Greg Schechter has begun a series that covers the ins and outs of the new effects API in WPF 3.5 SP1 (3.6??). This is the real effects API we in the WPF community all been waiting for. It’s completely GPU based and unlocks an infinite amount of potential for WPF designers.

Somasegar broke the news this morning and provides some details of what to expect from the service packs. Jump on over to his blog to read about it and then click here to start downloading.

Also note that if you’re using Expression Blend 2.5 preview, there’s an update to that which makes it work with the 3.5 SP1. You can read more about that over here.

Update 6PM (ET):
Even though I’ve uninstalled all other betas/CTPs that are documented (and then some) I am unfortunately unable to install the .NET Framework service pack due to the following error that occurs about 2 seconds into the installation:

[05/12/08,18:01:05] Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0SP1 (CBS): [2] Error: Installation failed for component Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0SP1 (CBS). MSI returned error code 1
[05/12/08,18:01:16] WapUI: [2] DepCheck indicates Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0SP1 (CBS) is not installed.

I’ve done some searching around and this doesn’t seem to be a 3.5SP1 specific problem. I’ve tried some of the suggested solutions out there, but have yet to get anywhere.

Well they demo’d the new WPF effects at the Mix keynote, but they didn’t show off any code. Guess that makes sense since it’s the keynote, but I’m really itching to find out how they were implemented. Anyone know where I can find some sample code??? Maybe I just need to wait for one of the Mix sessions to be posted up.

Microsoft has made the Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit available here. Note some of the links that go into detail are still not working as I write this, but the main page gives a glimpse of what we can expect. You probably want to check out the new developer features that IE8 will bring to the table. My favorites are the selectors API support and the AJAX enhancements… especially the news that they will up the number of connections IE uses to communicate with the server from the traditional two to six!

Just saw this over on Ars, the Singularity OS from Microsoft Research is now available for download. In case you’ve never heard about this project, it’s an operating system written almost entirely in managed code. Very cool stuff.

ScottGu has unleashed a set of posts (main post here) that shows off some of the new features of Silverlight 2. Looking at the samples, it’s safe to say Microsoft heard us loud and clear when we said that Silverlight really needs to reach a better feature parity with WPF if it hopes to embed itself as a viable rich client platform for the web. Silverlight now offers the same layout model, data binding model, and styling and templating model.

With these features in place, I finally think the code-name of WPF/Everywhere is now a valid representation of the product. Kudos to the team for all their hard work. Can’t wait to get the bits… the only question now is: how big has the download become?

Update on download size:
Oops, I missed that Scott mentions the size of the download right in the post…

The Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 is 4.3MB in size, and takes 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn’t already have it.

I’ve had access to it for a while, but just got around to installing it. The good news is now anyone can now because it became public today. The install experience went very smooth and I haven’t had any problems since installing it (earlier today). I developed in VS2008 all day, used Outlook, browsed the web with IE, etc. YMMV.

Keep in mind this is an RC and not RTM, so you will have to uninstall/re-install when it does go live.

Plain and simple, Mass Effect is one of the greatest games I have ever had the pleasure of playing. The story is amazing (you become totally immersed in it), the graphics are supreme (in fact they push the 360 a bit too hard at times) and the gameplay is signature BioWare .

If you haven’t already picked it up, do yourself a favor and pick it up tonight. Be careful though, it’s seriously addictive. I’ve spent 26hrs playing it thus far. I’ve spent a lot of time on secondary assignments to get my XP up for the primary storyline. I’ve heard you can finish the main storyline in about 30 if you ignore the secondary stuff, but what fun is that?

Wow, Microsoft is really on a roll here these past couple weeks. First, IE8 is officially announced here on the IE Blog and then PeteL, a member of the IE team, announced he’s already uploaded the VPCs and is just waiting for them to propagate to all of Microsoft’s content servers. So, I guess we should expect to have a shiny new toy to play with starting some time tomorrow.

Please, for the web’s sake, let alone Microsoft’s poor IE team who is taking a public flogging, let this version put an end to all the missing standards. I don’t care so much about proprietary things like supporting Canvas, because that can be provided through an abstraction to the VML engine or Silverlight or Flash, but please let this be the version that finally brings the DOM and CSS support up to spec and provides a better performing ECMAScript engine.

Fingers crossed, but I refuse to hold my breath.

Update:
It’s possible this is a false alarm. Joe pointed out to me in the comments that PeteL was probably talking about IE6/7 VPCs in the same post that he mentioned IE8. Without having read his previous post I had no context to figure that out and he wasn’t exactly very clear in his context switch. My apologies in advance if I got anyone’s hopes up too soon if it turns out to not be IE8.

Hot on the heels of the release of the Parallel Extensions (aka PFX) yesterday, Channel9 has posted a video where Anders Hejlsberg and Joe Duffy answer some of the whys and hows. Definitely worth checking out.

Also, check out this screencast (also on Channel9) where Daniel Moth shows PLINQ in action and discusses some features of PFX that we will see in future releases.