MIX09 is now over and the good news is that we can watch all sessions that have been recorded online !

I didn’t have time yet to watch all sessions I’m interested in, but I already saw “What”s new in WPF 4″ video (available here).

Here are the important points of this session regarding the future of WPF:

• Lot of new things are coming in WPF4: Text clarity improved, Multi-touch, Windows7 integration, Ribbon control, Focus management improvements, Visual State Manager, Client profile, Themes, Chart controls and a lot of bug fixes…
• WPF4 will come together with .Net4 which brings its own set of cool new stuff: Dynamic Language, MEF, F#, parallel library
• WPF will be the best choise for RAD under Windows7: Multi-touch, Taskbar integration, Ribbon, Common dialogs, File explorer customization…
• Multi-touch support: UIElement changes to manage touch related events, touch support is added for some controls (ScrollViewer)
• New composition API: developers can control graphical elements cached in video memory
• Controls that are currently available in the WPF toolkit will be integrated into the platform (DataGrid, DatePicker…) – moreover an update of the toolkit has just been released
• Developers tools are improved: VS2010 and Blend3 helps the usage of WPF (databinding support…)
• .Net4 will come with a new XAML parser: faster, extensible, public API to manage BAML format
• .Net4 XAML language has new XAML features: support for generics, better references by name

I hope will see a CTP soon so that we’ll start playing with those new features

The keynote at MIX09 is almost over and Expression Blend 3 has been announced !

Go ahead and grab this new version from the Microsoft Expression web site.

A video is also already available on Channel9, where Unni Ravindranathan takes on a tour to demonstrate the new features of Blend 3. I just finished watching the show and here are my notes:

• Blend3 supports Silverlight3 but there is more than that: lot of new functionalities to improve the user experience and the productivity
• Goal: be more creative inside the tool
• In Blend2, it was sort of complicated to select objects, particularly with nested containers. With Blend3 it’s a lot easier, we no longer have to navigate inside the objects explorer. Just click and you’re done
• New features to manipulate the gradients : we can manipulate the gradient stops directly from the artboard
• Supports for shaders : the assets panel now contains a “shader” category – drag’n'drop on the artboard and you’re done
• Supports for projections in Silverlight3, new category from the property grid to edit them
• Import from Photoshot and Illustrator functionality !
• XAML Intellisense (oh my god !)
• Team Foundation Server support
• Sample data source generation inside Blend3 (Blend is able to generate sample data such as texts and images)
• New features: behaviours that can be drag’n'dropped from the assets panel on the artboard to attach a piece of code to a visual element (could be used to start an animation for example)
• Easing functionality when working with animation: define elastic, cubic, exponential animations (I think designers are going to have some fun)
• New extensibility points to the Editor: custom adorners, custom panels, extend property grid, etc.

Here are some screenshots I just took running the preview on my machine. I think Blend3 is going a major step forward in the Expression Studio 3. Don’t wait a second to play with it !

Welcome to Blend3 !

The new assets panel

Easing functionality

XAML Intellisense !

Day 1 keynote will take place at 9:00 AM PST (5:OO PM in France :p) and we’re all excepting big announcements about the future of WPF, Expression Blend and Silverlight.

It’s possible to follow the keynote online at live.visitmix.com !

Apparently, some of the CTP bits that will be anounced during the keynote are already available such as Silverlight 3 SDK. Can’t wait to see the keynote