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GETTING STARTED

Because the WinFX bits are still in beta and being developed, there is a certain amount of bleading-edge pain that you might experience keeping up with which Visual Studio bits work with which WinFX Community Technology Preview (CTP) bits.

WinFX February 2006 CTP is now available. This works with the Visual Studio 2005 RTM, see the offical page for more details.

Eric Nelson of Microsoft UK has a great getting started with WinFX entry.

More on Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 2, but note this is not compatible with Office '12' Beta 1.
Don't forget also Microsoft have announced a go-live license for two pieces of WinFX, the Windows Communication Foundation and the Windows Workflow Foundation. This means that customers that need to deploy these pieces live can do so, although of course these products are still in beta. RTM for these, and a go-live for the Windows Presentation Foundation, will come later.

Other downloads:
   Windows SDK
   Microsoft Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Community Technology Preview - Development Tools for WinFX® (aka Fidalgo)
   VS Extensions for WorkFlow.

Tim Sneath has more details on the downloads. Also check if you are updating code from earlier CTPs note the breaking changes to WPF and WCF APIs.

After all that, you are ready to start developing!

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WHERE TO GO NEXT?

Windows Presentation Framework (WPF)
To play around using XamlPad or the getting started with 'Avalon' tutorials.

Windows Communication Framework (WCF)
Explore the getting started with 'Indigo' tutorials.

Windows Workflow Framework (WWF)
Read the getting started with the developer walkthrough of Windows Workflow Foundation.

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