Chapter 2: Programming WPF Applications

This chapter is taken from book "Foundations of WPF: An Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation" by Laurence Moroney published by Apress.

Programming WPF Applications

One of the key features of Windows Vista (and other versions of Windows that support WinFX) is the ability to differentiate applications by drastically enhancing the user experience using the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). WinFX introduces a new graphics driver model that is fault tolerant and designed to use the power of the graphics processor unit (GPU) that is on board most modern desktop computers. Its memory manager and scheduler enable different graphics applications to use the GPU to run simultaneously. Built on top of the GPU and graphics driver is the Windows Graphics Foundation (WGF), also known as Direct3D 10. Applications can use this application programming interface (API) to take direct advantage of the power available in the GPU.

In this chapter, you will get a very high-level overview of the architecture that makes this possible. You'll look at the different types of WPF applications that you can build, as well as the choices you have for distributing them, which of course affects how you build them.

You'll then look at the architecture of WPF and how it all hangs together, including taking a brief tour of some of the underlying classes that do the grunt work for your applications.

Finally, you'll look at the high-level classes such as Application and Window that form the workhorse of your WPF application. Although much of the information is theoretical in this chapter, it will give you the basis for understanding the stuff to come in later chapters, which is where you'll build a real-world application and get into the details of the application-level classes you can use to put together the latest, greatest WPF application.

What Are WPF Applications?

Any application you build using WPF will typically consist of a number of Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) pages plus their supporting code. However, as you can imagine, the functionality that a collection of independent pages can provide is limited and is not sufficient for meeting most requirements. For example, the processing that occurs on the page level cannot support necessities such as preserving the state of a page as a user navigates, passing data or context between pages, detecting when new pages have loaded, managing global-level variables, and so on.

As such, the application model for WPF supports collecting XAML pages into a single application in the traditional manner. If you think about it in terms of Windows forms applications, a XAML page is analogous to a form file, so where a traditional .NET WinForms application collects a number of forms together into a single executable, a WinFX desktop application does the same-except that instead of WinForms, it collects XAML pages.

XAML applications can run in one of two ways:

XAML browser applications: They can run as XAML browser applications where they are hosted in the browser. They are not run on a user's system and cannot run offline. From a security point of view, they execute in the Internet security zone, which limits their access to system resources. Because of this higher level of safety, they do not require user permission to run.

Installed applications: They can also run as installed applications. These applications will either be hosted in a stand-alone window (like any Windows application, as shown in Figure 2-1) or be hosted in the WPF navigation window (see Figure 2-2). This window contains a navigation band at the top of the client region with forward and backward buttons. This band is overridable by developers who want to build their own navigator, and to that end the navigation window is programmable through the System.Windows. Navigation.NavigationWindow class. This is beyond the scope of this book, but you can check out the Windows software development kit (SDK) documentation for this class for details about how to do this. Each type has full access to system resources.

Figure 2-1. Running a XAML application as a stand-alone installed application

Figure 2-2. Running a XAML application using the NavigationWindow class

When using WPF, you can use custom controls or other components, and these behave, from a security point of view, in a similar manner to installed applications, because they are compiled into a DLL file. As such, they are available only to applications and not directly to the user.

In the next section, you will look at these methodologies in a little more detail and learn how you should consider designing your application for hosting or deployment.

Choices in Application Distribution

As you saw earlier, you have two types of application and three types of deployment, with the browser application running only in the browser and the installed application being able to run stand-alone or in the navigation window. Which option you choose will have an impact on security; therefore, it is a good idea to understand each type of application in order to make an informed decision.

Choosing a XAML Browser Application

If you want a web-like experience in your application, you should consider the XAML browser application type. This will allow a user to have a seamless web-like experience, including the ability to navigate to other web pages and then return. Of course, if the application runs in this manner, you have to treat it as a typical web application, and as such it is restricted to the Internet security zone. Thus, if your application needs to go beyond this-to access the file system or the Windows registry, for example-then this type of application isn't suitable. If you want the user to browse directly to your application and not have to accept installation dialog boxes, this of course is a good approach. Finally, many applications require offline access- when building a XAML browser application, offline access isn't available, so you should consider in this case an installed application.

A XAML browser application is intended to provide a rich experience to a web user. Typically, web applications are quite static in nature, and they require many page refreshes and round-trips to perform processing tasks. Therefore, they don't usually create the most engaging experience, but advances in design and technology with frameworks and methodologies such as asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) are driving a more compelling web experience. Microsoft offers the framework code-named Atlas, which provides a consistent server-side programming model that enables ASP.NET developers to quickly and easily build Ajax applications.

Additionally, plug-ins to the browser such as the near-ubiquitous Flash and Shockwave from Adobe offer this rich experience. In many ways, XAML in the browser is a competitor to them, and it is a powerful one offering the same programming model as will be used in the next generation of desktop applications, which could be a decisive factor. In fact, Microsoft is developing an API called Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E) that provides a browser plug-in that renders XAML and appears to be the basis of a competitor to Flash and Shockwave. This API is in its earliest stages at the moment and as such is not covered in this book.

A XAML browser application is browsed to rather than deployed. The browser makes a request to the server to retrieve the application, which is downloaded and executed within the browser. The rich features of WPF are then available to the browser-based (and hence web) application.

You create and build browser XAML applications in the same way as installed applications . The differentiator happens at compile time where you change compiler settings. Indeed, using this methodology, a single-source code base is available to be shared between a browser and an installed application. Thus, if you are developing an application that needs to run on both (perhaps with an enhanced offline mode), you can use this single-source code base and make the changes at compile time. You'll see more about this in Chapter 9.

When building a XAML browser application, the build process creates three files:

Deployment manifests: These are denoted by the .xbap file extension. ClickOnce uses this file type to deploy the application.

Application manifests: These are denoted by the .exe.manifest extension. This contains the standard .NET metadata that is created for any managed application.

Executable code: This is denoted by the .exe extension. Yes, that's right, this is an EXE file that your users download and execute. It's not too scary, though, because you are still protected by the Internet security zone in the browser.

Deployment occurs when the user navigates to the uniform resource indicator (URI) of the .xbap file. This invokes ClickOnce to download the application. Note that users can deploy XAML browser applications only using ClickOnce. Therefore, Chapter 10 is devoted to this task and how you can create, build, and deploy a XAML browser application. The application cannot later be invoked by launching the .exe file; you have to browse to the .xbap file on the hosting server to run the application again. This also ensures application version consistency because only the server-hosted application version can be run.

Note that if the .xbap file resides on your system (instead of a server as is intended), it will run in the browser with local security zone permissions. This is particularly useful when developing, but of course, you should do your final testing from a server so you can test the application running in Internet security zone permissions.

Because the application runs in the Internet security zone, a number of features are not permitted. This is because the application runs with partial trust. This occurs regardless of where the server is hosted, be it the Internet or an intranet. Features that are not allowed in XAML browser applications and that will incur a compiler error are launching new windows,using application-defined dialog boxes, and using the UIAutomation client.

Choosing an Installed Application

A WPF installed application, from the point of view of requirements, behaves similarly to a traditional WinForms application. If your requirements call for access to system resources such as the file system or the registry, you should use an installed application. Of course, if you also need to have an offline experience, then this approach is best.

WPF installed applications are rich client applications that have full access to system resources, and they behave in the same way as any other installed application. They run stand-alone in their own window and not within a browser.

When you build a WPF installed application, you will build three standard files. These are the deployment manifest (an .application extension) , which ClickOnce uses to deploy the application; the application manifest (an .exe.manifest extension), which contains the standard application metadata that is created for any managed application; and the executable (an .exe extension), which is the application's executable code.

Additionally, you can create support DLLs as needed.

An installed application is typically deployed from a server using either ClickOnce or Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI). Of course, because it supports these technologies, it can also be deployed from media such as a DVD or a CD.

When it comes to security, take note that the installable application type has the same access to system resources as the logged-on user, in the same manner as any other Windows application. The security gateway comes at deployment time, so you should make sure your application distribution is controlled. Also, your users should be trained to understand that even though they may install WPF applications from a browser, the browser sandbox will not protect them when they run the application.

Windows Presentation Foundation Architecture

You'll now look at the WPF architecture from a programmer's viewpoint, taking a tour of the class libraries that a typical WPF application uses. You'll look into the major classes used by a WPF application and how they interact. Although the framework handles much of your work, particularly when using Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer (as you'll see in Chapters 3 and 4), it's still a good idea to have an inkling of what lies beneath.

The primary WPF programming model is exposed as managed code classes that run on top of the common language runtime (CLR). The presentation framework is built on top of the presentation core libraries (also managed code), which then run on the CLR. However, because WPF uses DirectX to interact with the video hardware, it requires a component that runs on top of this. This component is called milcore, and Figure 2-3 shows all three components.

Figure 2-3. WPF architecture

Now let's start looking into the major classes that WPF uses.

System.Threading.DispatcherObject

Most WPF objects derive from the DispatcherObject object. It provides the basic underlying constructs that deal with concurrency and threading. It handles messages such as mouse movements (a raw input notification), layout, and user commands. When you derive from a DispatcherObject object, you are effectively creating an object that has single-thread affinity execution and will be given a pointer to a dispatcher at the time the object is created.

System.Windows.DependencyObject

A primary design consideration in WPF is to use properties as much as possible and to use, wherever possible, properties instead of methods and events to handle object behaviors. As such, you could achieve a data-driven system for displaying user interface content via properties. For example, you can define much of the behavior of a user interface by binding properties, such as binding to a data source.

So, to beef up the behavior of a system that is driven by properties, the property system should be richer than the classic property model where properties define nonfunctional behavior such as color and size. So, for example, if you want to bind a property to the property of another object, then a change notification on properties needs to be supported; in fact, both sides of the binding need to support this.

This is where you use the DependencyObject type. The classic example of this is in inherited properties where you can have a property that is inheritable (for example, FontSize) and want this property on a child object to automatically update when the property on the parent object changes.

Property dependency is also nicely demonstrated when using control templates in WPF. You can specify a template for how a control or set of controls should appear and then apply that to a number of control sets to set their properties coherently.

For example, if you look at Figure 2-4, you can see the bicycle application that will be introduced in Chapter 3. This shows how the controls are laid out and how their default physical properties are set. The application has two panes; the left pane contains a list of products, and the right pane contains details for the selected product.

Figure 2-4. Default physical appearance of WPF controls

Now consider Figure 2-5. In this case, a template has been created for the controls, and each pane of the application derives its styling from this template. This uses the Dependency- Object under the hood to pass property information from the template to the controls within the pane, presenting a coherent user interface between the two panes that has to be developed only once.

Figure 2-5. Controls deriving their properties from a template

System.Windows.Media.Visual

This is the entry point into the WPF composition system. It displays data by traversing the data structures managed by the milcore, and these are represented using a hierarchical display tree with rendering instructions at each node of the tree. When you build a WPF user interface, you are creating elements of this class, which communicate with milcore using an internal messaging protocol.

System.Windows.UIElement

UIElement is at the heart of three major subsystems in WPF-layout, input, and events.Layout is a core concept in WPF, and UIElement introduces a new concept of how this is achieved differently from the familiar flow, absolute, and table layouts. It does this using two passes, called measure and arrange.

The measure pass allows a component to specify how much real estate it needs. This allows applications to automatically size their content areas, determining a desired size based on the size of the application.

When a measure phase results in changes to the desired size of controls, the arrange pass may need to change how they are arranged on the screen.

When it comes to input, a user action originates as a signal on a device driver (such as that for the mouse) and gets routed via the kernel and User32 to WPF. At the WPF level, it is converted into a raw WPF message that is sent to the dispatcher. At this level, it can be converted into multiple events; for example, a mouse move event can also spawn a mouse enter event for a specific control. These events can then be captured at the UIElement layer and passed to derived controls for the programmer to handle.

System.Windows.FrameworkElement

The primary features provided by FrameworkElement relate to application layout. FrameworkElement builds on the layout introduced by UIElement (see the previous section) and makes it easier for layout authors to have a consistent set of layout semantics. Effectively, it allows the programmer or designer to override the automatic layout functionality introduced by UIElement by specifying alignment and layout properties for controls. These then use FrameworkElement under the hood.

Two critical elements that FrameworkElement introduces to the WPF platform are data binding and styles. You'll see these used throughout WPF applications.

How to Program WPF Applications

In Chapters 3 and 4, you will use Expression Interactive Designer and Visual Studio 2005 with the Cider designer to build a WPF application. Earlier, you saw the underlying classes that support WPF applications, but before you start developing applications, it's a good idea to know how your higher-level managed code works. You may not directly use many of the classes in the previous sections, but you are likely to use the ones in the following sections extensively. So, before you get down and dirty with development, let's take a tour of these objects.

Using the Application Object

At the core of all WPF applications is the Application object. The class is in the System.Windows namespace and is in the presentationframework.dll assembly.

This object forms the interface between your application and the operating system,allowing you to manage your application as a collection of XAML pages.

It handles message dispatching on your behalf, so you do not need to implement a message loop, and it supports navigation between pages in its collection. It also has an application-level global object that provides a way to share data between pages and a number of application-level events that can be handled by the programmer, such as when the application starts.

This object is global to the application. Every page has access to the same Application object. It is created when the executable is launched and runs for the duration of the application. It is also local to the user's system. The application does not communicate with a server to update it.

By providing methods and events that can be overridden and handled respectively, you can customize your Application object because it is extensible.

The WPF creates the Application object at compile time using the application definition file, which is the XAML file, and its (optional) associated code-behind file. The application definition file is distinguished from other XAML files by using an ApplicationDefinition item instead of a Page definition item. Listing 2-1 shows an example of a simple Application definition file.

Listing 2-1. Application Definition File

<Application

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

x:Class="UntitledProject1.MainApplication"

StartupUri="Scene1.xaml"/>

Similarly, Listing 2-2 shows a Page definition file.

Listing 2-2. Page Definition File

<Page

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"

xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/interactivedesigner/200"

mc:Ignorable="d"

x:Name="RootPage"

x:Class="UntitledProject1.Page1"

WindowTitle="Root Page">

<Page.Resources>

</Page.Resources>

<Page.Triggers>

</EventTrigger>

</Page.Triggers>

<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

<Grid.RowDefinitions>

</Grid.RowDefinitions>

</Grid>

</Page>

When you create an application in Visual Studio 2005 using the WinFX Windows application template, the application definition file will be created automatically for you. The root tag of this file is the <Application> tag, and it is used to define application-level resources such as styles, which will be inherited by all the pages in your application. Listing 2-3 shows the simple application definition file again.

Listing 2-3. Application Definition File

<Application
xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation
xmlns:x=http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml
x:Class="UntitledProject1.MainApplication"
StartupUri="Scene1.xaml"/>

The first two tags describe the namespaces that are used to validate the document. They are the presentation and xaml schemas from WinFX 2006 in this example. As the API evolves, these schemas will likely also evolve. The latter of these defines the xaml schema to dictate the x namespace, and you can see this in use in the third attribute.

This attribute, x:Class, determines the underlying class file for which this application XAML defines the Application object.

The StartupUri property specifies the XAML file that initially loads. When this is specified, a NavigationWindow object is automatically created and the page is loaded into it.

When you compile, this information is used to create the Application object for your application. It then sets the StartupUri property as specified. In this case, it has no codebehind page, and you need to use one only when you want to handle an event of the Application object or you do not use the StartupUri property to specify a starting page.You would use such a file in the following scenarios:

Application events: The object supports a number of application-level events such as Startup and Exit that are used to handle some actions upon start-up or shutdown.

Global navigation events: The Application object supports all the events that fire when navigation takes place in any of your application windows. These include events such as Navigated, when navigation is complete; Navigating, while it is in progress; and NavigationStopped, when the user has canceled a navigation action.

Custom properties and methods: You can use these to add data points and functions that you'd like to call from any page in the application.

Accessing Properties

To access your Application object, you use the Application.Current property. This allows you to access properties and other information.

You would set the information like this:

MyApp.Current.Properties["UserName"] = txtUserName.Text;

To retrieve the information, you should cast the data type before using it like this:

string strUserName = (string)MyApp.Current.Properties["UserName"]

Handling Events

The Application object provides a number of events as well as methods that can be called to raise these events. I discuss them in the following sections.

Activated Event

You can use the Activated event to handle the application being activated by the system. So if the user activates the already running application by selecting its icon on the Windows taskbar, this event is fired.

So, for example, if you want to implement a handler for Activated, you would have a XAML application definition that looks like Listing 2-4.

Listing 2-4. Application Definition File Containing Activated Handler

<Application

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

x:Class ="AvalonBook.MyApp"

StartupUri ="Scene1.xaml"/Activated="MyApp_Activated">

Your associated code-behind file would look like Listing 2-5.

Listing 2-5. Handling the Activated Event

using System;

using System.Windows;

namespace AvalonBook

{

public partial class MyApp : Application

{

private bool isApplicationActive;

void MyApp_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

//Activated

this.isApplicationActive = true;

}

Deactivated Event

The Deactivated event handles the response to the window being deactivated, which happens if the user presses Alt+Tab to move to a different application or selects the icon of a different application on the taskbar.

You would configure your application to handle the Deactivated event using the application definition XAML like in Listing 2-6.

Listing 2-6. Specifying the Deactivated Event

<Application

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

x:Class ="AvalonBook.MyApp"

StartupUri ="Scene1.xaml"/Activated="MyApp_Activated"

Deactivated="MyApp_Deactivated">

Your application would be coded to support the event like in Listing 2-7.

Listing 2-7. Handling the Deactivated Event

using System;

using System.Windows;

namespace AvalonBook

{

public partial class MyApp : Application

{

private bool isApplicationActive;

void MyApp_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

//Activated

this.isApplicationActive = true;

}

void MyApp_Deactivated(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

//Activated

this.isApplicationActive = false;

}

SessionEnding Event

The SessionEnding event handles the situation where the application is being shut down by the operating system. So if the user shuts down the computer while the application is still running, you may need to do some cleanup. Here is a good place to do it!

To use it, you specify it in the application definition file like in Listing 2-8.

Listing 2-8. Specifying the SessionEnding Event

<Application

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

x:Class ="AvalonBook.MyApp"

StartupUri ="Scene1.xaml"/SessionEnding="MyApp_SessionEnding">

The associated code-behind file would look like Listing 2-9.

Listing 2-9. Handling the SessionEnding Event

using System;
using System.Windows;
namespace AvalonBook
{
public partial class MyApp : Application
{
void MyApp_SessionEnding(object sender, SessionEndingCancelEventArgs e)
{
// Save data using a helper function
SaveOpenData();
}
}
}

Supporting Application-Level Navigation Events

The Application object supports events that are related to navigation events, such as the Navigating event. In the context of the Application object, they are raised on the application rather than on a particular window.

The supported events are as follows:

Navigating: The navigation has been initiated. It is still possible for the user to cancel the event and prevent navigation from taking place.

NavigationProgress: This tracks the progress of the navigation. It is raised periodically to provide information about the progress of the navigation action.

Navigated: The target has been found, and the page download of the target document has begun. Part of its user interface tree has been parsed, and at least its root has been attached to the window.

LoadCompleted: The target page has been loaded and fully parsed.

Using the Application Object to Manage Your Windows

The Application object provides two properties that can help to manage the windows in your application.

The Windows property is a reference to a collection of open windows in your application. You can iterate through this collection to find and activate (or perform another action) on the window of your choice.

The MainWindow property contains a reference to the main window of your application. This is, by default, the first window to open when you run your application.

Managing the Shutdown of Your Application

After the application calls the Shutdown method, the system raises the Exit event. To run code that performs a final cleanup, you can write code in its event handler or in an override of its corresponding method OnExit.

You can also control how and when your application shuts down using the Shutdown- Mode property. This can contain any of the following values (which have an enumeration type within the API). Each of these can trigger the shutdown in addition to the explicit call to Shutdown.

OnLastWindowClose: As its name suggests, the application shuts down when the last window closes.

OnMainWindowClose: This shuts down the application when the main window is closed.

OnExplicitShutdown: This shuts down the application only on an explicit call to the Shutdown function.

Another instance of when the application can be shut down is when the operating system attempts to shut it down when, for example, the user logs off or shuts down the system while your application is still running. In this case, the Application object raises the SessionEnding event, which you can handle to tidy up the application state. If the user does not cancel this event (if given a choice to in your code), the system then calls the Shutdown function, which as described earlier raises the Exit event.

Window Management

Most applications have more than one window. WPF offers three types of window you can use, each with its own strengths and associated costs. You build them using the Window class, the NavigationWindow class, and the Page class. I discuss them in the next sections.

Using the Window Object

The Window object supports basic window functionality. If your application does not use navigation, it is good to use this type of object as opposed to NavigationWindow (see the next section) because it has less overhead and uses fewer system resources than a navigation window. However, your application can use both, so an application that uses NavigationWindows can still use Window objects for secondary windows or dialog boxes that don't require navigation support.

The API of the Window object supports properties, events, and methods that you can use to control how the window appears and how it responds to user interaction.

Some of these actions control creating, closing, showing, and hiding the window. You can also control its size and position through properties. Many of the window's adornments, including the style, caption, status bar, and taskbar icon, are available via the Window object API. Additionally, changes in window state and location can trigger custom code through event handlers associated with them.

Using the NavigationWindow Object

The NavigationWindow object is an extension of the Window object and thus supports its API. However, it adds support to allow for navigating between XAML pages. This includes a Navigate method that allows for programmatic navigation from one page to another. It also implements a default navigation user interface that supports forward and backward navigation that can be customized by the developer. You can see these in Figure 2-6.

Figure 2-6. The navigation buttons from the NavigationWindow object

Using the Page Object

The Page object provides an alternative way to access the NavigationWindow object. However, the NavigationWindow object does not allow (despite its name) navigation to a page that has Window or NavigationWindow as its root element. To get around this restriction, WPF also provides a page element. When using this element, you can freely navigate between windows that use Window or NavigationWindow as their root elements.

Managing Windows

Your application will have a window that is designated as the main window. When your application starts, the first window that is created will become this main window. A reference to this window is available from the Application object by accessing its MainWindow property. This is a read/write property, so you can change your main window should you like by assigning another window to it. Note that it contains a reference to a Window object, so if you want access to methods, events, or properties that may be used for navigation, you'll have to cast it to a NavigationWindow object.

Additionally, the Application object has a collection of references to all the open windows in your application. They appear in the order in which they were created. Thus, as you create and close windows, their indexes can change. Although the main window is the first one opened and will typically have the index of 0 under this scheme, this may not always be the case; therefore, if you use the MainWindow property to change, for example, MainWindow to another window, then the Window that was formerly the main window will still have index 0, and the MainWindow will have a different index in the Windows collection. This is why it is always good practice to use the MainWindow property to establish the main window, not Windows[0].

The events in Table 2-1 can be handled to manage the behavior of your application upon changes of state to your windows.

Table 2-1.Window Management Events

Event	Occurs When
Activated	The window has been activated programmatically or by user action.
Closed	The window is about to close.
Closing	The window is in the process of closing. Occurs directly after closed and can be used to reverse the process of closing.
ContentRendered	The content of the window has finished rendering.
Deactivated	The window has been deactivated by activating another window with Alt+Tab or by selecting another application on the taskbar.
LocationChanged	The location of the window has changed.
StateChanged	The state of the window has changed between Minimized, Maximized, and Normal.

Summary

In this chapter, you were introduced to the framework that WPF offers. You first looked into the types of applications you can build, exploring the differences between browser-based and Windows-based installed applications and the impact on security, and thus functionality, that each offers.

Next, you looked into the architecture of WPF and how all the parts hang together, including a look at the underlying classes that help everything to work. You may never need to use these classes explicitly, but you will always use them implicitly, so it's nice to have an idea of what they are doing!

Finally, you learned about some of the objects that are global to your application such as the Application, Window, and NavigationWindow objects and how they work together. This may all seem pretty theoretical at the moment, but don't worry-just put the information away in your toolbox, and when you start getting into application creation, they'll become useful.

In the next couple of chapters, you'll start putting this theory into practice, first using Expression Interactive Designer to build a simple application that uses a localized data store and then expanding it into one that connects with a live data service using the Windows Communication Foundation; through these examples you'll see how the different aspects of WinFX can work together seamlessly.

Book Detail

Foundations of WPF: An Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation

By Laurence Moroney

ISBN10: 1-59059-760-5

Published on Nov 2006

eBook Price: $20.00

Price: $39.99

	Foundations of WPF: An Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation
	By Laurence Moroney
	ISBN10: 1-59059-760-5
	Published on Nov 2006
	eBook Price: $20.00
	Price: $39.99