Introduction

Thank you for picking up WPF 4 Unleashed! Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is Microsoft’s premier technology for creating Windows graphical user interfaces, whether they consist of plain forms, document-centric windows, animated cartoons, videos, immersive 3D environments, or all of the above. WPF is a technology that makes it easier than ever to create a broad range of applications. It’s also the basis for Silverlight, which has extended WPF technology onto the Web and into devices such as Windows phones.

Ever since WPF was publicly announced in 2003 (with the code name “Avalon”), it has gotten considerable attention for the ways in which it revolutionizes the process of creating software—especially for Windows programmers used to Windows Forms and GDI. It’s relatively easy to create fun, useful, and shareable WPF samples that demonstrate all kinds of techniques that are difficult to accomplish in other technologies. WPF 4, released in April 2010, improves on previous versions of WPF in just about every dimension.