There are many advantages to using the .NET Framework add-in technology to factor application logic and UI, including security isolation, discovery, activation, communication, lifetime management, and versioning. WPF builds on the .NET Framework add-in technology to enable visual add-ins ie add-ins that provide UI for host applications to display. All that you need to do is define the contract to specify what types of things the host wants the add-in's UI to do. The end result for the user is that they see both host and add-in UI intermingled without knowing about the complex machinery underneath to make it work. And, to some degree, developers might approach the development of add-ins the same way. For example, when a WPF host application displays a UI provided by an add-in, developers might intuitively expect features like data binding, commanding etc to just work. Features like this, though, need a little extra work to, err, get working because features like these weren't originally
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