Windows Presentation Foundation and SilverLight (Aka WPF/E) is what you hear everywhere nowadays. WPF is the new successor of UI in Windows OS to traditional Windows Forms where SilverLight is a subversion of WPF framework (though not %100 the same) to be used in Web cloud which has cross platform support as well. Without diving much into the topic, let me show you a few videos which is a great showcase of some WPF applications and if you didn't see WPF in action before, prepare your "Holy Cow!" words 
:
WPF Mashup
WPF Applications
As the video"wooowwweddd", you should already understood that it's not the kind you knew so far. There is a significant change in how UI is used as well it's created. Some quick facts of this new technology includes :
- Built-in animation support.
- Hardware acceleration (On top of DirectX) which unleashes the power of your computer's GPU.
- Separation of UI and code layers similar to ASP.Net where you use XAML, a new declarative XML variation, to build up your UIs.
- Theming all over the UI.
This list can go on like this but I think this lists the main differences at first glance. The simple fact in here is that when you move to these new technlogies, you have to leave some ideas in the past and open your mind for new ones.
So really, where are we?
WPF was first glimpsed as early as 2003 with the name Avalon to be used on top of the successor of the Windows XP though things changed a bit when you saw Vista (that's a long story where you can search over the internet if you like). I remember I first got the chance to play with WPF in 2006 and got amazed so much that even had insisted one of our customers, which we were doing an enterprise project, to use it in their project as it was a %100 match in technology for their purpose and actually did implemented in those days even when the technology was in beta state. What I'm trying to say in here is that, behind the hood, we are one of the early adopters to this new technology.
Again in those days, software component vendors started to create components specific for those platforms and the results were not good. Why, because simply the releases were the same controls from Windows Forms world (Ribbon, wizard, menu, etc.) with a few animation additons from the new platform or were copies of the same carousel views we have seen many times. This is a sign that it's not understood how those new platforms has the potential to make a revolution in GUIs. Don't get me wrong, there are situations that you might need such things but the main case is how the UI technology has revolutanized where our minds did not. We knew that this was not the path we should follow.
To cut things even shorter, here's the plan we had so far :
- As a small shop compared to other big players, we had to wait a bit to get the market into a condition.
- Wth the time we gained, we should master and adopt our mind to open new ideas to unleash the power of those new platforms.
- And finally, release the products that the platform deserves.
According to thid plan, I'm glad to inform that we are near in the step of releasing products specific for WPF/SilverLight. If you have noticed, Klik! IconPack, contains XAML views of the icons in it which signals our first steps in here. The next one would be a product which tries to fill the gap of need of a designer to build great UIs in those platforms for small ISVs or lazy teams. The rest will follow as well...
Stay tuned to our blog to have latest news about the upcoming exciting WPF/SilverLight products from us very soon...
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