I'm facing a project that's to be written in C#.  It will most likely
use the .NET framework to provide the user interface and for other
services.

I'd like to know what the backwards compatibility expections should be
for this development environment.  Will a Windows 95 user be able to
run this application?  Or even, god forbid, a Windows 3.1 user?  If
not, is there any suggested method for supporting such platforms with
C# (not necessarily .NET), or is the answer to force users to ugprade?

Hello Doug,

Unfortunately -- according to Microsoft -- the .NET Framework doesn't
run on Windows 95.
Quote the Microsoft .NET Framework requirements page:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp?url=/downloads/sample.asp?url=/msdn-files/027/001/829/msdncompositedoc.xml

"The .NET Framework runs on:

Microsoft Windows 98
Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 (SP 6a required)
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) 
Microsoft Windows 2000 (SP2 Recommended)
Microsoft Windows XP Professional 
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition"

Since C# is part of the .NET Framework, I can only see the following
options (none of them very satisfying):
- Upgrade the target OS, from Windows 95 to one of the above.
- Switch to the Visual Studio 6 Product line (e.g. VB6).
- Develop a server-side application using ASP.NET; serve to the
browser.
- Wait for Microsoft or another company to come up with software that
makes .NET run on Windows 95.
- Ignore the Windows 95 platform.

Good luck!


Also see:

Redistributable on Windows 95
Newsgroup: microsoft.public.dotnet.framework
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=eCxWcU4%24AHA.1396%40tkmsftngp05&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3D%2522microsoft%2B.net%2522%2Bon%2B%2522windows%2B95%2522%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26selm%3DeCxWcU4%2524AHA.1396%2540tkmsftngp05%26rnum%3D1


Search terms:
"microsoft .net" on "windows 95"

Hi there.

The Mono project has actually implemented a .NET runtime which may
work with Windows 95. I've not verified this, but this page suggests
heavily that this is the case:

http://www.go-mono.com/download.html

Regards,

--seizer

Windows NT/2000/XP should work fine. Windows 98 is partially supported
(the .NET software may require some modifications to work on Windows
98 as it doesn't support things like filesystem watchers).  Versions
of Windows before Windows 98 won't work.

Hi Doug,
This depends on your application but....

Its my opinion that if you want to use .NET and you have a variety of
older OS etc. you should do it using web forms and run it off a server
machine. Visual Studio .net (.asp or whatever) is MUCH MUCH better at
this type of development. Applications that would previously have been
written in say vb6 and installed on the machines as binaries are now
often being written with .asp as a 'web' application on a server, and
made available over a LAN.

1) have little to worry about in terms of compatibility with hardware
on the clients
2) you can build it very similar to how you would build a non-web
application in visual studio (drag and drop buttons, text boxes etc).
3) Its much easier to support, when you fix bugs etc, you just copy
the files onto the server machine even if its running.