here is cover the basics so that you have a firm enough understanding of the .NET Framework to enable you to get started coding using the Mobile Internet Toolkit as soon as possible.

We start with how to obtain the .NET Framework SDK. The minimum system requirements can be confusing, so we cover those in some detail. The Common Language Runtime is the foundation that sits on top of the Windows operating system. Because this is the most important part of the .NET Framework, we spend most of our time going through the Common Language Runtime. The Base Class Library is a set of hundreds of classes that are provided as part of the Framework to help you build applications that will execute in the Common Language Runtime. We give an overview of these so that you can get an idea of the breadth of support provided by the SDK out of the box. To make building applications even easier, Microsoft provides some higher-level frameworks, such as ASP.NET and Windows Forms, that utilize and extend the functionality provided by the Base Class Library. ASP.NET greatly simplifies the building of Internet...