Book Image

Mastering Windows Presentation Foundation - Second Edition

By : Sheridan Yuen
Book Image

Mastering Windows Presentation Foundation - Second Edition

By: Sheridan Yuen

Overview of this book

Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides a rich set of libraries and APIs for developers to create engaging user experiences. This book features a wide range of examples, from simple to complex, to demonstrate how to develop enterprise-grade applications with WPF. This updated second edition of Mastering Windows Presentation Foundation starts by introducing the benefits of using the Model-View-View Model (MVVM) software architectural pattern with WPF, then moves on, to explain how best to debug our WPF applications. It explores application architecture, and we learn how to build the foundation layer of our applications. It then demonstrates data binding in detail, and examines the various built-in WPF controls and a variety of ways in which we can customize them to suit our requirements. We then investigate how to create custom controls, for when the built-in functionality in WPF cannot be adapted for our needs. The latter half of the book deals with polishing our applications, using practical animations, stunning visuals and responsive data validation. It then moves on, to look at improving application performance, and ends with tutorials on several methods of deploying our applications.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Data binding

The simplest improvement in performance when data binding can be obtained by simply setting the Binding.Mode property correctly. In order to make data binding possible, the Framework attaches handlers to listen out for changes to our data bound properties.

For two-way bindings, event handlers will be attached to the PropertyChanged event of the INotifyPropertyChanged interface to listen to changes in our data Model objects or View Models and to various other XxxChanged events in the relevant binding target controls to listen to UI-based property changes.

When we only require one-way bindings, we can save some computing resources by setting the Mode property of the Binding class to the appropriate member of the BindingMode enumeration. If you remember, when a data bound property is for display purposes only, we should set its Mode property to OneWay, and when we have no need to update an editable field from the View Model, we should set its Mode property to the OneWayToSource...