Event Information

WPF -- Microsoft’s Magnificent New Graphics Engine
When:	Tuesday, 8/21/2007 at 6:30 PM
Where:	San Francisco, 1 Market Street Landmark Building, 2nd Floor
Event Description
By now you’ve probably heard of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). But how well do you really know WPF? It’s been my experience in talking to .NET developers that many have no idea of how powerful WPF is. Some think it is a watered down graphics engine that can animate buttons on a form. Others think it is a new API for Vista and has no impact on applications they are currently building. But they are wrong! WPF represents the first significant change to the Windows graphics engine in over ten years. What is trivial to build with WPF is difficult or impossible in Microsoft's current Winforms technology. The WPF API is chock full of improvements for constructing rich client applications. WPF is hardware accelerated, using the graphics rendering engine in your GPU for faster processing of UI primitives. It is vector based, via Direct3D, which provides truly scalable and resolution independent UIs. WPF makes it easy to integrate video, audio, text, animation and 2D-3D graphics into a seamless montage. You may not need 3D in your business application but I bet you have UI ideas that are difficult to accomplish with the current set of graphics tools - like GDI. If you truly care about creating a great user interface, you owe it to yourself to see what WPF can do. Here’s what one attendee to a recent NET 3.0 road-show said after the event: “I attended this event to learn mostly about WCF and WF. I was expecting WPF to be a big waste of time. Not only did Walt do an excellent job explaining the benefits of Windows Presentation Foundation but he made a convert out of me. I never realized how extensive WPF is, or how it simplifies so many UI design tasks. If I had to a pick a favorite from the topics it would have to be Styles and Templates. Wow! Powerful stuff. We are going to be using WCF in our next release, no doubt about that, but after seeing WPF I've already planned several UI improvements for our existing application and I'll be using WPF for them.”
Presenter's Bio
Walt Ritscher hopped on the .NET roller coaster after seeing the first .NET preview back in 2000. Instantly realizing that .NET is a fundamental shift in the way developers produce code he set to work to show programmers the merits of this emerging platform. Prior to his .NET enlightenment he spent six years persuading Visual Basic and COM to work together. Walt has trained thousands of corporate developers during the last ten years. His teaching schedule has taken him throughout the world providing developer training at corporations, universities and software conferences. He has collaborated on several books and videos produced for the developer market including early adopter .NET courses at Microsoft Press. He is also deeply involved in the local developer community — founding the .NET Developers Association in Redmond, WA. Walt has accumulated plenty of experience as a developer — he is fluent in database, component, and Win-Forms technologies. As a web programmer he has built numerous websites including: EPA sites and the Microsoft Community Starter Kit. Walt joined Wintellect in 2006 as a trainer and consultant and is producing Wintellect’s WPF course. Before software development moved to center stage in his life, Walt enjoyed a lively career as a professional keyboard player. Once he cleared the stardust from his eyes, he realized that he loved programming as much as music except writing code was a lot more lucrative. Walt lives in Poulsbo Washington, a quaint waterfront town just a short ferry ride from Seattle. He still loves music, likes to travel with his family and is avidly planning his new dream house.