Recently, I have been more involved with development on the Microsoft Surface as part of my work with the Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab. We also have a couple of Surfaces here at Lab49. The Surface is a very interesting device to me because of it’s potential not necessarily as a consumer device but in marketplace and enterprise scenarios. Furthermore, it’s SDK is implemented in WPF using very clever tricks like attached events.
One thing that frustrated me about the Surface though, was how closed off its development community had been. If Microsoft really wants this thing to take off (a topic that has been the subject of heated debate), then why not just let anyone who wants to download the tools and SDK to test it out? Well it seems that Microsoft has come to their senses and put all the Surface materials (technical resources, documentation, and downloads) up for public consumption. If you’re a UI enthusiast or just a WPF developer I highly suggest checking it out:
Download Surface SDK 1.0 (SP1)
Surface Documentation on MSDN
New Surface Forums
Happy Coding!