The release of .NET 3 and 3.5 seems to have opened up a whole array of design possibilities.
It incorporates WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) which enables designers to build rich user interfaces, these designs can then be merged into the developers code through the use of XAML to describe the interface. We have been looking at Expression Blend and are very impressed so far. You can get a free trial from here: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/overview.aspx?key=blend
WPF is just part of it. The new version also brings LINQ, WCF, workflow and various syntax changes to the languages to allow for a better coding experience.
LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query, it allows developers to write queries against business objects, databases, xml documents... it is strictly typed and has intellisense.
An example of a LINQ expression would be:
var chicago = from d in doctors where d.City == “Chicago“ select d
Also note the new syntax above where the type of chigago is not declared, the type can be inferred from the result of the right hand expression, therefore the object is still strongly typed, we can write less code to acheive the assignment.
Probably the best article I have read on this is the MSDn article written by:
Don Box & Anders Hejlsberg - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479865.aspx