Chapter 1. What WPF Is and Isn’t

What You’ll Learn in This Hour:

  • What WPF is

  • When you should use WPF

  • What tools you will need

  • How WPF compares to other frameworks

  • The versions of .NET

  • Silverlight

What Is WPF?

WPF is big. In fact, it can be overwhelming because it has lots of moving parts that all interconnect. The shortest answer to the question, though, is that WPF is an API for building graphical user interfaces (UI) for desktop applications with the .NET Framework.

Now for the longer answer.

To begin with, WPF is an abbreviation for Windows Presentation Foundation. Physically, it’s a set of .NET assemblies and supporting tools. It’s intended to provide a unified API for creating rich, sophisticated user interfaces on Windows XP and Windows Vista.

WPF ...

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