WPF overview
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) lets you create desktop client applications for Windows with visually stunning user experiences.
The core of WPF is a resolution-independent and vector-based rendering engine that is built to take advantage of modern graphics hardware. WPF extends the core with a comprehensive set of application-development features that include Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), controls, data binding, layout, 2D and 3D graphics, animation, styles, templates, documents, media, text, and typography. WPF is part of .NET, so you can build applications that incorporate other elements of the .NET API.
This overview is intended for newcomers and covers the key capabilities and concepts of WPF.
Program with WPF
WPF exists as a subset of .NET types that are (for the most part) located in the System.Windows namespace. If you have previously built applications with .NET using managed technologies like ASP.NET and Windows Forms, the fundamental WPF programming experience should be familiar; you instantiate classes, set properties, call methods, and handle events, using your favorite .NET programming language, such as C# or Visual Basic.
WPF includes additional programming constructs that enhance properties and events: dependency properties and routed events.
Markup and code-behind
WPF lets you develop an application using both markup and code-behind, an experience with which ASP.NET developers should be familiar. You generally use XAML markup to implement the appearance of an application while using managed programming languages (code-behind) to implement its behavior. This separation of appearance and behavior has the following benefits:
Development and maintenance costs are reduced because appearance-specific markup is not tightly coupled with behavior-specific code.
Development is more efficient because designers can implement an application’s appearance simultaneously with developers who are implementing the application’s behavior.
Globalization and localization for WPF applications is simplified.
Markup
XAML is an XML-based markup language that implements an application’s appearance declaratively. You typically use it to create windows, dialog boxes, pages, and user controls, and to fill them with controls, shapes, and graphics.
The following example uses XAML to implement the appearance of a window that contains a single button:
Specifically, this XAML defines a window and a button by using the Window and Button elements, respectively. Each element is configured with attributes, such as the Window element’s Title attribute to specify the window’s title-bar text. At run time, WPF converts the elements and attributes that are defined in markup to instances of WPF classes. For example, the Window element is converted to an instance of the Window class whose Title property is the value of the Title attribute.
The following figure shows the user interface (UI) that is defined by the XAML in the previous example:
Since XAML is XML-based, the UI that you compose with it is assembled in a hierarchy of nested elements known as an element tree. The element tree provides a logical and intuitive way to create and manage UIs.
Code-behind
The main behavior of an application is to implement the functionality that responds to user interactions, including handling events (for example, clicking a menu, tool bar, or button) and calling business logic and data access logic in response. In WPF, this behavior is implemented in code that is associated with markup. This type of code is known as code-behind. The following example shows the updated markup from the previous example and the code-behind:
In this example, the code-behind implements a class that derives from the Window class. The x:Class attribute is used to associate the markup with the code-behind class. InitializeComponent is called from the code-behind class’s constructor to merge the UI that is defined in markup with the code-behind class. ( InitializeComponent is generated for you when your application is built, which is why you don’t need to implement it manually.) The combination of x:Class and InitializeComponent ensure that your implementation is correctly initialized whenever it is created. The code-behind class also implements an event handler for the button’s Click event. When the button is clicked, the event handler shows a message box by calling the System.Windows.MessageBox.Show method.
The following figure shows the result when the button is clicked:
Controls
The user experiences that are delivered by the application model are constructed controls. In WPF, control is an umbrella term that applies to a category of WPF classes that are hosted in either a window or a page, have a user interface, and implement some behavior.
For more information, see Controls.
WPF controls by function
The built-in WPF controls are listed here:
Buttons: Button and RepeatButton.
Data Display: DataGrid, ListView, and TreeView.
Date Display and Selection: Calendar and DatePicker.
Digital Ink: InkCanvas and InkPresenter.
Overview of Windows Programming in C++
There are several broad categories of Windows applications that you can create with C++. Each has its own programming model and set of Windows-specific libraries, but the C++ standard library and third-party C++ libraries can be used in any of them.
This section discusses how to use Visual Studio and the MFC/ATL wrapper libraries to create Windows programs. For documentation on the Windows platform itself, see Windows documentation.
Command line (console) applications
C++ console applications run from the command line in a console window and can display text output only. For more information, see Create a console calculator in C++.
Native desktop client applications
A native desktop client application is a C or C++ windowed application that uses the original native Windows C APIs or Component Object Model (COM) APIs to access the operating system. Those APIs are themselves written mostly in C. There’s more than one way to create a native desktop app: You can program using the Win32 APIs directly, using a C-style message loop that processes operating system events. Or, you can program using Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), a lightly object-oriented C++ library that wraps Win32. Neither approach is considered «modern» compared to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), but both are still fully supported and have millions of lines of code running in the world today. A Win32 application that runs in a window requires the developer to work explicitly with Windows messages inside a Windows procedure function. Despite the name, a Win32 application can be compiled as a 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) binary. In the Visual Studio IDE, the terms x86 and Win32 are synonymous.
To get started with traditional Windows C++ programming, see Get Started with Win32 and C++. After you gain some understanding of Win32, it will be easier to learn about MFC Desktop Applications. For an example of a traditional C++ desktop application that uses sophisticated graphics, see Hilo: Developing C++ Applications for Windows.
C++ or .NET?
In general, .NET programming in C# is less complex, less error-prone, and has a more modern object-oriented API than Win32 or MFC. In most cases, its performance is more than adequate. .NET features the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) for rich graphics, and you can consume both Win32 and the modern Windows Runtime API. As a general rule, we recommend using C++ for desktop applications when you require:
- precise control over memory usage
- the utmost economy in power consumption
- usage of the GPU for general computing
- access to DirectX
- heavy usage of standard C++ libraries
It’s also possible to combine the power and efficiency of C++ with .NET programming. You can create a user interface in C# and use C++/CLI to enable the application to consume native C++ libraries. For more information, see .NET Programming with C++/CLI.
COM Components
The Component Object Model (COM) is a specification that enables programs written in different languages to communicate with one another. Many Windows components are implemented as COM objects and follow standard COM rules for object creation, interface discovery, and object destruction. Using COM objects from C++ desktop applications is relatively straightforward, but writing your own COM object is more advanced. The Active Template Library (ATL) provides macros and helper functions that simplify COM development. For more information, see ATL COM desktop components.
Universal Windows Platform apps
The Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is the modern Windows API. UWP apps run on any Windows 10 device, use XAML for the user-interface, and are fully touch-enabled. For more information about UWP, see What’s a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app? and Guide to Windows Universal Apps.
The original C++ support for UWP consisted of (1) C++/CX, a dialect of C++ with syntax extensions, or (2) the Windows Runtime Library (WRL), which is based on standard C++ and COM. Both C++/CX and WRL are still supported. For new projects, we recommend C++/WinRT, which is entirely based on standard C++ and provides faster performance.
Desktop Bridge
In Windows 10, you can package your existing desktop application or COM object as a UWP app, and add UWP features such as touch, or call APIs from the modern Windows API set. You can also add a UWP app to a desktop solution in Visual Studio, and package them together in a single package and use Windows APIs to communicate between them.
Visual Studio 2017 version 15.4 and later lets you create a Windows Application Package Project to greatly simplify the work of packaging your existing desktop application. A few restrictions apply to the registry calls or APIs your desktop application can use. However, in many cases you can create alternate code paths to achieve similar functionality while running in an app package. For more information, see Desktop Bridge.
Games
DirectX games can run on the PC or Xbox. For more information, see DirectX Graphics and Gaming.
SQL Server database clients
To access SQL Server databases from native code, use ODBC or OLE DB. For more information, see SQL Server Native Client.
Windows device drivers
Drivers are low-level components that make data from hardware devices accessible to applications and other operating system components. For more information, see Windows Driver Kit (WDK).
Windows services
A Windows service is a program that can run in the background with little or no user interaction. These programs are called daemons on UNIX systems. For more information, see Services.
SDKs, libraries, and header files
Visual Studio includes the C Runtime Library (CRT), the C++ Standard Library, and other Microsoft-specific libraries. Most of the include folders that contain header files for these libraries are located in the Visual Studio installation directory under the \VC\ folder. The Windows and CRT header files are found in the Windows SDK installation folder.
The Vcpkg package manager lets you conveniently install hundreds of third-party open-source libraries for Windows.
The Microsoft libraries include:
Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC): An object-oriented framework for creating traditional Windows programs—especially enterprise applications—that have rich user interfaces that feature buttons, list boxes, tree views, and other controls. For more information, see MFC Desktop Applications.
Active Template Library (ATL): A powerful helper library for creating COM components. For more information, see ATL COM Desktop Components.
C++ AMP (C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism): A library that enables high-performance general computational work on the GPU. For more information, see C++ AMP (C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism).
Concurrency Runtime: A library that simplifies the work of parallel and asynchronous programming for multicore and many-core devices. For more information, see Concurrency Runtime.
Many Windows programming scenarios also require the Windows SDK, which includes the header files that enable access to the Windows operating system components. By default, Visual Studio installs the Windows SDK as a component of the C++ Desktop workload, which enables development of Universal Windows apps. To develop UWP apps, you need the Windows 10 version of the Windows SDK. For information, see Windows 10 SDK. (For more information about the Windows SDKs for earlier versions of Windows, see the Windows SDK archive).
Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits is the default location for all versions of the Windows SDK that you’ve installed.
Other platforms such as Xbox and Azure have their own SDKs that you may have to install. For more information, see the DirectX Developer Center and the Azure Developer Center.
Development Tools
Visual Studio includes a powerful debugger for native code, static analysis tools, graphics debugging tools, a full-featured code editor, support for unit tests, and many other tools and utilities. For more information, see Get started developing with Visual Studio, and Overview of C++ development in Visual Studio.
Introduction to Visual Studio
Visual Studio is an Integrated Development Environment(IDE) developed by Microsoft to develop GUI(Graphical User Interface), console, Web applications, web apps, mobile apps, cloud, and web services, etc. With the help of this IDE, you can create managed code as well as native code. It uses the various platforms of Microsoft software development software like Windows store, Microsoft Silverlight, and Windows API, etc. It is not a language-specific IDE as you can use this to write code in C#, C++, VB(Visual Basic), Python, JavaScript, and many more languages. It provides support for 36 different programming languages. It is available for Windows as well as for macOS.
Evolution of Visual Studio: The first version of VS(Visual Studio) was released in 1997, named as Visual Studio 97 having version number 5.0. The latest version of Visual Studio is 15.0 which was released on March 7, 2017. It is also termed as Visual Studio 2017. The supported .Net Framework Versions in latest Visual Studio is 3.5 to 4.7. Java was supported in old versions of Visual Studio but in the latest version doesn’t provide any support for Java language.
Visual Studio Editions
There are 3 editions of Microsoft Visual Studio as follows:
1. Community: It is a free version which is announced in 2014. All other editions are paid. This contains the features similar to Professional edition. Using this edition, any individual developer can develop their own free or paid apps like .Net applications, Web applications and many more. In an enterprise organization, this edition has some limitations. For example, if your organization have more than 250 PCs and having annual revenue greater than $1 Million(US Dollars) then you are not permitted to use this edition. In a non-enterprise organization, up to five users can use this edition. Its main purpose is to provide the Ecosystem(Access to thousands of extensions) and Languages(You can code in C#, VB, F#, C++, HTML, JavaScript, Python, etc.) support.
2. Professional: It is the commercial edition of Visual Studio. It comes in Visual Studio 2010 and later versions. It provides the support for XML and XSLT editing and includes the tool like Server Explorer and integration with Microsoft SQL Server. Microsoft provides a free trial of this edition and after the trial period, the user has to pay to continue using it. Its main purpose is to provide Flexibility(Professional developer tools for building any application type), Productivity(Powerful features such as CodeLens improve your team’s productivity), Collaboration(Agile project planning tools, charts, etc.) and Subscriber benefits like Microsoft software, plus Azure, Pluralsight, etc.
3. Enterprise: It is an integrated, end to end solution for teams of any size with the demanding quality and scale needs. Microsoft provides a 90-days free trial of this edition and after the trial period, the user has to pay to continue using it. The main benefit of this edition is that it is highly scalable and deliver high-quality software.
Getting Started with Visual Studio 2017
- First, you have to download and install the Visual Studio. For that, you can refer to Downloading and Installing Visual Studio 2017. Don’t forget to select the .NET core workload during the installation of VS 2017. If you forget then you have to modify the installation.
- You can see a number of tool windows when you will open the Visual Studio and start writing your first program as follows:
- Code Editor: Where the user will write code.
- Output Window: Here the Visual Studio shows the outputs, compiler warnings, error messages and debugging information.
- Solution Explorer: It shows the files on which the user is currently working.
- Properties: It will give additional information and context about the selected parts of the current project.
- Create, Open and save projects commands are contained by File menu.
- Searching, Modifying, Refactoring code commands are contained by the Edit menu.
- View Menu is used to open the additional tool windows in Visual Studio.
- Project menu is used to add some files and dependencies in the project.
- To change the settings, add functionality to Visual Studio via extensions, and access various Visual Studio tools can be used by using Tools menu.
Note:
- Support for different programming languages in Visual Studio is added by using a special VSPackage which is known as Language Service.
- When you will install the Visual Studio then the functionality which is coded as VSPackage will be available as Service.
- Visual Studio IDE provides the three different types of services known as SVsSolution, SVsUIShell, and SVsShell.
- SVsSolution service is used to provide the functionality to enumerate solutions and projects in Visual Studio.
- SVsUIShell service is used to provide User Interface functionality like toolbars, tabs etc.
- SvsShell service is used to deal with the registration of VSPackages.