The beginning of an era - Windows Presentation Foundation ships

The .NET Framework 3.0 has been released which means that Windows Presentation Foundation is now fully available as a development platform for Rich Internet Applications. The .NET Framework blog has a list of the various downloads.

If you use Vista when it comes out, the .NET Framework 3 will be installed by default, but the download is required for anyone using Windows XP. Reactions are all over the place including Rob Relyea's blog, DesignersLove.NET, Mike Swanson, and hackedbrain among others.

Big congratulations to the .NET and Avalon teams. It's been a long time coming, but hopefully it was worth it. With the release of WPF, my eyes are on Adobe's Apollo as the only Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology that isn't released yet. The RIA space is booming. We have Adobe's Flex, OpenLaszlo, and now we have WPF. I'm excited to see what developers do with the new Framework and how they leverage the power of WPF and XBAPs to build richer user experiences that go beyond the browser. The only question mark I have for the platform is when we will see WPF/e and what platforms will that be supported for.