Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed

Book Preface

This book is for software developers who are interested in user interfaces. Regardless of whether you’re creating line-of-business applications, consumer-facing applications, or reusable controls, this book contains a lot of content that helps you get the most out of the platform. It’s designed to be understandable even for folks who are new to .NET. And if you are already well versed in WPF, I’m confident that this book still has things to teach you. At the very least, it should be an invaluable reference for your bookshelf.

Because WPF enables you to create not only standalone Windows applications but also content hosted in a web browser, anyone interested in alternatives to Adobe Flash might find this book interesting. And although the more lightweight and cross-platform Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E) technology does not have significant coverage in this book, many of the same concepts in this book will apply to WPF/E once it is released.

Although this book’s content is not optimized for graphic designers, reading this book can be a great way to understand more of the “guts” behind a product like Microsoft Expression Blend.

To summarize, this book
. Covers everything you need to know about Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), the new XML-based language for creating declarative user interfaces that can be easily restyled
. Examines the WPF feature areas in incredible depth: controls, layout, resources, data binding, styling, graphics, animation, and more
. Delves into topics that aren’t covered by most books: 3D, speech, audio/video, documents, bitmap effects, and more
. Shows how to create popular UI elements, such as features introduced in the 2007 Microsoft Office System: Galleries, ScreenTips, custom control layouts, and more
. Demonstrates how to create sophisticated UI mechanisms, such as Visual Studio-like collapsible/dockable panes
. Explains how to develop and deploy all types of applications, including navigationbased applications, applications hosted in a web browser, and applications with great-looking nonrectangular windows
. Explains how to create first-class custom controls for WPF
. Demonstrates how to create hybrid WPF software that leverages Windows Forms,
ActiveX, or other non-WPF technologies
. Explains how to exploit new Windows Vista features in WPF applications, and how to go beyond certain limitations of WPF

This book doesn’t cover every last bit of WPF. (In particular, XML Paper Specification [XPS] documents are only given a small bit of attention.) WPF’s surface area is so large that I don’t believe any single book can. But I think you’ll be pleased with the breadth and depth achieved by this book.

Examples in this book appear in XAML and C#, plus C++/CLI for interoperability discussions. XAML is used heavily for a number of reasons: It’s often the most concise way to express source code, it can often be pasted into tools like XamlPad (in the Windows SDK) to see instant results without any compilation, WPF-based tools generate XAML rather than procedural code, and XAML is applicable no matter what .NET language you use, such as Visual Basic instead of C#. Whenever the mapping between XAML and a language like C# is not obvious, examples are shown in both representations.