Microsoft is working to make it easier for Eclipse developers write code for Windows apps. Microsoft will provide engineering support to allow Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) to use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Such support would make it easier to Java developers to write applications that look and feel like Windows Vista. San Ramji, director of the Open Source Software Lab explains in his blog-posting Supernova, “We’re committing to improve this technology with direct support from our engineering teams and the Open Source Software Lab, with the goal of a first-class authoring experience for Java developers.”

Now that VS 2008 is out of the box, so to speak, it appears that a new era in Windows development is upon us. Language-Integrated Query is one of several game-changing technologies now supported in the Microsoft software kit. Although it is still early and there is a lot of learning to do, LINQ is poised as a whole new way of developing with data.

It is fair to say that the first rush of .NET technology was about catching up with Java, although there was much unique about .NET too. With LINQ, for now, it seems Microsoft has stolen a march on the Java opposition.

I spoke recently with Jason Beres, director of product management at Infragistics, which is one of the major third-parties in the Microsoft market. Beres said people will take LINQ very seriously. “I think it going to be the de facto way to do any real data binding or object access moving forward,” he said.

With the new Microsoft tool kit comes Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Is WPF game changing? That is hard to say. When it was first conceived, the ubiquitous Web interface seemed to be overstressed, and ready to be replaced by a new generation of WPF-based Smart Clients that would use something like WPF. But, before WPF made it too market, AJAX came on strong as a means to give new life to Web interfaces.

This means the plate of companies like Infragistics is pretty full. Infragistics has just rolled out NetAdvantage for WPF 2007, which is compatible with Visual Studio 2008. At the same time, according to Beres, the company has been re-tooling its frameworks around ASP.NET AJAX as well.

For Infragistics and others, Silverlight looms as another alternative interface. Watch for Infragistics and others to provide Silverlight components, especially now that Silverlight 2.0 (which, more than its predecessor, rightly bears the mantle of “WPF/Everywhere”) arrives in its first beta form.

LINQ, WPF and VS 2008 have been primary areas-of-interest for the SearchWindowsDevelopment.com site for some time. We invite you to check out our LINQ VS 2008 pages, and to stay tuned.

RELATED INFORMATION:
> VS 2008 and LINQ Topic Page
> Introducing WPF
> Introduction to Silverlight 1.0

XAML, the Extensible Application Markup Language, is the code-behind language for Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight applications. The idea is that application designers can create the whiz-bang graphics they want and hand them over to developers as XAML files that the developers need not touch (or “ruin,” depending on whom you ask).

A couple bloggers have had a chat recently about programming with XAML. They focus primarily on using XAML with WPF — not surprising, since, in relative terms, it has been around a lot longer than Silverlight. Both articles are worth a read, especially for those just getting started with XAML programming.

Tomer Shamam loves XAML, particularly the way it separates design from code, is hierarchical and is able to define a graphic using fewer lines of code than do static languages.

On the other hand, Omer van Kloeten does not love XAML. It doesn’t make good enough use of the .NET 2.0 CLR, it adds complexity (in the form of new syntax for binding and references, a different parser and compiler, and new layers), and the tooling support for both developers and designers is a bit immature.  

Have any of you out there had XAML experiences that mirror those of either Shamam or van Kloeten? Feel free to weigh in.

Microsoft Expression Blend is used to create the rich graphical interfaces that are the proverbial bread and butter of Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight applications.

Blend targets application designers as opposed to developers, but, as Microsoft sees it, designers and developers will increasingly be cooperating in the application development lifecycle. Blend’s hook is that the UI elements made by designers come with a code-behind XAML file, which can then be easily read by Visual Studio.

Microsoft’s Expression Blend Service Pack 1 takes a logical step and makes the tool compatible with the recently released Visual Studio 2008. Additional features of the download are covered in the Knowledge Base articles Description of Expression Blend Service Pack 1 and Issues that are fixed in Expression Blend by Expression Blend Service Pack 1.