WPF(Window Presentation Foundation) in VB.NET

In this article we will learn about the WPF (Window Presentation Foundation) and also describes the Difference between Silverlight and WPF (Window Presentation Foundation) in Visual Studio 2010.
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In this article we will learn about the WPF (Window Presentation Foundation) and also describe the Difference between Silverlight and WPF (Window Presentation Foundation) in Visual Studio 2010.

WPF (Window Presentation Foundation)

WPF application is used for desktop application. The use of WPF is limited to applications that are meant to run on the Windows operating system. You cannot build an application that is able to run on any other operating system, and even for older versions of Windows, like 95 and 98. WPF is a more mature technology and was designed with a richer feature set. It also has the advantage of being able to run in a browser or as an installed Windows-Form-type app.  
  1. WPF is used for local use.
  2. WPF applications are restricted to later versions of the Windows operating system.
  3. WPF can utilize local resources.
  4. WPF is capable of full 3D images.

For example

If a corporation is designing an application for internal use only and every employee has Windows XP as the company standard OS, then go with WPF.

Features of WPF - WPF has the following features.

Direct3D

Graphics, including desktop items like windows, are rendered using Direct3D. This provides an avenue for displaying more complex graphics and custom themes.

Data binding

WPF has a built-in set of data services to enable application developers to bind and manipulate data within applications. There exists support for three types of data binding:

  1. one time: where the client ignores updates on the server.
  2. one way: where the client has read-only access to data.
  3. two way: where client can read from and write data to the server.
     

Media Services

WPF provides an integrated system for building user interfaces with common media elements like vector and raster images, audio, and video. WPF also provides an animation system and a 2D/3D rendering system.

Imaging

WPF can natively access Window Imaging component (WIC) code and APIs allowing developers to write image codec for their specific image file formats.

Text

WPF includes a number of typographic and text rendering features that were not available in GDI. This is the first Windows programming interface to expose OpenType features to software developers, supporting OpenType, TrueType, and OpenType CFF (Compact Font Format) fonts.

Difference between Silverlight and WPF (Window Presentation Foundation)

WPF:

  1. Runs as Windows application or as web "browser application" (called XBAP, for "XAML Browser Application"). Note that XBAPs run only in Internet Explorer with .NET 3.0 and in both Internet Explorer and Firefox with .NET 3.5.
  2. Runs on Windows machines only (Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008)
  3. Richest functionality, including 3D graphics
  4. WPF leverages the full.NET Framework and executes on the common language runtime (CLR).

Silverlight

  1. Runs in web browsers only (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari).
  2. Runs on Windows or Mac operating systems (also on Linux via Moonlight, which is an open source implementation of Silverlight based on Mono).
  3. Functionality is a subset of WPF's feature set.
  4. Silverlight is based only on a subset of XAML and the full.NET Framework executing on a browser-hosted version of the CLR.

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