.NET 3.0, WPF and XBAP Blurp

WPF? You know, Vista’s new “kickass” feature? With the latest Vista talk on almost every website, chances are you’ve heard about the Windows Presentation Foundation already built-in certain Vista flavours. It is what drives, among other things, the new Aero interface; Aero’s Flip 3D is another example.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the next-generation presentation sub-system for Windows.
It provides developers and designers with a unified programming model for building rich Windows smart client user experiences that incorporate UI, media, and documents.

Then what about XBAP? XBAP stands for XAML Browser Application and it’s Microsoft’s, Windows-only, Rich Internet Application alternative to Macromedia’s (Adobe’s) Flex technology. The difference? It is based on the .NET Framework 3.0 and only runs in Internet Explorer ;). It seems fairly promising, considering this example by the British Library, which recently made available some of the best (ancient) books using XBAP tech. It’s called Turning the Pages 2.0. The original Turning the Pages, which made the news a couple or so years ago, still lives.

Read more about WPF and XBAP. Also, check out this interesting interview with Microsoft’s XPAB Program Managers.