Scott Guthrie posted a plethora of information on the upcoming Service Pack 1 release for Visual Studio 2008.
There's a lot of content in the post.
So read it several times to make sure you digest it all. ;)
Here are the WPF highlights, some of which were announced at MIX08 (emphasis added):
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WPF Performance Improvements
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes several significant performance optimizations and improvements to WPF. Some of the specific graphics improvements include:
- Smoother animations
- Hardware accelerated rendering of Blur and DropShadow Bitmap Effects
- Text Rendering speed improvements - especially with VisualBrish and 3D scenes
- 2D graphics improvements - especially with z-index scenarios
- A new WriteableBitmap class that enables real-time and tear-free bitmap updates. This enables custom "paint"-style applications, data visualizations, charts and graphs that optionally bypass the default WPF 2D graphics APIs.
- Layered window performance improvements
- WPF Data Improvements
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes several data binding and editing improvements to WPF. These include:
- StringFormat support within {{ Binding }} expressions to enable easy formatting of bound values
- New alternating rows support within controls derived from ItemsControl, which makes it easier to set alternating properties on rows (for example: alternating background colors)
- Better handling and conversion support for null values in editable controls
- Item-level validation that applies validation rules to an entire bound item
- MultiSelector support to handle multi-selection and bulk editing scenarios
- IEditableCollectionView support to interface data controls to data sources and enable editing/adding/removing items in a transactional way
- Performance improvements when binding to IEnumerable data sources
- WPF Extensible Shader Effects
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support in WPF for a new shader effects architecture and API that allows extremely expressive visual effects to be created and applied to any control or element within WPF. These shader effects support blending multiple input compositions together. What makes them particularly powerful is that WPF executes effects (including custom effects you build yourself) using the GPU - giving you fully hardware accelerated graphics performance. Like almost everything in WPF, you can also use WPF databinding and animation on the properties of an effect (allowing them to be fully integrated into an experience).
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WPF Interoperability with Direct3D
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support to efficiently integrate Direct3D directly into WPF. This gives you more direct access to the hardware and to take full advantage of the Direct3D API within WPF applications. You will be able to treat Direct3D content just like an image within an application, as well as use Direct3D content as textures on WPF controls.
- VS 2008 for WPF Improvements
VS 2008 SP1 includes several significant improvements for WPF projects and the WPF designer. These include:
- Several performance improvements
- Events tab support within the property browser
- Ability to sort properties alphabetically in the property browser
- Margin snaplines which makes form layout much quicker
- Better designer support for TabControl, Expander, and grid computing
- Code initiated refactoring now updates your XAML (including both control declarations and event declarations in XAML)
- Go to Definition and Find All References now support things declared in XAML
The debugger has also been updated in SP1 so that runtime errors in XAML markup (for example: referencing styles, datasources and/or other objects that don't exist)
The more I work with WPF (it's been over a year now) , the more I love it.
I can't imagine how I worked with Windows Forms for so long. ;)
Speaking of WinForms, WinForms gets new controls in SP1:
- Vector shapes (Line, Rectangle, Oval)
- Printing controls
- DataRepeater controls
Previously, I had heard that WinForms 2.0 was it for the technology and there was to be no new developments in the technology.
Has that changed? Or did these controls already exists?
The screen shot implies that these controls were part of a VB control package.
