Visual Basic® 2008 Programmer's Reference

Chapter 13. WPF Windows

In Windows Forms applications, Form objects play a special role. They represent the top-level user interface components in which all other controls reside. A typical Windows Forms application starts by displaying a Form object. That Form may provide buttons, menus, and other controls that open other Form objects, but all of the controls are contained in Form objects.

In WPF applications, you can display controls on a Window, an object that is basically the WPF version of a Form. Alternatively you can display controls in a Page. A Page is a lot like a Window without decorations such as borders, title bar, and system menus (maximize, minimize, restore, close, and so forth). A Page must be hosted inside another object that provides these decorations. Usually, a Page is displayed in a web browser, but the WPF Frame control can act as a browser and display Page objects.

This chapter explains how you can use these top-level objects, Window and Page, in your WPF applications. It explains how a program can display and manage multiple Window and Page objects, and provides some examples showing simple navigation schemes.

Note that the initial build of Visual Basic 2008 introduces a bug in new WPF projects. For more information, see the section "Visual Basic 2008 Version 1 Warning" in the Introduction on page xxxix.

Window Applications

A typical desktop WPF application displays its control in Window objects. To create this type of application, select the File menu's New ...