vasanth

<h2><a href="http://ewilkerson.wordpress.com/2007/01/03/wpf-expander-control-cool-things-part-1-animation/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: WPF Expander Control - Cool Things Part 1 (animation)">WPF Expander Control <br></a></h2> <div class="snap_preview"><p>Hmm…this is by no means a tutorial. There - that’s my disclaimer. So now that I’ve absolved myself from all WPF-sin, we can get started. WPF…that’s Windows Presentation Foundation for the layman…has been around for over a year now in multitude of incarnations (Avalon, WinFX, etc.) , and is the backbone Microsoft’s new OS “Vista”. If you didn’t already know, WPF uses a customized XML language called XAML for creating/rendering all of its controls. XAML (rhymes with camel) stands for <strong>Extensible Application Markup Language…</strong>and quite honestly…is the coolest thing since sliced bread.</p> <p><span id="more-4"></span></p> <p>Because it’s an XML-based language…it gives the developer and end-user easy to use, yet very powerful control over customization/theming and templating. I’m not going to get into alot of detail, but believe me when I tell you that this can/will radically change the way alot of people handle the UI side of things. Custom controls are a given in today’s enterprise world because they’re scalable and reusable. They save you tons of  time because you don’t have to re-invent the wheel everytime you go to make a new application. It’s the essence of object-oriented programming.</p> <p>Now, imagine that every control at your disposal, even the ones straight out of the box, are custom controls. That’s what WPF gives you. You can apply branding/theming to every button, in every application you make just by including another XAML file or two. And not only that, you can make all you controls “act” a certain way in a multitude of different situations. Some may argue that this functionality (or some subset thereof) was