Developing Windows Client Applications
by Mike Snell, Lars Powers
Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Unleashed, Third Edition
- About This eBook
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents at a Glance
- Table of Contents
- About the Authors
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- We Want to Hear from You!
- Reader Services
- Introduction
- Part I: Introducing Visual Studio 2015
- Chapter 1. A Quick Tour of Visual Studio 2015
- Chapter 2. The Visual Studio IDE
- Chapter 3. The .NET Languages
- What’s New in C# 6.0 and VB 14
- Language Primer
- Language Features
- Infer a Variable’s Data Type Based on Assignment
- Create an Object and Initialize Its Values (Object Initializers)
- Define a Collection and Initialize Its Values
- Creating an Instance of a Nonexistent Class
- Add Methods to Existing Classes (Extension Methods)
- Add Business Logic to Generated Code (Partial Methods)
- Access and Query Data Using the .NET Languages
- Write Simple Unnamed Functions Within Your Code (Lambda Expressions)
- Splitting an Assembly Across Multiple Files
- Working with XML Directly Within Your Code (VB Only)
- Removing Unused Arguments from Event Handlers (VB Only)
- Creating an Automatically Implemented Property
- Dropping the Underscore in VB for Line Continuation
- Working with Dynamic Languages/Objects
- Covariance and Contravariance
- Asynchronous Programming
- The .NET Framework
- Summary
- Part II: An In-Depth Look at the IDE
- Chapter 4. Solutions and Projects
- Chapter 5. Browsers and Explorers
- Chapter 6. Introducing the Editors and Designers
- Part III: Working with the Visual Studio Tools
- Chapter 7. Working with Visual Studio’s Productivity Aids
- Chapter 8. Testing Code
- Chapter 9. Refactoring Code
- Chapter 10. Debugging Code
- Chapter 11. Deploying Code
- Chapter 12. Developing Applications in the Cloud with Windows Azure
- Chapter 13. Working with Databases
- Part IV: Extending Visual Studio
- Part V: Building Web Applications
- Chapter 17. Building Modern Websites with ASP.NET 5
- Chapter 18. Using JavaScript and Client-Side Frameworks
- Chapter 19. Building and Consuming Services with Web API and WCF
- Part VI: Building Windows Client Apps
- Chapter 20. Building Windows Forms Applications
- Chapter 21. Building WPF Applications
- Chapter 22. Developing Office Business Applications
- Part VII: Creating Mobile Apps
- Chapter 23. Developing Windows Store Applications
- Chapter 24. Creating Windows Phone Applications
- Chapter 25. Writing Cross-Platform Mobile Applications with Apache Cordova
- Index
- Code Snippets
Developing Windows Client Applications
There are two principal .NET technologies used to develop Windows client desktop applications: Windows Forms (WinForms) and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Both of these technologies are essentially a set of classes and user interface controls exposed by the .NET Framework that enable developers to quickly build out applications that are installed, and run, under the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Note
With Windows 8, Microsoft has introduced a third client application stack. These are so-called “modern UI” applications that run on top of the Windows runtime. Although we don’t cover building Windows client applications for the Windows runtime in this chapter, we do cover those tools and technologies in depth in Chapter 23, “Developing Windows Store Applications.”
WPF is unique when compared to the older Windows Forms technology because it uses a markup language called XAML to describe application objects, property values, and behavior. In this respect, it is similar to a web application that uses HTML to describe the various elements of a web page. WPF as a technology heavily leverages vector graphics and graphics hardware acceleration to display an application’s user interface.
Regardless of the type of client application you need to build, the process is much the same: both the WinForms designer and the WPF designer enable drag-and-drop development, and both have project templates available in Visual Studio.
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