Microsoft is getting ready to release a beta version of a new cross platform graphical subsystem, WPF/E. WPF/E stands for Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, and is a scaled down version of WPF.

WPF is the graphical subsystem of .Net 3.0, and is a part of the Vista operating system. It is what allows such fluid transitions and scaling in the Vista interface, among other things. The WPF/E subset discussed here is limited in its features in that it doesn’t include the 3D rendering of its bigger brother, but does include hardware rendering, vector graphics, animation and more. While WPF is built into Vista, and available only to Windows XP and 2003 server through .Net 3.0, WPF/E is cross platform. WPF/E will be available to Firefox for Window or Linux, Safari for Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and more. It will be scriptable through javascript, and will even contain a subset of the CLR and .Net Framework so it can be accessed through C# or VB.Net, even under Mac OS X.

The hype includes the mention of “killer”. This time it is aimed at Adobe’s flash technology apparently. We will see how that pans out in time I guess. However, It does shed a little more light on the recent announcement of Adobe contributing code to Firefox.

The only available mention of a date for release is “soon”.

There is a video available here which sheds a little more light on the discussion of WPF/E.

Source: BetaNews