as many of us windows user are gearing up for windows vista, microsoft today announced the availability of some related technologies important for designers/photographers. do check out microsoft expression and microsoft codename max.

the design tools are leveraging the new windows presentation foundation (formerly code named "avalon") which is the new unified presentation subsystem for the windows operating system. the windows presentation foundation (wpf) is exposed through winfx, windows vista's managed-code programming model that extends the microsoft .net framework. i know, this is a lot of techie-talk but it is actually very cool. wfp consists of a display engine that takes full advantage of modern graphics hardware and an extensible set of managed classes that development teams can use to create rich, visually stunning applications. wpf also introduces extensible application markup language (xaml), which enables developers and designers to use an xml-based model to declaratively specify the desired user interface (ui) behavior.

vista is still a long way out from being on the shelfs, but trust me, it will rock!