I encourage anyone who wants to learn
more about the future of WPF to track them down. Finally, I??™d never write any book without
the support of my wife and these special individuals: Nora, Razia, Paul, and Hamid. Thanks,
everyone!
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Introduction
When .NET first appeared, it introduced a small avalanche of new technologies. There was a
whole new way to write web applications (ASP.NET), a whole new way to connect to databases
(ADO.NET), new typesafe languages (C# and VB .NET), and a managed runtime (the CLR).
Not least among these new technologies was Windows Forms, a library of classes for building
Windows applications.
Although Windows Forms is a mature and full-featured toolkit, it??™s hardwired to essential
bits of Windows plumbing that haven??™t changed much in the past ten years. Most significantly,
Windows Forms relies on the Windows API to create the visual appearance of standard user
interface elements such as buttons, text boxes, check boxes, and so on. As a result, these
ingredients are essentially uncustomizable.
For example, if you want to create a stylish glow button you need to create a custom control
and paint every aspect of the button (in all its different states) using a lower-level drawing
model. Even worse, ordinary windows are carved up into distinct regions, with each control
getting its own piece of real estate.
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