Jason Zander, a Microsoft Product Unit Manager, not only points out the implementation problems we have with being able to unload .NET assemblies, he recommends AppDomains as the solution you really want anyway. And then, when his commentors dissent, he’s right back in there asking for more information.

Have you got opinions on this topic? Make hay while the sun shines!

Ian posted a fun little snippet of XAML showing off the new support for image effects on anything that Avalon renders, not just images:

<FlowPanel xmlns=“http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/xaml”
  xmlns:def=“Definition” Text.FontSize=“24″>
  <Text>This seems clear enough.</Text>
  <Text>
    <Text.ImageEffect>
      <ImageEffectBlur Radius=“3”/>
    </Text.ImageEffect>
    This is considerably less clear.
  </Text>
</FlowPanel>

I’ve rewritten it using a more compact syntax:

<Text ImageEffect=“*ImageEffectBlur(Radius=3)“>
This is considerably less clear.
</Text>

1. For 1 free UUID, is this legal XAML? Why or why not?
2. For 2 free UUIDs, what other popular XAML construct uses the exact same syntax?
3. For 3 free UUIDs, what popular C# construct has a similar syntax? How is it subtly different? (Hint: I’m not showing the difference in this example.)

As Wesner notes, the Longhorn SDK lists 3 distinct Avalon applications types: Windows/Forms apps, multi-page apps and documents. The beauty of Avalon is that it brings so many together, apps/documents, multi-window apps/multi-page apps, text/images/video/audio, 2D/3D, etc. And to answer Wesner, Microsoft will provide editing tools for Avalon beyond Notepad (someday…).

Greg Schecter, one of the designers of the new support for 3D in Avalon available in the Longhorn WinHEC build, provides a nice overview and some other links to Avalon 3D resources:

• Greg Schechter’s Introducing 3D in Avalon and 2D/3D Integration
• Basic 3D in the Longhorn SDK
• Joe Beda’s WinHEC report, including a screenshot of an Avalon 3D sample

3D support in Avalon is not meant to build Doom 3, but it does shine especially brightly in two places: 1) you can do 3D in a declarative way in XAML, just like the rest of Avalon and 2) as Greg describes, the integration of 2D and 3D in Avalon is nice and clean the way it isn’t in most current 3D APIs. I’m looking forward to taking advantage of the 3D support in my own apps, which isn’t something I ever considered before with DirectX. Thanks, guys!