Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation

Overview

The Windows Presentation Foundation is Microsofts next generation UI framework to create applications with a rich user experience. It is part of the .NET framework 3.0 and higher.

WPF combines application UIs, 2D graphics, 3D graphics, documents and multimedia into one single framework. Its vector based rendering engine uses hardware acceleration of modern graphic cards. This makes the UI faster, scalable and resolution independent.

The followinig illustration gives you an overview of the main new features of WPF

Separation of Appearance and Behavior

WPF separates the appearance of an user interface from its behavior. The appearance is generally specified in the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), the behavior is implemented in a managed programming language like C# or Visual Basic. The two parts are tied together by databinding, events and commands. The separation of appearance and behavior brings the following benefits:

• Appearance and behaviour are loosely coupled
• Designers and developers can work on separate models.
• Graphical design tools can work on simple XML documents instead of parsing code.

Rich composition

Controls in WPF are extremely composable. You can define almost any type of controls as content of another. Although these flexibility sounds horrible to designers, its a very powerful feature if you use it appropriate. Put an image into a button to create an image button, or put a list of videos into a combobox to choose a video file.

 
<Button>
    <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
        <Image Source="speaker.png" Stretch="Uniform"/>
        <TextBlock Text="Play Sound" />
    </StackPanel>
</Button>
 
 

Highly customizable

Because of the strict separation of appearance and behavior you can easily change the look of a control. The concept of styles let you skin controls almost like CSS in HTML. Templates let you replace the entire appearance of a control.

The following example shows an default WPF button and a customized button.

Resolution independence

All measures in WPF are logical units - not pixels. A logical unit is a 1/96 of an inch. If you increase the resolution of your screen, the user interface stays the same size - if just gets crispier. Since WPF builds on a vector based rendering engine it's incredibly easy to build scaleable user interfaces.

 Comments on this article

IMTIAJ KHAN	Commented on 20.August 2010 WONDERFUL TECHNOLOGY
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fbi	Commented on 23.August 2010 COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT AT ITS FINEST!!!!!!!!! MOSER IS GREASY AS HELL
the law	Commented on 23.August 2010 wow you guys are really that impressed by mosers copy and pasting
Christian Moser	Commented on 23.August 2010 Its funny that you guys find my articles so helpful considering I just copy and pasted random shit from other random sites that I found. Its all good though because those google ads are making me cash!!!
Christian Moser	Commented on 23.August 2010 Dont bother deleting them because I wont stop :)
prabhat	Commented on 24.August 2010 Thanks all the WPF Tutrial team.
sanjeewa	Commented on 25.August 2010 WONDERFUL
Mervinkumar M.	Commented on 25.August 2010 Nice Artice very Helpful for me
Shashidhar K	Commented on 25.August 2010 Nice Introduction..
varun c/o INDIA	Commented on 25.August 2010 hai bro,nice information abt WPF and fantastic website design
varun c/o INDIA	Commented on 25.August 2010 hai bro,nice information abt WPF and fantastic website design
varun c/o INDIA	Commented on 25.August 2010 hai bro,nice information abt WPF and fantastic website design
chii lok	Commented on 26.August 2010 Nice intro
chandru	Commented on 27.August 2010 excellent introduction ...... it was like a hero intro in a movie :)
chandru	Commented on 27.August 2010 excellent introduction ...... it was like a hero intro in a movie :)
Ramesh	Commented on 29.August 2010 Excellent introduction.... It's really good for beginers
Amey Odak	Commented on 30.August 2010 Thanks for the Wonderful Introduction
Vincent Murphy	Commented on 30.August 2010 Thanks for your time and effort you've put into this. If all people can comment with is "Copyright" blah blah.... then they might consider contributing something more positve with their efforts. Anyway, cheers, keep up the good work.
Geetha	Commented on 31.August 2010 very nice...
ravi teja	Commented on 1.September 2010 very helpful...
Eyad	Commented on 1.September 2010 nice work, keep it up
Raviprakashr...	Commented on 1.September 2010 Really good for Bigineers
Nanak Kumar...	Commented on 1.September 2010 It is nice tutorial for beginners....really good
Nanak Kumar...	Commented on 1.September 2010 It is nice tutorial for beginners....really good