Visual Studio 2010 to be made in WPF

[chris128]

Sorry if this is old news but I only just heard that the VS 2010 IDE is going to be made using WPF (I also didnt know that Expression Blend was made in WPF). Apparently this should make it very easy to create your own IDE extensions and add-ins. Sounds good to me, and its also a rather comforting sign that Microsoft is very serious about WPF and is confident in its abilities.
Just wondering what other people's thoughts are on this and if you have heard anything more about the advantages that this could bring us as users of WPF and VS 2010 then please post em

[DeanMc]

I dont think the whole application is WPF its only parts of the ide. You sould look at the new start page, thats all xmal its pretty cool!

[mendhak]

It's just the start page that's going to be WPF. They will provide you with a PROJ file and the XAML that lets you modify your own start page to contain what you want. However, as I learned the hard way, you'll first have to copy the project over to a specific location for VS 2010 to pick it up. I thought I had mentioned this in my VS 2010 article but I guess I didn't.

[DeanMc]

I was full sure some other parts where too! Damn I will find the link if I can.

[chris128]

Are you guys sure its not the whole thing?

Here are some quotes from 4 different websites from the first page of a google search on the matter..

Visual Studio 2010 will be Microsoft's first major application based on WPF. WPF-based Visual Studio 2010 will supposedly contain both a "dramatically improved" designer for WPF applications, and a designer for Silverlight, a subset of WPF aimed at web applet

Yes, today Microsoft has confirmed this to the entire developer's world: Visual Studio 2010 IDE will be based on the WPF platform!

With Microsoft writing Visual Studio 2010 shell using WPF, it will change the opinions about this technology in minds of many. Visual Studio is an integral part of any dev shop running Microsoft Platform. And when the flagship product which is bread and butter of millions of developers uses WPF it delivers a confident statement. Microsoft by using WPF for development of Visual Studio will communicate the benefits of data visualization better than any number of presentations. When you will work with Visual Studio 2010 I am sure the conversation will be something like this. Hey! Look at that Architecture Explorer. I really like the way it lays out all those diagrams. Did you know that the entire shell is written in WPF?

As many folk will know, we announced at PDC that the new Visual Studio 2010 shell is being written in WPF. This applies both to the visual “chrome” and the code editor. I saw a demo of the new editor just before PDC, and it’s looking really strong.

EDIT: Oh and a screenshot

[DeanMc]

To be honest I hope it is as it will put serious weight behind WPF. Also the scaling in all the expression products is pretty neat rather than draging windows in and out. That screen shot looks well sexy. I wonder when VS2010 will be out.

[chris128]

Well it looks promising

An interesting video on the WPF roadmap for the future if you havent seen it by the way: http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC46/ (although it is mostly about existing WPF stuff and not that much about the future, its still great to see some of the things that have been made in WPF)

[mendhak]

They've changed the shell since the VS 2010 CTP... so it looks like it'll be the start page and the VS 2010 shell. I sit corrected and this should hopefully mean that writing extensions and add-ins for VS 2010 will be easier. However, I won't get my hopes up just yet. There are several components to VS 2010 and it's entirely possible that they make a part of it in VS 2010 and leave the rest of it in its archaic slumber.

[JuggaloBrotha]

To be honest I hope it is as it will put serious weight behind WPF. Also the scaling in all the expression products is pretty neat rather than draging windows in and out. That screen shot looks well sexy. I wonder when VS2010 will be out.

Probably April of 2010

[DeanMc]

Cool, better start saving now!

[mendhak]

It should be out to the 'lucky ones' in Q4 2009.

[DeanMc]

You mean the the MVP's? Grrr, oh well I guess that's the way the world works huh!

[chris128]

MSDN subscribers get stuff about 2/3 weeks after MVPs anyway dont they?

[DeanMc]

Sigh, im not one of those either. I wonder if someone would sponser me an MSDN subscription!

[JuggaloBrotha]

I've got an msdn subscription (paid for by my job for home use) so I'm looking forward to getting it 3 weeks early for free

[DeanMc]

Oh yeah, thats it, rub it in!

[mendhak]

I'm not entirely sure so don't quote me on this (don't even press the quote button) but I think the order is MVPs -> Technet -> MSDN -> Hello World

But it's very very close usually. A day or two, sometimes a week, sometimes a few months. I was allowed to test VS 2010 CTP a month (or two?) before it came out but we're not allowed to talk about it. For VS2010, I'm going to hazard a guess and say that it'll be 3 days before.

[chris128]

I was allowed to test VS 2010 CTP a month (or two?) before it came out but we're not allowed to talk about it.

Looks like you failed to not talk about it :P

[mendhak]

I meant we were not allowed to talk about it. Damn punctuation and apostrophes