(a.k.a. WPF for Windows Forms Developers)
I'm really enthused about WPF. Not just the Wow! factor things like 3D and animation, but even the more basic features - like for instance the way that you can take control of layout and achieve intelligent resizing without fiddling around with Anchor and Dock settings.
But of course progress usually comes with a price tag - and I'm not thinking of the cost of software here. There's a price to be paid in the sense that you will have to navigate another learning curve, learn new things, "unlearn" old ones and still retain the ability to mentally flip-flop between the two as you go.
I've started to write some articles chronicling a step by step approach to getting started with WPF. It's already clear that they're already going to be far too long to be suitable as blog items. And as we're having a temporary problem with the VBCity Articles area at the moment, I decided to upload them to my ISP's server and link directly from this blog to those articles as I write them. (I'll get them published on DevCity too, once that's sorted.)
Part 1 of the first article is available now and can be viewed here. I'll link from there to new material as I get it written.
Long term, I plan to put the articles together with some video step-by-step walkthroughs (thanks to the magic of Camtasia) and make it all available as a VBCity Academy course later in the year.
Everywhere I look there are loads of articles, blogs, web sites and demos using C#. Very few with VB as the code behind. So I guess I'm just trying to do something to redress that imbalance.
I would appreciate any feedback on the usefulness (or otherwise ) of the articles. As I haven't set up any feedback mechanism with the articles themselves, if you have any comments please post them to this blog item. I hope some people will find the articles useful.