Mastering Windows Presentation Foundation: Master the art of building modern desktop applications on Windows

Key Features

• Learn how to use the MVVM software architectural pattern and see the benefits of using it with Windows Presentation Fountain (WPF)
• Explore various ways to enhance efficiency through performance tuning and UI automation
• Obtain a deep understanding of data validation and understand various methods that suit different situations

Book Description

Windows Presentation Foundation is rich in possibilities when it comes to delivering an excellent user experience. This book will show you how to build professional-grade applications that look great and work smoothly.

We start by providing you with a foundation of knowledge to improve your workflow – this includes teaching you how to build the base layer of the application, which will support all that comes after it. We'll also cover the useful details of data binding. Next, we cover the user interface and show you how to get the most out of the built-in and custom WPF controls.

The final section of the book demonstrates ways to polish your applications, from adding practical animations and data validation to improving application performance. The book ends with a tutorial on how to deploy your applications and outlines potential ways to apply your new-found knowledge so you can put it to use right away.

What you will learn

• Use MVVM to improve workflow
• Create visually stunning user interfaces
• Perform data binds proficiently
• Implement advanced data validation
• Locate and resolve errors quickly
• Master practical animations
• Improve your applications' performance

About the Author

Sheridan Yuen is a Microsoft .NET MCTS and Oracle Java SCJP certified software developer, living in London, England. His passion for coding made him stand out from the crowd right from the start. From his second year onward at university, he was employed to be a teaching assistant for the first year student coding workshops and has since returned as a guest lecturer.

Among other prestigious positions, he was the primary software developer for the Ministry of Sound group for four years, working on their main music business application, responsible for creating their multi award winning albums. This application managed to increase its users' productivity by up to 80% in some cases.

In addition to this, he architected a unique ticket scanning application for their award winning nightclub, making it the first club in the world to introduce scanned ticket entry across all streams for their clients. Coming from a musical background and being a qualified audio engineer, with experience of record production and digital audio, this post was a perfect union.

He soon became a popular figure in the C# and WPF sections of the Stack Overflow, “question and answer” website, being awarded enough reputation by the community members to raise him to well within the top half percent of all users. While authoring this book and other projects have kept him away for some time, he is keen to return to continue to help new users to get to grips with WPF.

Table of Contents

1. A Smarter Way of Working with WPF
2. Debugging WPF Applications
3. Writing Custom Application Frameworks
4. Becoming Proficient with Data Binding
5. Using the Right Controls for the Job
6. Mastering Practical Animations
7. Creating Visually Appealing User Interfaces
8. Implementing Responsive Data Validation
9. Completing That Great User Experience
10. Improving Application Performance
11. Deploying Your Masterpiece Application
12. What Next?