Hello everybody,

it's done! No no... not the whole WPF article series and the other stuff I would blog about . After one and a half week I think I became just enough acquainted with WordPress and the plugin system it uses. I think I'm ready to fill my technical blog with some hopefully interesting articles.

This is the beginning of the WPF series.

First I would like to introduce my intention to write this articles and the requirements you will need to test the code snippets. To play around with some code is often a great way to learn a new technology. I hope I have the time to continue this series with not so much space between every part and to post at least a full compilable and functional code snippet. Certainly a complete Visual Studio 2008 solution is most suitable to test the code snippets, but if I have not enough time I will hopefully post the code snippet.

Why I'm writing a WPF article series? That's an easy question: Because I'm learning WPF right now! I start reading WPF articles found on different websites just two or three weeks before. I'm very interested in this new technology and the possibilities it gives to the developer. Of course there are many problems you must face as a developer who knows Windows Forms 2.0 when you're going to develop a new WPF application or when you try to migrate existing Windows Forms 2.0 code. You must conquer differences between layout containers, the designer, data-binding and so much more. Regardless I think it's a great technology with many improvements which can be used to design great looking applications with a never seen before usability.

To use the posted code snippets, you need at a minimum the .NET Framework 3.0 installed on the client machine. You can download the Redistributable Package for 3.0 here*. To use the solutions you need Visual Studio 2008 or any other application which can read and handle the VS 2008 solution files (maybe SharpDevelop briefly). I write all code with Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5. You can download the Redistributable Package for 3.5 here*. Maybe I use Expression Blend for the GUI designs in the future, but for the moment I write the XAML code by my own.

Enough text written for the moment. The next part would be a short introduction to the .NET Framework 3.0 and the possibilities you have with WPF.

* The first download link on the Microsoft websites contain only the bootstrapper. That's the explanation for the very small files. If you scroll down the pages you should find links to the full packages, if you want to install the framework on different clients.