I'm still playing with WPF pretty routinely. I haven't posted much because I'm enjoying learning and playing more than writing about it, and honestly there is such a wealth of tutorials (in video, book, and article formats) that me writing about it is pretty useless unless it is covering some issue I really struggled with. I am considering writing a getting started with WPF guide eventually though, because all of the great resources for learning are spread around in a million places.

So far I am not running into major roadblocks, other than perhaps small things like using XMLDataProvider for an XML data island in XAML - if you do this always be sure to put xmnls="", because if no namespace is defined (even a blank one) then your bindings will not work - because it inherits the namespace of the XAML document itself. Little stuff like this really doesn't warrant writing a whole article, its just one of those little things you pick up on. So, until next time I'll just post more k-rad stuff going on with WPF..

First off, .Net 3.5 SP1 was released on Monday - the word on the street is that this is the 3rd major revision to WPF, with the first being .Net 3.0, the second being .Net 3.5, and then now 3.5 SP1 - it sounds like WPF really got a bunch of focus in this service pack. It includes a built in DataGrid for WPF, moves bitmap effects to the hardware tier for better performance, includes built in support for quick loading splash screens, and new control named D3Dimage - a way to use Direct3D right inside WPF. There is a video right now on Channel9 which shows off some of the new graphic abilities in SP1, it is definitely worth checking out.

I just got my hands on a new book, Programming WPF, after reading a ton of Amazon reviews. I would post more in this blog entry, but honestly I'm ready to get crackin' on this new book - until next time!