WPF - Introduction

Introduction

WPF stands for Windows Presentation Framework.

It was introduced with .Net framework 3.0

It is the new-era of desktop applications that are very rich and efficient.

Advantages of WPF

WPF delivers rich, responsive UI; it is very easy to use animations with WPF.

I am not a game developer but then also creating games application using WPF is far easier. Efficient and flexible developing WPF applications are an experience in itself.

WPF Vs DirectX

Not really, although using WPF you can create nice, responsive UIs but the video performance is better in DirectX than in WPF.

WPF is good for small game programming.

 WPF Vs Windows applications

·         Windows applications basically used the Operating system controls to build its application. Whereas WPF uses the vector graphics and WPF controls are actually drawn over the screen, and hence you can customize controls totally and modify their behavior when required.

·         WPF uses the hardware capabilities of your system making it to deliver smooth graphics.

·         WPF uses device independent DPI(dots per inch) for the visual layout whereas the windows applications use pixels. Using DPI makes a WPF application to adjust with various different resolutions of your monitor.

·         It’s very easy to apply styles to a WPF application , in case of windows applications the styles are defined in css and each control is tightly coupled to a style. Whereas in case of WPF you can create a style irrespective of the control.

For example , you can give a toggle button style to your checkbox.

·         In case of windows application , the controls are resource intensive , that is when a form is created the controls are loaded and their objects are loaded in memory. In case of WPF if the templates are loaded only once during the complete lifecycle of the form, this frees a certain part of memory.

·         Also, in case of WPF we are using data binding and dependency properties instead of CLR properties which gives the application very loosely coupled architecture.