The negotiation is a two-step process: first, a control tells its parent what location and size it requires. Second, the parent tells the control what space it can have. The layout system is exposed to child controls through base WPF classes. For common layouts such as grids, stacking, and docking, WPF includes several layout controls:. Canvas : Child controls provide their own layout. DockPanel : Child controls are aligned to the edges of the panel. Grid : Child controls are positioned by rows and columns.
StackPanel : Child controls are stacked either vertically or horizontally. VirtualizingStackPanel : Child controls are virtualized and arranged on a single line that is either horizontally or vertically oriented. WrapPanel : Child controls are positioned in left-to-right order and wrapped to the next line when there isn't enough space.
The following example uses a DockPanel to lay out several TextBox controls:. The DockPanel allows the child TextBox controls to tell it how to arrange them. To do this, the DockPanel implements a Dock attached property that is exposed to the child controls to allow each of them to specify a dock style.
A property that's implemented by a parent control for use by child controls is a WPF construct called an attached property. Most applications are created to provide users with the means to view and edit data. For WPF applications, the work of storing and accessing data is already provided for by many different.
After the data is accessed and loaded into an application's managed objects, the hard work for WPF applications begins. Essentially, this involves two things:. Copying the data from the managed objects into controls, where the data can be displayed and edited. To simplify application development, WPF provides a powerful data binding engine to automatically handle these steps.
The core unit of the data binding engine is the Binding class, whose job is to bind a control the binding target to a data object the binding source. This relationship is illustrated by the following figure:. This assumes there's a data object set to the DataContext property of the Window with a Name property. The WPF data binding engine provides more than just binding, it provides validation, sorting, filtering, and grouping. Furthermore, data binding supports the use of data templates to create custom user interface for bound data.
For more information, see Data binding overview. WPF provides an extensive and flexible set of graphics features that have the following benefits:. Resolution-independent and device-independent graphics. Each device-independent pixel automatically scales to match the dots-per-inch dpi setting of the system it renders on. Improved precision. The WPF coordinate system is measured with double-precision floating-point numbers rather than single-precision.
Transformations and opacity values are also expressed as double-precision. WPF also supports a wide color gamut scRGB and provides integrated support for managing inputs from different color spaces. Advanced graphics and animation support. WPF simplifies graphics programming by managing animation scenes for you; there's no need to worry about scene processing, rendering loops, and bilinear interpolation.
Additionally, WPF provides hit-testing support and full alpha-compositing support. Hardware acceleration. WPF provides a library of common vector-drawn 2D shapes, such as the rectangles and ellipses. The shapes aren't just for display; shapes implement many of the features that you expect from controls, including keyboard and mouse input. The 2D shapes provided by WPF cover the standard set of basic shapes.
However, you may need to create custom shapes to help the design of a customized user interface. WPF provides geometries to create a custom shape that can be drawn directly, used as a brush, or used to clip other shapes and controls.
For more information, see Geometry overview. A subset of WPF 2D capabilities includes visual effects, such as gradients, bitmaps, drawings, painting with videos, rotation, scaling, and skewing. These effects are all achieved with brushes. The following figure shows some examples:. For more information, see WPF brushes overview. WPF also includes 3D rendering capabilities that integrate with 2D graphics to allow the creation of more exciting and interesting user interfaces. For example, the following figure shows 2D images rendered onto 3D shapes:.
For more information, see 3D graphics overview. WPF animation support lets you make controls grow, shake, spin, and fade, to create interesting page transitions, and more.
You can animate most WPF classes, even custom classes. The following figure shows a simple animation in action:. For more information, see Animation overview.
As a demonstration of text integration with graphics, the following figure shows the application of text decorations:. For more information, see Typography in Windows Presentation Foundation. Often, though, the basics aren't enough for creating and managing a truly distinct and visually stunning user experience.
The standard WPF controls might not integrate with the desired appearance of your application. Data might not be displayed in the most effective way. Your application's overall user experience may not be suited to the default look and feel of Windows themes. There have never been enough hooks for the things I am asked to do by my clients. Data validation always seemed to be an afterthought, or again, not enough hooks were in place to do what was necessary for business applications.
With WPF, Microsoft provided much more robust data binding and many more hooks exist that allow the flexibility needed for complicated business applications.
You will find yourself using XAML to express the data binding that you would have had to write code for in Windows Forms applications. This will increase your productivity immensely once you start to take advantage of these new techniques in WPF. Of course, no new development paradigm will catch on if the third-party vendors and the programming community at large are not behind the effort. There is a large community and many third-party vendors behind WPF. You will find tons of code samples at CodePlex.
Be sure to download these two add-ons for WPF as you will find some great controls that help you get your business applications programmed quickly. NET Framework 4. Many third-party vendors have updated their control packs to support WPF.
You will find many of your favorite controls that you used in Windows Forms applications have WPF counterparts. I can think of many more reasons than I outlined here as to why you need to take a good look at WPF as your desktop development platform.
I hope you will find your way to WPF in the near future. My Subscriber Account Advertise Write. Training Home State of. Staffing Home Looking for Staff? Looking for Work? Contact Us. Dark Kimbie. Published in:. Animation While animation is not a prerequisite for many business applications, there are some areas where a proper and typically short animation can guide the user and make them aware of something on the screen that they might not otherwise notice.
Screen Resolution Windows Forms applications can be hard to scale when a user's screen resolution changes. Data Binding I have never been a big fan of data binding. Community and Third-Party Support Of course, no new development paradigm will catch on if the third-party vendors and the programming community at large are not behind the effort. Summary I can think of many more reasons than I outlined here as to why you need to take a good look at WPF as your desktop development platform.
NET Framework installed. Taskbar support jumplists, progress bar in the taskbar, overlay icons , support for touch input, Pixel Shader 3 support - all these were introduced in WPF, but not in WinForms.
Platform support and active development is an important factor in deciding which sub-framework to choose. So far, WPF is in the lead. Now your application can not only run based on separate windows, but also pages.
This is especially useful when there are various levels segments that require user input and visualization, since pages offer easier navigation between content.
Therefore, if you have enough experience with WPF, you can easily star working with Silverlight with slight adjustments and vice-versa. Of course my list is in no way a final set of reasons — I am pretty sure that there are people out there who can list tens of other reasons to make the switch, others will try to provide arguments that the switch is not worth it.
The sooner you make the switch, the more potential you are giving your applications. Web Dev Zone. Thanks for visiting DZone today,. Edit Profile. Sign Out View Profile. Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Like 1. Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.
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