WPF Futures

I just got out of the WPF Roadmap talk. I found the future for WPF less interesting that the present, although that could very well because the speed of innovation coming from that group has been very high over the past couple of years. In fact, the 'roadmap' is as much about the present as it is about the future.

Mention was made of the fact that the SP1 version of .NET 3.5 actually included a fair bit of 'new' functionality for WPF. As well, they have just released some new controls that are in different states. There is a DataGrid, Calendar control and DatePicker that are officially released. And there is a brand new ribbon control that is (I believe) in CTP mode.

As well, there is also a Visual State Manager available for WPF. This is actually quite cool, as the VSM solves a problem that WPF has (and that SIlverlight already has). Specifically, it could be challenging to get the visual state of a control/page/form matched up with the event or data triggers that would be raised within the application. The Visual State Manager lets you associate a storyboard with a particular state and then set the state programmatically, at which point WPF runs the storyboard.

Both the ribbon control and the VSM are available right now

The future for WPF seemed less clear. A list of 'potential' controls was presented. And some general comments about improvements in the rendering, integration with touch, etc. In other words, the future appears to be now. I guess that lack of specificity is to be allowed when a product group is right at the beginning of it's development cycle.