1. .Net 3.0 and Windows Presentation Foundation
Jim Fawcett
CSE775 – Distributed Objects
Spring 2007

2. References
Introducing Windows Presentation Foundation, David Chappell,
Several figures used from this presentation
Introducing Windows Communication Foundation, David Chappell,
Foundations of Windows Presentation Foundation, Laurence Moroney, Apress, 2006
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XML Graphics for the Web,

3. References
Introduction to Vector Markup Language (VML),
Windows Presentation Foundation, Ronnie Saurenmann,
Windows Presentation Foundation, Sue Chard,

4. .Net 3.0
The .Net 3.0 Framework has support for three major pieces, available for Vista, XP, and Server 2003:
Windows Work Flow (WF)
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
There is a fourth piece, Media Foundation, available only on Vista
A COM multi-media framework, designed to replace DirectShow, Windows Media SDK, DirectX media, etc.
Won’t be available on XP.
Basic tools (command line compilers etc) and Framework classes support these.
New, more productive, tools are coming with the Orcas release of Visual Studio, later this year.

5. Windows Work Flow (WF) Windows Work Flow is:
An execution engine for code-based activities
Essentially an attempt at simplifying organization of programs.
Executes activity blocks and sequences between blocks based on connectivity and control constructs, or based on events.
Runs in two modes:
Sequential is essentially a flow-chart execution engine
State is a state-machine execution engine
Discussion I’ve read indicates that it is oriented primarily toward implementing “Business Rules”.
Workflows are programmed in XAML (used to be called XOML in WF. The O stood for Object.

6. All diagrams from Chappell, IWPF

7. Windows Communication Foundation
Convergence of application programming models for communication, supporting:
Web Services (Asp Web Services)
Web Applications (Asp.Net)
Windows Services (NT Services)
Remoting (.Net Remoting)
Queuing (MSMQ)
Can be hosted in:
IIS
Windows Services
Windows Applications

8. WCF Services
Chappell (IWCF)

9. Windows Presentation Foundation
Convergence of presentation programming models, Supporting:
Desktop applications
WinForms, MFC, WTL, Win32
Web applications
Asp.Net
Document presentation
Word Documents

10. Chappell (IWPF)

11. Chappell (IWPF)

12. Elements of WPF Scalable Vector Graphics
It is not clear whether WPF is based on standard SVG or on Microsoft’s proprietary Vector Markup Language (VML)
eXtensible Application Markup Lanaguage (XAML)
A dilect of XML with tags defined for specific graphics (or other application) operations: <Rectangle Width="30" Height="10" Fill="HorizontalGradient Red Yellow" />
CodeBehind
Event handler code

13. Adapted from Chard (WPF)
Applications
Controls
Styling
Layout
Data
Content
Action
Presentation Framework
Adapted from Chard (WPF)
PresentationCore.dll - managed
MilCore.dll – unmanaged composition
DirectX – a COM technology
Driver

14. Features Programming Interop with Forms
Declarative programming with XAML
Imperative programming with classes from System.Windows namespace
Interop with Forms
Host Forms controls on WPF pages
Host WPF controls on Forms

15. WPF Support for Presentation
Presentation mode:
Window: basic display windows
NavigationWindow: hyperlinked navigation
Layout:
DockPanel: Flow layout like a web page
StackPanel: Linear layout, ala toolbars
Grid: Absolute positioning on grid
Canvas: Free positioned layout
Controls:
All the usual plus new addtions
Supports custom controls

16. Styles Cascading Style Sheets Style element class: Inline styles:
It is not clear that WPF directly supports CSS
WPF does have DataTemplate and ControlTemplate classes that support styling data layouts and controls.
Style element class:
<style>…</style>
Inline styles:
<Button style=“{StaticResource ButtonStyle}”>a title</Button>

17. Documents Typography: Documents OpenType fonts ClearType Glyphs
FixedDocument class
Layout is fixed for rendering in any window or printer, does not flow
FlowDocument class
Uses browser flow model
Lots of control over the details of how that is done through properties

18. Media Images Video <Image width=“200” Source=“C:\temp\us.jpg” />
Can have metadata
Can be painted onto 3D canvases
Video
<MediaElement Source=“c:\temp\myVid.wmv” />
Handles wmv, mpeg, avi, wav, …

19. Audio & Video Formats: WMV, MPEG, Some AVIs
Ronnie Saurenmann (WPF)
<Border Width="400"
BorderBrush="Green"
BorderThickness="9">
<StackPanel>
<MediaElement Source="aero.wmv" />
<Button>Hello</Button>
</StackPanel>
</Border>
WPF supports the following audio/video formats.
Windows Media Video (.wmv) files are Advanced Systems Format (.asf) files that include audio, video, or both compressed with Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Windows Media Video (WMV) codecs.
MPEG (pronounced M-peg), which stands for Moving Picture Experts Group, is the name of family of standards used for coding audio-visual information (e.g., movies, video, music) in a digital compressed format. The major advantage of MPEG compared to other video and audio coding formats is that MPEG files are much smaller for the same quality. This is because MPEG uses very sophisticated compression techniques.
AVI, an acronym for Audio Video Interleave, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992, as part of the Video for Windows technology. AVI files contain both audio and video data in a standard container that allows simultaneous playback.
Formats: WMV, MPEG, Some AVIs
Can be synchronized with animations
Windows Media Foundation used to instantiate playback machinery into a DirectShow graph 19

20. 2D Graphics Support for primitives:
Line, Ellipse, Rectangle, Polygon, Polyline, Path
Support for defining regions:
LineGeometry, RectangleGeometry, …

21. 2D Graphics, 3D Graphics, Imaging
Ronnie Saurenmann (WPF)
2D Graphics
3D Graphics
Imaging
Let’s look at the WPF support for 2D and 3D graphics, and imaging.
Graphics - The following areas comprise the Windows Presentation Foundation graphic APIs.
Brushes. Use the Brush classes to paint areas with solid colors, patterns, images, and drawings.
Shapes. Use Shape classes to create and render 2-D geometric shapes.
Imaging. Use the imaging classes to encode, manipulate, and displays bitmaps, and to apply special effects such as glow and blur to images and vectors.
Geometries. Geometries, like shape objects, represent 2-D shapes. Geometries are more versatile than shape objects, in that they can be used to define curves, clipping regions, and hit-testing areas. Unlike shape objects, geometries do not participate in the layout system and cannot draw themselves to the screen. They can be rendered using other framework elements, controls, visuals, or brushes.
Transformations. Use the Transform classes to rotate, translate, scale, and apply other 2-D effects to geometries, visuals, brushes, framework elements, and controls.
Animations. Use the animation and timing APIs to make objects change color, move, spin, grow, shrink, and more.
Visuals. Visual objects are the building blocks of the Windows Presentation Foundation rendering system. The visual layer is the Windows Presentation Foundation equivalent to GDI. All Windows Presentation Foundation objects use visuals to draw to the screen.
3-D Graphics - The System.Windows.Media.Media3D namespace defines 3-D graphics primitives, transformations, and animations that can be used to create 3-D controls and graphics.
Imaging Platform Basics
Not the mainstream WPF usage, but critical for a class of customers
Industrial strength, used extensively in the Windows Vista Shell
3rd party extensible bitmap CODEC architecture
Microsoft-supplied CODECs for JPEG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, BMP, ICO
Streams and NT Sections
Thumbnails in the Windows Vista shell
“Mainline” encode / decode, explicit imaging operations, etc.
Access through managed and native code
Imaging engine in Windows Vista, can be used by Win32 21

22. 3D Graphics Viewport3D control Models Define shape, lighting, viewing
GeometryModel3D class
SpecularMaterial class
DiffuseMaterial class
DirectionalLight
AmbientLight
PerspectiveCamera
OrthographicCamera

23. Transformations RotateTransform ScaleTransform RenderTransform
Blur and glow effects

24. Animations Storyboard class
Defines element(s) to which animation applies, by name
Initial properties like size and position
Range of changes of those properties with duration settings (time between changes)

25. Combining Stuff Most of the WPF elements can be containers:
Can put an ellipse in a button
Graphics figures, controls, animations, … can be freely mixed and applied to each other.

26. Applications Desktop applications XAML Browser Applications (XBAPS)
Full trust
Rich, but familiar applications
XAML Browser Applications (XBAPS)
Lowered trust
Many operations are not allowed, e.g., access to local file system
May appear very like an equivalent desktop application
Most of the code is the same

27. End of Presenation