Visual Basic 2012 Programmer's Reference

INTRODUCING WPF DESIGNER

Windows Forms controls allow you to build powerful desktop applications. WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is a new set of controls that you can also use to build desktop applications. While WPF and Windows Forms controls provide many similar features, the WPF controls are more closely tied to high performance graphics libraries so they can provide many sophisticated graphical features that are missing from Windows Forms controls. For example, WPF controls can draw themselves at any scale without losing resolution, can display gradient backgrounds, and can contain other controls in a more flexible and consistent way than Windows Forms controls can. For a specific example of this last feature, a Windows Forms Button control can hold only text. A WPF Button control can hold other controls such as a Grid that contains several Images and TextBlocks to make a much richer experience.

In addition to giving WPF new features, Microsoft is positioning it, or more precisely the Silverlight subset of WPF, for use in building applications on its future platforms. You can build applications in Silverlight for the Windows 8 operating system, the Windows Phone operating system, or web applications. Windows Forms programs still have an important role on desktop systems but Microsoft seems determined to make WPF and Silverlight be the development tools of the future. You can still build Windows Forms applications and run them on the Windows 8 desktop, but you need to ...