Finally there is a Bing Maps control for Windows Presentation Foundation. It's currently in beta but it opens up some interesting possibilities.

So at last WPF developers have native controls for adding maps and map-related information to their projects rather than having to use either the Ajax Bing Maps V7.0 or Silverlight control as workarounds.

What surprises me is  that there wasn't already a control for WPF given that  the Silverlight one was out eighteen months ago, released as soon as the former Virtual Earth changed its name to Bing Maps. Even more disturbingly, Chris Pendleton writing on the Bing Maps Blog starts by asking (and answering)  "What is WPF?" - as if WPF was some third world graphics system he would expect the reader never to have heard of.

"The WPF Control has everything you'd expect from a Bing Maps control including the ability to present information via a WPF native control such as:

• Map Styles: Road, Aerial and Hybrid
• The ability to place shapes on the map via lat/lon – pins, polylines and polygons
• Navigating the map with pan and zoom keyboard controls

We’ve also opened up a lot of the abilities within the control to empower the developer to take control of the user experience. So, you’ll notice there is no default navigation, no default pushpins and no roll overs – this is truly a blank (er, map-based) canvas - we want to see you do some killer things with"

One noteworthy feature is support for Microsoft Surface - the WPF control is touch-enabled with support for Surface v 2’s Pixel Sense technology. It supports full rotation and inertia with options to turn both off and offers infinite scroll; touch to lat/lon to pixel conversions, which lets you add pushpins by touch; and the ability to plug into the Bing Maps REST API for geocoding and routing or to the Bing API for search.

This certainly gives some scope for WPF developers Bing team is looking for feedback while it is in beta.

Download:

Bing Maps WPF Control (Beta) 

Related articles:

Getting started with the Bing Maps Silverlight Control

Getting started with Bing Maps AJAX Control 7.0

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