12/05/2006, 4:15pm, EST

Tuesday, December 5th

MS quietly releases WPF/E Mac beta

setteB.IT reports that Microsoft has quietly released a Mac beta of WPF/E, its Windows Presentation Foundation Everywere plug-in. The software is designed to enhance Web browsers -- Safari and Firefox 1.5.0.8 -- by enabling them to render rich content in addition to HTML. The December 2006 Community Technology Preview will expire on February 18th, 2007, but is available now as a digital download from Microsoft's website. The plug-in requires Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later running on a PowerPC G3 500MHz or faster system with 128MB of memory. The new beta release works with Intel-based Macs and will function normally until the expiration date, according to Microsoft, after which it will prompt users to update to the latest version upon any attempt to render a page that requires the plug-in.

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dashiel

cool...

12/05, 4:28pm, EST

sparkle and wpf seem pretty interesting. though there's no way in hell i'm installing a microsoft beta product that connects to the internet.

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jarod

WTF

12/05, 4:49pm, EST

is Windows Presentation Foundation anyhow? It's bad enough that their FINAL releases are fataly bad. Do they honestly think, people will install MS BETAware on their Macs to view 1 or 2 pathetic sites that no one gives a shit about anyhow? Get real.

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l008com

wow

12/05, 4:51pm, EST

does MS try to come up with the worst names ever? Cause I don't think you could come up with this stuff if you weren't trying.

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ricardogf

As usual, phone home...

12/05, 5:13pm, EST

Oh poor MS...you are hopeless.

From MS's page:

“WPF/E” (codename) will periodically ping Microsoft.com to verify its integrity (at which point the only information that will be communicated will be your IP address and the module version).

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jpellino

so......

12/05, 5:34pm, EST

what can I do now that I couldn;t do before?

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jarod

To: jpellino

12/05, 5:56pm, EST

You will probably crash more now! ;-)

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t6hawk

Why is it called...

12/05, 7:44pm, EST

Windows Presentation Foundation anyways? It's running on a Mac.

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LordJohnWhorfin

Same old tricks...

12/05, 11:00pm, EST

Another platform marginalization tool brought to you by the Evil Empire™. Except that it's not going to work this time around because nobody wants their crap anymore.

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Guntis

So...what is rich content

12/06, 2:05am, EST

"The software is designed to enhance Web browsers -- Safari and Firefox 1.5.0.8 -- by enabling them to render rich content in addition to HTML." On their website I couldn't find answer to what is "rich content" which I'm supposed to lack without this plugin... Now I can view Flash, QT, WMV, etc. What am I missing? Kernel panics? I'm happy to live with as little of MS as possible. Only MS Office for those rare situations when I need to print documents sent to me from my PC friends.

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Sprocket

Be vewwy, vewwy quiet!

12/06, 6:25am, EST

I'm glad I was quietly notified of this WPF/E release. That way it won't wake anyone when I flush this thing down the bog.

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