WPF Overview

• WPF is the new presentation subsystem for Windows.
 Unified programming model to build smart windows client applications including UI, Documents, and Media (audio, video, sound, animation, 2D, 3D, speech etc).

• Presentation Foundation Services
 User Interface Services: Application Services, Deployment, Controls, Layout, Data Binding
 Base Services: XAML, Property System, Input and Eventing, Accessibility.
 Media Services: 2D, 3D, Audio, Video, Text, Imaging, Animation, Effects, Composition Engine.  Document Services: XPS Documents, Open Packaging Conventions.

• Right now we have island of technologies to develop rich smart windows applications having differentiated User experience.
 For example, to develop User Interface we need to use Windows Forms or USER32.
 Present GDI and GDI+ is thin wrapper to Win32 API’s and targeting 2D graphics.
 To incorporate 3D, we need to use Direct 3D or OpenGL.
 To incorporate media, we need to use DirectShow.

• WPF provides all the above features as single technology with out changing our gears between the diverse choices of different technologies.
 One single technology for incorporating variety of features starting from UI, data binding, Style, Animation etc, regardless of whether we are targeting 2D, 3D or text content.

• Integrated, vector-based composition engine
 Utilizing the power of the PC and the powerful Graphical Processing Units.
 The rendering architecture uses Direct3D for all output.
 WPF takes advantage of hardware capabilities using a DirectX-based model. If required hardware is not available, it will make use of software rendering.
 WPF provides Vector based rendering, rather than bitmap-based, supports high-dpi, double buffering using powerful composition engine.

• Ease of deployment
 WPF provides the best features of both Web (Broad Reach, Easy change maintenance, Easy Deployment) and Windows (Rich User Experience, Developer Productivity, Responsiveness) world through smart client Click Once technology.

• WPF supports both stand alone and web-browser applications.
 Web-browser applications run in a partial trust sandbox for security. Web-browser applications also make use of the local client hardware and use 3D and media services for the richest Web experience.

• Windows Presentation Foundation also provides a new set of document and print technologies.
 WPF builds on fixed documents by defining a new type of document, known as an XML Paper Specification (XPS) document.
 XPS is an open, cross-platform document format that enables users to create, share, print, and archive paginated documents.