1. What is WPF?

Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly named "aveon") is a unified display subsystem used by Microsoft for Windows. It is made public through WinFX. It consists of a display engine and a hosted code framework. The Windows Presentation Foundation unifies the methods for creating, displaying, and operating documents, media, and user interfaces (UIS) in Windows, this allows developers and designers to create better visual effects and different user experiences.

After the Windows Presentation Foundation is released (to be released in December 2006), it can be used in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and all later Windows operating system versions.

Windows Presentation Foundation

Windows Presentation Foundation consists of two main parts: Engine and programming framework.

• Windows Presentation Foundation engine. The Windows Presentation Foundation engine unifies how developers and designers experience documents, media, and UI, provides a single Runtime Library for browser-based experience, forms-based applications, graphics, videos, audios, and documents. The Windows Presentation Foundation enables applications not only to take full advantage of all the existing graphical hardware functions in modern computers, but also to take advantage of future advances in hardware. For example, the vector-based rendering engine of Windows Presentation Foundation enables applications to flexibly utilize high DPI monitors without additional work from developers or users. Similarly, when Windows Presentation Foundation detects a video card that supports hardware acceleration, it uses hardware acceleration.

• Windows Presentation Foundation framework. The Windows Presentation Foundation framework provides more solutions for media, user interface design, and documentation than developers currently have. The Design of Windows Presentation Foundation considers scalability, allowing developers to create their own controls based on the Windows Presentation Foundation engine, you can also create your own controls by reclassifying existing Windows Presentation Foundation controls. The core of the Windows Presentation Foundation framework is a series of controls for shapes, documents, images, videos, animations, 3D, and panels used to place controls and content. These "self-owned controls" provide construction blocks for the development of next-generation user experience.

Microsoft introduces the Windows Presentation Foundation and The XAML, a markup language that publicly represents the Windows application user interface, developers and designers can use more tools to build and reuse the UI. For Web developers, XAML provides a familiar UI description mode. XAML also separates the UI design from the basic code, so that developers and designers can work closely together.

　　Why Windows Presentation Foundation?

For enterprises, Windows Presentation Foundation provides improved customer relationships and different applications. By providing technologies that can quickly provide better visual effects and unique user experience, enterprises can establish close relationships with customers so that they can establish stable digital customer relationships and unique brand opportunities. Moreover, because Windows Presentation Foundation is a combination of forms, documents, videos, 3D, and other functions, enterprises can create persistent user experience solutions and integrate them into customers' daily activities.

For developers and designers, the Windows Presentation Foundation provides a unified UI platform, so they only need to learn one mode to get an unlimited UI experience. For. NET developers, the framework is familiar, and it will eventually reduce the number of lines of code required to provide the best user experience and communication logic. For designers, the platform provided by the Windows Presentation Foundation eliminates the boundaries between content, media, and applications. Most importantly, the Windows Presentation Foundation enables developers and designers to work closely together to quickly provide different connectivity experiences.

Current development response to WPF

At present, many people have begun to consider or have switched to WPF, and a new learning craze has begun. However, according to my recent studies and knowledge, there are very few documents about WPF in China. Besides the materials provided by msdn, they are mostly from abroad, some are the materials on the blog of overseas developers, of course, in English. Therefore, it would be a good time to introduce some WPF books. In addition, several foreign WPF books have just been listed. If we can introduce them as soon as possible, it will definitely help Chinese developers catch up with the international market in the shortest time.

At present, Microsoft provides services and support for WPF.

With the release of Vista RTM, a new round of Microsoft technology promotion has begun. In fact, WPF has been widely promoted before, because the CTP version has been released for some time. Of course, many developers mainly focus on technical research, and a few companies have begun to work on WPF-based product R & D.

1. The official version of WPF has been released (with the official version of. net framework 3.0). You can download it from msdn for free.

2. the corresponding technical support has started, but it is currently limited to major customers, mainly for pre-sales technical support. Technical support for General developers may not start until March (I personally know the situation, please refer to the information published on the official Microsoft technical support website)

3. the WPF VS2005 plug-in currently only has the Community preview version (CTP version). It is also free to download from msdn. However, the official version may take some time, however, you can use the CTP version to develop the wysiwyg wpf in VS2005.

4. the WPF/e ctp version has been released. You can download it for free on msdn. WPF/E Sample Pack for CTP is also released.