Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation for Not Yet Techies

"Using XML-Based Technology to Display Vivid Graphical User Interfaces"

by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation / WPF is the unified presentation subsystem for .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly known as WinFX or NetFX).

It's the display engine that controls graphics. It was formerly codenamed Avalon.

Microsoft WPF comes installed in the Windows Vista operating system, along with Windows Communication Foundation / WCF and Windows Workflow Foundation / WWF.

Windows Presentation Foundation contains rich media graphical user interface or GUIs. It's a leap up from ordinary graphics and user interfaces in computers now.

It has a huge API / Applications Program Interface and a suite of managed classes, and it's based on managed code. WPF's deployment model supports standalone and XAML Browser Applications (XBAP). All objects are derived from the Dispatcherobject object.

WPF uses Extensible Application Markup Language / XAML to define user interfaces. This is a specialized use of XML. XAML allow for declaration development WPF applications using the Windows Presentation Foundation object model. A declarative command is set for the WPF runtime engine.

You can use various tools to use Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation / WPF to develop various applications, including Cider, an XAML add-in Microsoft created for Visual Studio 2005. Also Microsoft Expression Blend for designers.

The architecture is: Presentation Framework - Presentation Core -- Common Language Runtime -- milcor -- Direct X -- kernel.

WPF includes:

User interface

2D and 3D drawing

Fixed and adaptive documents

Vector graphics

Raster graphics

Animation

Data binding

Audio

Video

All Microsoft WPF graphics use Direct3D.

Also, Microsoft has created a cross-platform version of Windows Presentation Foundation known as WPF/E -- for Everywhere. WPF/E will not display the full 3D graphics capabilities that will be available in Vista.

They're going to create versions of WPF/E for Windows XP, Windows 2000, Firefox web browser, Mac's Safari browser and mobile phones. Microsoft will allow third-party companies to make editions of WPF/E for Linux and non-Windows mobile phones.

Next: ASP.NET: Ajax / Atlas

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