Welcome to the "WPF/E" December CTP

For the last 6 months we've been quiet about the progress our team has been making. Today, the first "WPF/E" CTP build is live and folks can play with the plug-in themselves. This post is about getting started with "WPF/E" development. Future posts will have samples, tips and tricks and more detailed developer information. Just to get it out of the way, yes, the technology is called “WPF/E” today and yes, this is a codename and will change.

The best place to get started is the “WPF/E “ developer center. Apparently this page enjoyed an early preview launch this weekend. It is officially live now, and all the links from the page should be working. The first thing you’ll want to do is install the plug-in. The Windows version is here and the Mac version is here. Once you’ve got the plug-in on your machine you’ll be able to try out the live samples. There’s one at the bottom of this blog post and there are more available on Channel 9.

Next, you’ll want some docs, and probably an SDK. Installing the SDK also adds a start menu entry to install the “WPF/E” Visual Studio 2005 project template. The installer also drops the “WPF/E” schema into your VS schemas directory so you can get XML intellisense for your “WPF/E” XAML. There is also a set of samples available for download. If you’ve got questions, there’s a fresh new set of MSDN forums for “WPF/E” where the product team will answer questions.

The sample below is a simple video player skin that I wrote yesterday. It took me about 8 hours to put this thing together. You can download the code for this sample here, or just navigate directly to the sample and view source. A big thanks to Chris Anderson (not the long tail one) for hosting this sample on his site for me. Also, a quick thanks to Nick Cody for showing me how to make shiny buttons.