Thanks to the efforts of Kurt Berglund, a new hire on the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly "Avalon") team, there is now a library that allows standard WPF controls (like buttons, text boxes, lists) to be used interactively on 3D objects. This is not a native feature of the 1.0 version of the framework--such items could be displayed, but were non-interactive. See this channel9 video or this blog post for details on how this (dare I say) clever hack works. Source code is also available.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-11-24
It's called the internet ;-). It started with standards and it relies on it.
Adobe Flash? That's a standard for vector animation. Yet, there's no open source player that can legally play Flash without having to reverse-engineer the format in a clean-room environment. Funny that Gnash will accommodate/validate this closed format, while Microsoft will challenge it on their home turf (oops! I mean "Monopoly". What was I thinking?!).
MP3s are a standard, and have been since the days of Napster and Winamp. Yet, you can't legally distribute a codec (FOSS or no) for playing MP3 without first paying for a license from Fraunhofer (until 2010, I believe).
Standards shouldn't be created without agreement between competitors and an open, free basis for basic access by non-competitors. Yet, they are.
As they say, "standards schmandards."
Member since:
2005-07-06
There are a lot of clients that simply don't care about open standards.
It's called the internet ;-). It started with standards and it relies on it.
Just the way we use .NET 2.0. That way development gets cheaper, yet quality gets higher.
Right.
Nobody is forcing you to use or dump anything. You can install WPF/E plugin the same way you install Flash player.
Again, the difference between it and Flash is the monopolies Microsoft can use to push it on people. People do genuinely get a choice with Flash at the moment because Macromedia and Adobe don't control a dominant browser.