WPF News and Announcements

WPF Win32 Interop Renderer on Codeplex

2007-08-29T17:41:00Z

A pretty exciting project went up on Codeplex called Win32HostRenderer that "defies" the airspace rules of WPF. Quoting from the project, " Win32HostRenderer is a WPF control that will host a Win32 control and render it onto a WPF bitmap buffer allowing you to interact with the control and apply anchors and other sweet WPF trickery and magic. It works with 2D and 3D viewports." There is a warning associated with the project -- "The control is still highly in prototype mode and It doesn't really work perfectly just yet" -- but nonetheless it represents some exciting work that many may find useful.

UI Automation APIs

2007-07-27T18:24:00Z

Are you using the UI Automation APIs? If so, the WPF team would love to talk to you! In particular, we are interested in companies who have written testing tools (or are thinking of writing testing tools) that exercise these APIs. Please email annegao@microsoft if so.

Making NetFX Framework + Application Install Easier

2007-07-16T23:56:00Z

Kevin Moore, a program manager on the WPF team, has prototype code for making the process of installing the .NET framework 3.0 on to XP a much smoother experience. He's looking for beta testers.

New Hands-on Lab: Building a Line of Business application (MS Outlook UI) with WPF, Expression Blend and Visual Studio 2005

2007-06-14T19:27:00Z

This new end-to-end Hands-On Lab takes you through the paces to the next level of Windows UI development. Harnessing the power of WPF (.NET 3.0, Expression Blend, and Visual Studio 2005), you can learn how to build a replica of the Outlook 2007 UI in just a couple of hours! There is also a source code download. You can preview an XBAP demo here.

New Version of WPF Performance Tools Posted

2007-06-07T19:06:00Z

A new version of the WPF Performance tools (wpfperf.exe) has been posted both x86 and x64. This new build has both user interface enhancements and resolves some of the stability problems that the earlier version suffered from. If you are a WPF developer and aren't using these tools, download immediately! If you are using the existing tool, the recommendation is to move to the new version of the tools.

Family.Show -- A Great WPF Reference Application

2007-05-17T22:52:00Z

Vertigo software has written a fantastic WPF reference application called Family.Show. You can run the app and download the source. It is a great sample:

It's realistic because there are shrink-wrapped applications for sale today that offer similar functionality;

It's applicable because it's a data-centric scenario, because the idea of a hierarchical tree is pervasive in many business scenarios (CRM and HR to name just two), it covers data visualization (also a key requirement for many modern business applications), and because it has a well thought out model that keeps data and presentation separate.

It covers many feature areas: data binding, styling and templates, animation, XML serialization, resources, rich text editing, image manipulation, Windows Vista integration and XPS output.

It's interesting: everyone has a family story to tell

WPF Momentum Video

2007-05-10T20:23:00Z

Check out the high resolution copy of the WPF Momentum video shown during Ray Ozzie's MIX07 keynote. It highlights a range of exciting applications using WPF that are in production. If you don't want to take the 32mb download hit, you can always watch it streamed via Silverlight.

Expression Studio Ships!

2007-05-08T17:12:00Z

Microsoft Expression Studio shipped and is now available for purchase. Between Expression Design and Expression Blend, designers, design technologists and interactive designers have all the tools they need to build great WPF experiences. If you are an MSDN subscriber, these tools are available now as part of your subscription.

Expression Blend Release Candidate 1

2007-03-15T17:25:00Z

The availability of the first Release Candidate of Blend is an exciting milestone that takes us another step closer to shipping. With an updated User Guide, a host of quality improvements, and a shiny all-new set of impressive and informative samples, the RC is available now.

Another WPF Chat on February 21

2007-02-06T00:16:00Z

We had a pretty successful online technical chat in December, where we brought about twenty members of the WPF team together to answer your technical questions and listen to your feedback. Based on the response, we're going to host a similar event at the end of this month, covering both WPF and Expression Blend.

Specifically in this chat, as well as general technical Q&A, we'd love to hear even more in the way of feedback from yourselves on what we're doing right and wrong with WPF. What would you like to see in the next release of WPF? We'll hopefully give you a bit of information about our current plans and invite feedback.

The chat takes place on Wednesday, February 21st 2007 at 11am Pacific (that's 2pm Eastern, 7pm UK/GMT, 8pm Europe). Use this link to add an appointment to your calendar, and use this link to enter the chatroom on the day of the event. Spread the word around, and hope to see you there!

The WPF Wiki

2007-01-26T15:41:00Z

The WPF Wiki is now live on Channel 9, thanks to Karsten and Tim. It is a repository for sharing best practices, useful resources, bugs and workarounds relating to Windows Presentation Foundation. We want you to contribute to this - please feel free to add new topics, contribute content, make suggestions or even correct inaccurate information. This complements the recently released MSDN Wiki for Windows Presentation Foundation. More details on that in this post.

Chat Online with the WPF Team

2006-12-19T21:46:00Z

We'll be hosting our first ever live online technical chat with the WPF team on the MSDN site this Thursday, December 21st, at 12:30pm Pacific Time (that's 3:30pm ET, 8:30pm GMT, 9:30pm CET). We'll have a collection of the WPF team on hand to answer your technical questions, hear your feedback on what we should be doing in our next release, share great tips and tricks for using WPF, and just generally connecting with one another.

If you're interested, you can open this ICS file to add the appointment to your calendar.

Hope to see you there - here's the URL:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/

Interacting with 2D placed on 3D

2006-12-14T02:50:00Z

Interacting with 2D placed on 3D is now possible in v1 of the Windows Presentation Foundation!

In between shipping Vista and planning the next version of WPF, the WPF 3D team realized that with a clever implementation it was possible to provide this feature today on v1 bits. The binaries (and source code to them) needed to do this are available for download. The download also contains two sample applications - InteractiveViewport3DSample and Channel9Demo - which illustrate how to use the code. Read all about it, download the code and watch the Channel9 video.

WPF Featured Partner: iBloks

2006-11-29T01:30:00Z

Create a 3D movie with your pictures, videos, and music in under a minute with iBloks! iBloks is an all WPF-based application and the first multimedia Certified for Vista application that lets you mix your media inside 3D mods created in XAML (sample iBlok here). The software is free and can be downloaded here. iBloks is also hosting a mod designer contest and the winning entrant gets a 50” Plasma HDTV!

November events

2006-10-31T19:30:00Z

This November, Microsoft is unveiling innovative new changes for the developer community. Join thousands of other Microsoft developers from around the world to learn about the exciting opportunities in developing software for Windows Vista at DevConnections in Las Vegas, or TechEd: Developers in Barcelona, Spain. Check the Events page for details.