What version of Visual Studio to target windows XP builds?

c#, visual-studio, windows, wpf

Solution

Its more of .Net framework and not IDE specific.

`.Net 4.5 framework` cannot be installed on XP machines. So if you are talking about `development machines`, its true you `can't go with VS 2012/2013` since 4.5 in installed by default with them.

But if you are talking about `customer machines` here, you can use `Windows 7/8 for development with 2012/2013 IDE` but project should target `.Net 4.0 framework or below`.

Problem

I want to develop a business application using WPF/C# .NET. The application will have lots of modern gui widgets and functionality such as dockable views and a ribbon. The application should also run on Windows XP as well as Windows 7 and 8. What Visual studio .NET version should I use? I've heard that in VS 2012/2013 you can't target xp. Is that the case?

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