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)

Introducing key-frames

Key-frame animations enable us to do a number of things that we cannot do with the From, By, and To animations. Unlike those animations, with key-frame animations, we are able to specify more than two target values and animate objects that cannot normally be animated in discrete steps. As such, there are more <TypeName>AnimationUsingKeyFrames classes than <TypeName>Animation classes, for example, the RectAnimationUsingKeyFrames and SizeAnimationUsingKeyFrames classes.

Each <TypeName>AnimationUsingKeyFrames class has a KeyFrames property that we populate with key-frames to specify various values that must be passed during the animation. Each key-frame has a KeyTime and a Value property to specify the value and the relative time that it should be reached.

If no key-frame is declared with a key time of zero seconds, the animation will start from the relevant property's current value. The animation will order the key-frames by the values of their...