Microsoft WPF
Windows Presentation Foundation (or WPF) is a technology that helps developers to create rich user interfaces for Windows-based applications. Runtime libraries are included in all versions of Microsoft Windows starting with Microsoft Vista and Windows Server 2008.
Advantages
- Ability to make rich user interface relatively easy
- Capabilities to create animations and special effects
- Resolution independent graphical core, which uses hardware acceleration for drawing the graphical user interface, thus enhancing performance
- Powerful styling and skinning structure
- Multimedia integration support
- Culturally aware controls
- Ability to run in a browser (the same code base can be used as desktop application and as web based application)
Disadvantages
- Learning to work with WPF takes time, as this is a more complex technology
- WPF's in-box control suite is far more limited than that of WinForms
- WPF applications cannot not run on Windows 2000 or lower
- Reduced community support
Development tools
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2012
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2013
- Microsoft Blend for Visual Studio (formerly Microsoft Expression Blend)
- WPF Performance Suite
Versions
- WPF 3.0
- WPF 3.5
- WPF 3.5sp1
- WPF 4
- WPF 4.5