Post-Whidbey Innovation

In my post last week, Is Windows Forms Dead?, I stated that:

“From an innovation perspective, Whidbey is almost certain to be the last full-blown feature version of Windows Forms. Any post-Whidbey release is likely to contain only tactical features, bug fixes and other infrastructure to support the next version of VS that will run on Longhorn.”

I want to clarify this as a lot of folks got stuck on the first sentence. By “full-blown feature version of Windows Forms” I meant that there won’t be fundamental architecture changes made to the designer or the current control set. However, innovation in Windows Forms will not stop and we will also continue to address top customer pain points as they are uncovered. For example, we will focus on developing the appropriate Avalon interop solution, making sure that Windows Forms applications look great when run on Longhorn and developing a handful of new controls. The details of what we end up delivering are obviously not yet known, but the key point is that we will make significant investments in Windows Forms post Whidbey.