Microsoft releases .NET Core 3.1 and ASP.NET Core 3.1

Microsoft has released .NET Core 3.1, a relatively minor update following the major release of .NET Core 3.0 earlier this year. This release aims to fix any issues and make more improvements to features introduced in .NET Core 3.0, and because of that, it's also a long-term supported release, which means it will be supported for the next three years. .NET Core 3.0 will only be supported until March of next year.

Windows desktop developers can now use .NET Core for WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and Windows Forms applications. That said, there are a few issues with Windows Forms and .NET Core. The Windows Forms designer is still in preview and has to be installed separately. Only C# is supported, not Visual Basic. Further, Microsoft has had a change of heart about some Windows Forms controls that worked in .NET Core 3.0. These are old controls like DataGrid (replaced by DataGridView) and MainMenu (replaced by MenuStrip).