WPF in VS2008: On more good content to get started & on Blend/VS2008 compatibility

It is Saturday and I am filled up with lots and lots of information. I have been reading “Essential Windows Presentation Foundation” by Chris Anderson. In addition to that, I have been watching the bootcamp courses I blogged about yesterday. However, what is really difficult, is to find information that is still valid in the RTM version of VS 2008. MS changed quite a lot of things in the process from releasing technology previews and the final version. The worst thing is that the current, released version of Expression Blend does not match VS 2008 compatibility-wise. One has to use a technology preview, which is available for download as well though. Still, it is tough to find the right combination of tools before one really gets started.

I found another list of well-done tutorials I would like to share with you, produced by ContentPresenter.com. Highlights - for me - are the tutorial on how to build custom components and how to bind CLR collections to the GUI. It is really amazing how intuitively one can build custom components now. Delphi found a very cool way to do it in code. Now think that you can do it using a tool like Photoshop with Animation extensions and without writing a single line of code. Then you have the power of Expression Blend.

Still, I can only stress the fact that there is not a released version of Expression Blend that can be used with VS 2008. For me it is fine, but for some big companies it might be a problem using non-released products. In addition to that, the VS 2008 WPF designer really needs more work compared to Blend. There are some XAML markups the designer in VS is simply not able to display. You will end up with an empty, white frame. Hopefully, the products will be available soon as this situation is somewhat strange. However, it has also to be said that the official release for non-MSDN subscribers will be much later. I guess MS will have the products ready then and allows the partners to get an earlier look at everything.