WPF changes all this. In WPF, the underlying graphics technology isn??™t GDI/GDI+. Instead,
it??™s DirectX. Remarkably, WPF applications use DirectX no matter what type of user interface
you create. That means that whether you??™re designing complex three-dimensional graphics
(DirectX??™s fort?©) or just drawing buttons and plain text, all the drawing work travels through
the DirectX pipeline. As a result, even the most mundane business applications can use rich
effects such as transparency and anti-aliasing. You also benefit from hardware acceleration,
which simply means DirectX hands off as much work as possible to the GPU (graphics processing
unit), which is the dedicated processor on the video card.
nNote DirectX is more efficient because it understands higher-level ingredients such as textures and
gradients, which can be rendered directly by the video card. GDI/GDI+ doesn??™t, so it needs to convert them
to pixel-by-pixel instructions, which are rendered much more slowly by modern video cards.
One component that??™s still in the picture (to a limited extent) is User32. That??™s because
WPF still relies on User32 for certain services, such as handling and routing input and sorting
out which application owns which portion of screen real estate. However, all the drawing is
funneled through DirectX.
Pages:
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76