Yesterday, .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 went live on MSDN. You can see what's new in both here and download them here.

Since this is a graphics blog, here are the graphics-specific changes of note in 3.5:

New Graphics Features
  • UIElement3D
  • Interactive 2D on 3D: Viewport2DVisual3D
  • Transformation services on Visual3D
  • BitmapSource.DecodeFailed event
  • HwndTarget.RenderMode to enable software rendering per window
  • BitmapImage.UriCachePolicy and BitmapDecoder.Create(..., RequestCachePolicy) to control web request caching

Notable Graphics Performance Improvements

  • Less animation jitter
  • RenderTargetBitmap memory leaks plugged
  • Big layered window improvements when combined with this on Vista or this on XP
  • MeshGeometry3D hit testing up to 50% faster in common scenarios

Notable Graphics Bug Fixes

  • Numerous layered window problems resolved

Most of these changes will appear in 3.0 SP1 as well. 

-- Jordan