Summary

In this chapter, you’ve taken a tour through the enormous features from WPF. WPF makes it easy to separate work between developers and designers. Both Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer and Visual Studio make it possible to work with XAML code. XAML code does a better separation of the UI from the functionality behind it. All UI features can be created with XAML, and the functionality by using code behind.

Styling and templates allow you to customize the look of controls. Triggers allow you to change properties of WPF elements dynamically. Animations can be done easily by animating a property value from a WPF control.

The data-binding features of WPF are a leap forward compared to Windows Forms. You can bind any property of a .NET class to a property of a WPF element. The binding mode defines the direction of the binding. You can bind .NET objects and lists, and define a data template to create a default look for a .NET class.

Tip 

This chapter gave you an overview of WPF and enough information to get started with this technology. For more information on WPF, you should read a book with its focus on WPF, for example, Professional WPF Programming: .NET Development with the Windows Presentation Foundation by Chris Andrade et al. (Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2007).