Experience the DifferenceThe webcast series continued this afternoon with me demonstrating the coolest bit of WinFX --

Robert Burke: Raising the Stakes with "Avalon," the Windows Presentation Foundation
June 27th, 3:00pm-4:30pm GMT

Session description:
Why should you care about adding a groundbreaking User Experience to your applications?  Answering that question (in style!) is where we'll begin, and this developer-oriented presentation will proceed on a whistlestop tour of the Windows Presentation Foundation, formerly codenamed Avalon.  WPF allows you to leverage the power of your local PC and managed languages (including Visual Basic.NET) to provide a unified framework for next-generation user interface, media, documents, and even 3D graphics.  Until WPF, incorporating those concepts has effectively been the dark art of the game development shop. No more!

We'll look at the WPF unified architecture, and then dive into several specific developer concepts you'll need to know to get started building applications.  We'll explore the declarative markup language XAML and how it maps to your VB.NET code, and show how it is being used to facilitate tools that will bring designers into the development picture. We'll look at the concepts of Styles and data binding for your controls.  We'll move through animation, talk about interop with classic WinForms, and if time permits, we'll even get a glimpse at adding video and 3D.  Finally, the presentation will conclude with links to useful resources for getting started with WPF, hooking into the community, and learning more.

 

Webcast Recording:
Click here to view the webcast recording.

 

Follow-up:

I had a specific question on using HWnds and WPF/WinForms interop, which Nick answers thoroughly in his article.

I also had someone ask about WPF/E, the Windows Presentation Foundation / Everywhere, which is a subset of WPF that will work... well... everywhere. This Scoble video from back in May with a WPF/E Program Manager explains what everywhere means.

And -- goodness! -- it looks like you want more details about all the subtopics.  The Hands-On Labs are excellent. 

Getting started with WPF:
My previous advice stands regarding how to begin your exploration of WPF -- except I think that perhaps you should install the June CTP instead of Beta 2. 

I'm about to install the June CTP now.  I decided to head home and download it from here.  I will let you know how that goes!  Man, that SDK download is huge.