Porting a Win Forms app to WPF

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Porting a Win Forms app to WPF

• Caleb Vear, dotNET solutions

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Overview

• An Introduction to WPF
• How I ported the catalog application
• Issues with the porting process

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What do you need to develop WPF applications?

• The .NET 3 Frameworkhttp//www.microsoft.com/down
  loads/details.aspx?FamilyID10cc340b-f857-4a14-83f
  5-25634c3bf043DisplayLangen
• Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET
  3.0http//www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.asp
  x?FamilyIDf54f5537-cc86-4bf5-ae44-f5a1e805680dDi
  splayLangen
• Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows
  Vistahttp//www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.a
  spx?familyid7614FE22-8A64-4DFB-AA0C-DB53035F40A0
  displaylangen
• Expression Blendhttp//www.microsoft.com/expressi
  on/products/overview.aspx?keyblend

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What is WPF?

• WPF is a new API for building Windows
  applications

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What is WPF good for?

• To enable designers and developers to work
  together
• To allow an easy way to customize the look of
  controls without changing its behaviour
• To allow 3D graphics more easily in Windows
  applications
• To allow an easy way to do animations in Windows
  applications
• To enable the creation of applications which
  scale nicely to
• high resolution screens

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Overview of WPF Architecture

• Most of WPF is written in managed code
• milcore is the only unmanaged component of WPF

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Important WPF Concepts

• XAML Extensible Application Mark-up Language
• Dependency Properties
• Routed Events
• Commands
• Styles
• Control Templates

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Dependency Properties Example
ltWindow xClass"WindowsApplication1.Window1"
xmlns"http//schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xa
ml/presentation" xmlnsxhttp//schemas.micro
soft.com/winfx/2006/xaml gt ltGrid xName"myGrid"
Margin"20"gt ltTextBlockgt Sample Text outside
the ItemsControl block lt/TextBlockgt ltItemsContro
l Foreground"Red" VerticalAlignment"Center"gt lt
TextBlockgtSample Text without foregroundlt/TextBloc
kgt ltTextBlock Foreground"Blue"gtSample Text
with foregroundlt/TextBlockgt lt/ItemsControlgt lt/Gri
dgt lt/Windowgt
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Routed Events
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How did I port the application?

• Created a new WPF project
• Created a test project for testing styles
• Shared the non Windows Forms class files
• Separated the main form into two partial class
  files
• One file containing platform specific methods
• The other containing platform independent methods

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Platform Independent
Platform Dependent

• Methods to load local data
• Methods to cache data
• Methods to load data from the web service

• Methods to change the cursor
• Properties to set the status bar text
• Methods to show the different pages

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Issues

• The Frame control doesnt support scripting
  objects
• Layout issues with Winforms on WPF
• Winforms controls will always be rendered over
  the top of WPF controls
• Winforms controls cant be scaled or transformed
• Winforms controls cant be rotated or skewed

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Useful Links

• Windows Presentation Foundation SDK Blog
• http//blogs.msdn.com/wpfsdk/
• WPFPedia.com
• http//www.wpfpedia.com
• Windows Vista Technical Articles
• A Guided Tour of Windows Presentation Foundation
• http//msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480221.
  aspx