Take all of Microsoft's languages, databases, interfaces and development tools. Tack ".net" to their names as a suffix and find some way to really make it useful and you have what they've been doing since 1998. In 2005 they've reached version 2.0. If you recall, it took until Windows 3.0 was released before Microsoft won the battle for the desktop. I'll keep watching this space closely.

What they offer right now is pretty good but it gets technical fast and there are lots of acronyms that look like alphabet soup but help keep the sentences short, unlike this one. A few highlights include:

• A common language interface that lets you use any of the .net languages interchangeably. VB and C# are the initial players but Java Script and even old languages like COBOL  have been reborn.
• Compiled execution means speed (actually it seems to mean Microsoft can pack in more overhead and keep the speed the same, but that's another story)
• Development tools including the dominant Microsoft Visual Studio but also the free Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition
  
• Powerful ways to access databases and file systems.
  
• A big collection of web controls that you can put on your pages that encapsulate lots of commonly used functionality. Things like data connected grids and dropdownlists are now primary objects and don't have to be programmed each time you need one.
• Ways to build custom controls that give you access to all kinds of software programs.
• Easy access to client side programming. The DOM and JavaScript are outside the .net framework per se but are still accessible.
  
• Lots more technical stuff that makes it easy to build really big applications.

Another thing that's really nice about the .net initiative is that it extends clear across Microsoft's desktop offerings as well. So if you are using VB or C++ to create desktop applications now you are using the .net versions of those tools and are using the same programming languages, class libraries and development tools that the web application developers are using.

It's all highly object oriented so developers need to be really comfortable with that set of concepts.

And Microsoft has made the commitment to keep this stuff current. As an example, the AJAX framework was developed outside Microsoft's purview. AJAX supports applications that let the client and server interact in new ways like in Google Earth. So now Microsoft has introduced Atlas which is their version of AJAX and it works with ASP.Net 2.0.