Intro to XAML in 20 Minutes (or less) - Or "What the heck is this XAML thing?" - Or "How I learned to love my zammel"

The Moth - XAML: Level 100

"Since you are reading my blog, chances are that you are a .NET developer. Do you realise that eXtensible Application Markup Language (XAML) is now part of .NET? Are you familiar with it? How would you describe XAML (pronounced "zammel") to someone that is not familiar with it if you only had 10-20 minutes? Below is my take.

Background
XAML was introduced as part of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which was released in November 2006 as part of .NET Framework v3.0. In addition, XAML is at the core of Silverlight, v2 of which will be released this year. Whilst XAML itself is independent of those two technologies, I am a practical person so I associate XAML with those two presentation technologies (WPF for the Windows desktop and Silverlight for the cross-platform browser) and have no qualms in intermixing those terms in this blog post. The XAML that Silverlight 2 will support is a subset of the XAML that WPF supports but the core principles and most capabilities are the same.

XAML is an XML language for describing a hierarchy of objects and their properties; in our concrete examples, it describes a hierarchy of visual objects that make up a Graphical User Interface (GUI).

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Conclusion – XAML levels of competency
If you have been ignoring XAML so far, I don't think you can afford to do so any longer. IMHO there are 4 levels of XAML competency:
Level 100 – truly understand all of the above.
Level 200 – confidently read XAML (e.g. as spat out by VS2008 or Blend).
Level 300 – be able to type XAML yourself with an aim to create a structure of a bland GUI (setting basic properties and hooking events etc).
Level 400 – create styles, templates, animations and set gradient colours by hand."

The Moth is at it again, this time with a long elevator pitch as to what XAML "is".

As for my current XAML competency level... err... um... yeah...  :/