"Pro WPF with VB 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5"
BAML is tokenized, which means lengthier bits of XAML are replaced with shorter tokens. Not only is BAML significantly smaller, it??™s also optimized in a way that makes it faster to parse at runtime. Most developers won??™t worry about the conversion of XAML to BAML because the compiler performs it behind the scenes. However, it is possible to use XAML without compiling it CHAPTER 2 n XAML 26 first. This might make sense in scenarios that require some of the user interface to be supplied just in time (for example, pulled out of a database as a block of XAML tags). You??™ll see how this works later in this chapter, in the section ???Loading and Compiling XAML.??? XAML Basics The XAML standard is quite straightforward once you understand a few ground rules: ??? Every element in a XAML document maps to an instance of a .NET class. The name of the element matches the name of the class exactly. For example, the element