As I blogged about the other day, Paint.NET will be adopting .NET 4.0 fairly rapidly after its eventual release. The current release of Paint.NET, v3.5.2, makes use of .NET 3.5 SP1.
Scott Hanselman just blogged about how you can help to test out .NET 4.0 Beta 2 by setting a registry key so that it pops up in your Windows Update. The goal there is to test the deployment (aka installation) to help ensure things continue to go smoothly later this year when it’s rolled out to everyone.
It’s actually pretty easy and straightforward to do this… he’s got a .REG file you can download which pretty much does the whole thing for you.
Now, here’s where we can use big words like transitivity … by helping to test out .NET 4.0 Beta 2, you are in effect also helping out Paint.NET! I’m finally getting over this cold that seems to have hit everyone here in the Seattle area, and one of my next goals is to pop in that Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 DVD and see how Paint.NET copes with the big scary framework upgrade…
You can also just go and install .NET 4.0 Beta 2 directly. However, Paint.NET won’t use it just yet.
I’ve also been doing a lot of deep thinking about what needs to be done for Paint.NET v4.0. There’s going to be a lot of changes under the hood in order to enable a whole lot of things that everyone’s been wanting for awhile, including and especially myself (please don’t ask what – at this point it’s just research, hope, and speculation). Many whiteboard markers are giving their lives for it …
paint.net blog 
Installed .NET 4.0 Beta 2 without any problem (Windows 7 Ultimate x64).
I hope that Paint.NET 4.0 will be a fantastic release 😉
I’m curious what feature you’re most excited about from .NET 4. Is it the Parallel library?
No problems here, been using it for a little while.
George, actually the [newly rewritten] Workflow Foundation.
Link doesn’t work for me. Only shows I should install Silverlight, a little input box and the most important, the microsoft logo…
Do I have to have an english version of IE?
The links work fine, Mandy.
On my System i dont have prolems.
.NET Framework 4.0 Beta 2! works good
Do you think we can get more space to work on in Paint.Net 4.0? I love how Photoshop CS4’s menus are very space efficient. 😀
Hi Rick,
Here is a screenshot of *my* app with toolbars attempting your look: http://dsgamemaker.com/images/DS_Game_Maker_4_3.png
I would like to know what rendering code you are using to render your controls, as they match very nicely together – comboboxes and context menus alike. The code I am using uses the ‘Renderer’ property of toolstrips and menubars… obviously no support for ContextMenu.
If you could give me a poke in the right direction, I would be grateful.
(I am using .NET 4.0 and compiling my app without problems, by the way.)