"Acropolis" CTP available for download
The cat is finally out of the bag and available for discussion - Microsoft's "Acropolis" project. Even though I decided to go ahead and port a major project to the CAB (Composite Application Building Block), I have spend the past few years explaining to the P&P team that the CAB was too hard to work with for most developers/projects. Acropolis is MS's attempt to
(1) Make it much easier to build loosely coupled, composite, smart client applications and
(2) Make it part of the .NET framework instead of an add-in from the Patterns and Practices team
You can download the CTP (for Orcas Beta 1) and help file from here. In addition to the framework classes, the CTP includes a design wizard and template for Acropolis applications. The help file includes not only reference sections, but also a nice walk-through of a simple RSS reader in Acropolis.