.NET 3.0 WPF/WCF Templates for VS2005

Microsoft recently released the .NET Framework 3.0 (WinFX) that includes Windows Presenation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace. If you are trying to develop using the WPF or WCF using VS2005, you might be wondering if there are VS2005 Templates avail for these project types. You would think that by installing the Vista SDK and the .NET Framework 3.0 you would have them, but no. After doing some digging, there are extensions for WWF for Visual Studio. For WPF and WCF, you are left with the November 2006 CTP Release of the Extensions, which is the “Cider” Release. I guess from what I am reading, there won’t be RTM versions of these extensions, well, not until the Visual Studio release of “Orcas”.

Now, I guess I don’t mind that the CTP versions are what you are supposed to use, but the problem is there is no where I can find (in one place) where all of this is laid out and specified. You have to dig around on forums and what not. Microsoft should lay out what is what so you don’t have to second guess.

After installing the RTM 2006 Extensions, you should see the .NET Framework 3.0 projects types in VS2005 as shown here: