You know I haven't dug just a whole lot into WPF/E. I did spend about 4 hours yesterday giving a hard and quick look at it though. What did I get out of it? Well, how is something that requires and ties into javascript the way it does ever going to compete with Flash? Not only that, but you have to have the client install something that will render the xaml (it installed something, this is what I assumed it was, for the vector graphics and animation and whatnot). WPF/E resources on the web are lacking in info from what I've found, and the expression series of tools website doesn't have any good information either. All the demos and tutorials are too remedial to make an informed decision about the products and technology. I spent 2 hours on a tutorial on Expression Blend, and at the end of it, my synchronization of databound elements wouldn't stay in sync like they were supposed to, which was the entire purpose of doing the demo. I could have done the same thing in VS in about 5 minutes and made it work fine. The only advantage was that I could slap some nice coloring and layout stuff onto the page with Expression Blend.
BTW, Expression Design is pretty damned slick. You can create full vector images just like if you were using Photoshop, and export them out to XAML. I thought that was impressive. The demo on that was nice too.
So I downloaded about all the demo's and websites I could find on WPF/E, and every one of them is filled with a TON of javascript. How is that easier than anything else I'm doing? Seems like going backwards to me.
I also got the trial of Expression Web and downloaded the starter kit. I thought there was going to be something cool in there, but turns out, there is nothing (that my untrained eye can find) that has anything to do with WPF! Its just a plain Asp.Net 2.0 website!
Is WPF/E really a viable solution? Is it going to get widespread use in the future? My first impressions after spending about 4 hours with it is no, at least not for enterprise applications. Its use is primarily for media, vector graphics and animation - period. All interaction with these elements requires javascript, and what appears to be a lot of it, and that's a big downer to me. I admit I know nothing about Flash except that it looks cool and requires a plug-in to run in my browser. From a user perspective, WPF/E will be the same thing. However, from a developer prospective, are you going to quit using your Flash model and switch to WPF/E? Is it really going to be better? Javascript and untyped form data... oh joy. Cross platform is a plus though :)
I went through quite a bit of WPF/E stuff yesterday and I have to say, that's probably as far as I'm going to go with it for quite awhile. The technology doesn't fit what I do, because I don't build Amazon or YouTube or anything of those websites that would benefit and look snazzy with this type of ability that WPF/E provides.
Those of you have do have more than 4 hours of "getting to know you" time with WPF/E, feel free to set me straight on this.