David Boschmans Weblog

Getting started with developing WPF/E applications

The release of the first (December) CTP of WPF/E and the announcement of the new names and design of the Microsoft Expression tools has generated quite some interest in the technology according to the Technorati search results for WPF/E and Microsoft Expression.

Running the "WPF/E" (codename) CTP (December 2006) SDK Samples is fairly simple but when starting with the development of a WPF/E application quite some questions might pop up. A few examples:

• what exactly is WPF/E?
• how does it relate to XAML?
• how do I get started in Visual Studio 2005?
• what's a "WPF/E" JavaScript application template and why do I need the Web Applications Project?
• which tools should I use for creating the design of the application?
• how should I configure my app to deploy the XAML runtime to Internet Explorer and Firefox?
• what will be running in the browser: xml or binary content?
• how does ASP.NET AJAX relates to WPF/E?
• what are the scenarios for using WPF/E?

The good news is that all of these questions are answered in the following white papers on MSDN:

• Getting Started with "WPF/E" (Code Name) - Laurence Moroney
  This white paper provides a high-level overview into "WPF/E" and how it fits into the development stack for the next generation of Web applications.
  
• "WPF/E" (Code Name) Architecture Overview - Barak Cohen
  This white paper provides a high-level overview of the "WPF/E" architecture and how it fits into the Microsoft offering for building next-generation Web applications. Also, this white paper provides an architectural review of the "WPF/E" technology.
  
• "WPF/E" (Code Name) for Web Media Scenarios
  This white paper describes the benefits, features, and usage of the "WPF/E" (code name) Community Technology Preview (CTP) for delivery of rich audio and video experiences on the Web.

Finally you also might want to check out this example, or the result of integrating Adobe's (Flash) and Microsoft's (WPF/E) web technologies: Microbe.

Published Thursday, December 07, 2006 2:07 PM by David Boschmans