Although Silverlight 2.0 is biting WPF in its tail, and Microsoft promotes Silverlight 2.0 for future LOB applications, and that Silverlight is planned to go out-of-prison (browser), there is a nice plan for WPF 4.0.
I'll start by saying that few controls such as the long awaiting DataGrid, Calendar and DatePicker controls are now released, and you can download the toolkit from here.
There is a new cool WPF Ribbon control which is currently CTP, and you can also download it from here.
* In order to access Ribbon, click on "License the Office UI" and sign the licensing agreement. The Ribbon download will be available on the page after signing the license.
As for the WPF roadmap, here is a list of what you should expect to have in near future:
- Ribbon control RTM - this year
- Text Clarity Enhancements
- App and Framework Deployment
- Improved Interop
- Improved Accessibility & Localization
- Improved Performance
- Multi-touch
- Superbar Control
- PropertyGrid Control
- Common Dialogs
- Effects (I saw a demo of XNA effects on WPF, this was an extremely cool feature)
- Animation
- Media Enhancements (H.264 on Windows 7) - also I heard about a plan for a new media pipeline for WPF
- Improved RAD LOB Designer
- Better XAML Designer - maybe Intellisense for Data Binding Markups...
- Developer/Designer Workflow Enhancements
- Visual State Manager, compatible with Silverlight 2.0
- More …
Blend 3.0 and VS 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 should be released around 2009/2010, especially VS WPF designer will provide a great RAD for WPF (like WinForms designer), such as Drag/Drop Data Binding, Color Picker, Designers, etc.
Stay tuned and watch the PDC session on Channel9.