Introduction to XAML

Hi Manip, you should be able to click on the button in the bottom-right hand corner to open it in WMP. Once loaded, you can simply do File / Save As... to copy it onto your disk.

In response to your WordArt question, you can do some insanely cool stuff with text. Whilst you can't exactly do what you're after directly, you can use the FormattedText.BuildGeometry() method to turn any formatted text into a vector geometry, and once you've done that, you can skew it, transform it, reshape it or anything else you want. We're all going to be able to create some awesome effects using this capability.

As far as the differing styles of XAML are concerned, it is at least consistent - you have both choices. For example, you can write:

   <Button Content="OK" />

or

   <Button>OK</Button>

It's just that the default property for Button is Content, hence you can embed the text within the element. We could only support the former choice, but the latter allows for a more natural syntax, I think. Does that make sense?

That's right - you get Avalon Express applications on any machine with IE 6 or above and the WinFX Runtime Components installed. You'll get the very best experience on IE 7, since we weren't able to touch the IE 6 bits to integrate better. On IE 7, for instance, the back / forward buttons in the browser can be used to control the navigation model within an Avalon app. Avalon Express applications can be hosted as the full contents of a browser window, or alternatively within an IFRAME if you want to use Avalon as if it were a plug-in.

The way is also open for other browsers to host Avalon Express, incidentally - they just need to host our container.

Expect to see a whitepaper on Avalon Express published on MSDN in the next week by Karen Corby, the Program Manager for this area.