Visual Basic® 2010 Programmer's Reference

Chapter 11. Selecting WPF Controls

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides a whole new method for building user interfaces. Although it bears a superficial resemblance to Windows Forms, WPF provides new controls, a new event architecture, and a new foundation for building and interacting with properties.

WPF also provides tools for separating the user interface from the code behind the interface so that the two pieces can potentially be built by separate user interface designers and Visual Basic developers. It includes a new Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML, pronounced "zammel") that lets you build a user interface by using declarative statements rather than executable code. XAML lets you determine the size, position, and other properties of the WPF controls on a form. It lets you define styles that can be shared among many controls, and it lets you define transformations and animations that affect the controls.

As is the case in Windows Forms applications, controls play a central role in WPF applications. Different kinds of controls give information to the user (Label, StatusBar, TreeView, ListView, Image) and organize the information so that it's easy to understand (Border, StackPanel, DockPanel, TabControl). They enable the user to enter data (TextBox, TextBlock, ComboBox, PasswordBox), select options (RadioButton, CheckBox, ListBox), and control the application (Button, Menu, Slider).

To make an application as effective as possible, you should match controls ...