Microsoft is updating its .NET Framework service, bringing the programming platform to version 4.7.1. The release of this build coincides with the wide release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, which launched yesterday.
In its announcement, Microsoft revealed several new improvements for Framework. Version 4.7.1 brings accessibility improvements in narration and focus control areas. SHA-2 support in ASP.NET is now more secure, while .NET Standard 2.0 now gets support from .NET Framework.
As usual, .NET Framework 4.7.1 is available across a wide range of Windows versions. Customers running the platform on Windows 10 (Anniversary Update and above), Windows 8.1, and Windows 7 SP1 can download this update.
Microsoft has published the following changelog for this update:
- Accessibility improvements in narration, high contrast and focus control areas
- .NET Framework support for .NET Standard 2.0 and compiler features
- More secure SHA-2 support in ASP.NET and System.Messaging
- Configuration builders
- NET Execution step feature
- NET HttpCookie parsing
- Enhancements in Visual Tree for WPF applications
- Performance and reliability improvements
Arguably the most important addition is .NET Framework support for .NET Standard 2.0. With this release, Microsoft is including 200 missing APIs that have been part of Standard 2.0, but not implemented by Framework.
Recent .NET Framework Updates
Last month's security and quality roll up for the programming service. The company fixed a code execution vulnerability that would occur when the framework processed untrusted inputs. This allowed hackers to potentially take over a system.
This was an important fix, even though attackers would have needed a user to open the malicious content.
.NET Framework 4.7 has been available since June, focusing on adding new APIs and adding to ASP.NET, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Forms, and Core.
“The update added Object Cache Extensibility to ASP.NET. With these new APIs, developers use tools to replace default ASP.NET implementations. In their place, dev's can use in-memory object caching and memory monitoring. Microsoft says customers can replace object cache store, memory monitoring, and Memory Limit Reactions.”