WPF 4.5 Unleashed

Introduction     1
Who Should Read This Book?      2
Software Requirements     3
Code Examples     3
How This Book Is Organized     4
Conventions Used in This Book     6

Part I: Background
Chapter 1: Why WPF?      7
A Look at the Past      8
Enter WPF     9
The Evolution of WPF     12
Summary     16
Chapter 2: XAML Demystified     17
XAML Defined     19
Elements and Attributes     20
Namespaces     22
Property Elements     25
Type Converters     26
Markup Extensions      28
Children of Object Elements     31
Mixing XAML with Procedural Code     36
XAML2009     44
XAML Keywords     49
Summary     52
Chapter 3: WPF Fundamentals     55
A Tour of the Class Hierarchy      55
Logical and Visual Trees     57
Dependency Properties      62
Summary     76

Part II: Building a WPF Application
Chapter 4: Sizing, Positioning, and Transforming Elements     77
Controlling Size     78
Controlling Position     83
Applying Transforms     86
Summary     95
Chapter 5: Layout with Panels     97
Canvas     98
StackPanel     100
WrapPanel     102
DockPanel     105
Grid     108
Primitive

Adam Nathan is a principal software architect for Microsoft in the Startup Business Group. Adam was previously the founding developer and architect for Popfly, Microsoft's first product built on Silverlight, named one of the 25 most innovative products of 2007 by PCWorld Magazine. Having started his career on Microsoft’s Common Language Runtime team, Adam has been at the core of .NET and WPF technologies since the very beginning.





Adam’s books have been considered required reading by many inside Microsoft and throughout the industry. He is the author of the best-selling WPF Unleashed (Sams, 2006) that was nominated for a 2008 Jolt Award, WPF 4 Unleashed (Sams, 2010), Windows 8 Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed (Sams, 2012), 101 Windows Phone 7 Apps (Sams, 2011), Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed (Sams, 2008), and .NET and COM: The Complete Interoperability Guide (Sams, 2002); a coauthor of ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code (Sams, 2001); and a contributor to books including .NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference, Volume 2 (Addison-Wesley, 2005) and Windows Developer Power Tools (O’Reilly, 2006). Adam is also the creator of PINVOKE.NET and its Visual Studio add-in. You can find him online at www.adamnathan.net or @adamnathan on Twitter.

Praise for the First Edition "The Nathan book is brilliant--you'll love it. Publishers, take note: I'd sure be buying a heck of a lot more technical books if more of them were like this one." --Jeff Atwood, codinghorror.com, cofounder of Stack Overflow "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed is a must-have book for anyone interested in learning and using WPF. Buy it, read it, and keep it close to your computer." --Josh Smith, Microsoft MVP "As we built the feature team that delivered the new WPF presentation layer for Visual Studio 2010, Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed quickly became our must-read WPF reference book of choice, over and above other books on WPF and indeed internal documentation. Highly recommended for any developer wanting to learn how to make the most of WPF." --James Bartlett, senior lead program manager, Microsoft Visual Studio "I've bought nearly all available WPF books, but the only one that's still on my desk is Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed. It not only covers all WPF aspects, but it does it in the right, concise way so that reading it was a real pleasure." --Corrado Cavalli, Codeworks "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed is the most insightful WPF book there is. Don't be misled by its size; this book has the best introduction and deepest insights. This is the must-read for anyone getting started or wanting to get the most out of WPF." --Jaime Rodriguez, Microsoft client evangelist for Windows, WPF, Silverlight, and Windows Phone "I found Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed to be an excellent and thorough introduction and guide to programming WPF. It is clearly written, easily understood, and yet still deep enough to get a good understanding of how WPF works and how to use it. Not a simple feat to accomplish! I heartily recommend it to all the students who take DevelopMentor's WPF course! Anyone serious about doing WPF work should have a copy in their library." --Mark Smith, DevelopMentor instructor, author