The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Windows Presentation Foundation a.k.a Avalon Major Keary |
The next version of Microsoft's client operating system will be Windows Vista. The release date is likely to be rubbery for some time to come, but in the meantime developers will be able to build their skills in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which was known as Avalon. WPF — still pre-beta — is a new graphics subsystem for building user interfaces and is able to take advantage of the graphics capabilities of the latest video cards and the new generation of high-resolution monitors. The kind of graphics that have been restricted to games will be available to application developers. The WPF technologies include "an engine that supports 3-D graphics and animation, a new XML-based markup language called XAML [eXtensible Application Markup Language], and a radical new model for customising controls — the text boxes, listboxes, etc. that constitute the building blocks of a user interface". WPF is supported on WinXP.
O'Reilly has just released Programming Windows Presentation Foundation, which is intended for developers to explore WPF and keep up with its evolution. A knowledge of C# and .NET is assumed, and "Windows Forms, XML, and HTML are all recommended". Readers are warned that the book is not intended to teach programming; the examples are not annotated or explained, but are there to illustrate the discussions, and use C# as well as examples of XAML.
The coverage is comprehensive and presented in considerable depth. One of the authors comments that "WPF integrates the capabilities of those frameworks that preceded it, including User, Graphic Device Interface (GDI), GDI +, and HTML ... and it's heavily influenced by toolkits targeted at the Web, such as Macromedia Flash, and popular Windows Applications such as Microsoft Word".
Even though written for developers, and WPF is still a work-in-progress, the book should be of interest to those who have a professional-level interest in the development of Windows. By that I mean informed journalists, consultants, and others who have a sound grasp of Windows' inner workings.
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Chris Sells and Ian Griffiths: Programming Windows Presentation Foundation ISBN 0-596-10113-9 Published by O'Reilly, 430 pp., RRP $74.95 incl. GST |
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Reprinted from the Jan / Feb 2006 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne
PC User Group, Australia
