One of the biggest beneficiaries so far of Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) may be Tacoma's IdentityMine.

The Web and software development company built early demos of WPF and .Net 3.0 such as newsreaders and applications that Microsoft used to show off its platform.

Now IdentityMine has taken the big step from services to products by releasing a set of tools called Blendables for designers and developers. The company has been developing the kit with its user community for months. It released the kit on Oct. 3 and formally announced the launch today.

IdentityMine was an alpha and beta tester of Microsoft's XAML-based presentation technologies, said Kurt Brockett, director of product manager:

"We had all these tools laying aound that we had built ourself. Once it shipped, there was a natural market out there for components - it was just a matter of productizing our components."

The kit includes tools such as Zoombox, which "allows content to be panned in any direction or zoomed in or out using a multitude of user inputs" and ElementSnapshot that "enables greater designer creativity by alleviating performance degradation when exploiting advanced visual effects."

Blendables starts at $395 and the company is offering a downloadable 60-day trial.

IdentityMine has about 50 employees, mostly in Tacoma. It also has offices in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas and about 20 in Kochi, India.

(Updated with Brockett's comment and details about employees)