I get a reassuringly high number of hits on my WPF blog items, so I guess they're proving useful to a few people out there. So it just occurred to me that I should maybe include a link here in my blog to a couple of WPF articles that I've written recently that are published over on our devCity site that might be of interest to newcomers to WPF.
The first one is an introduction to using FlowDocuments in WPF.
When WPF first came on the scene, one of the features that got a lot of air time was the display of documents. Leading edge projects like the NY Times Reader and the British Library manuscript display raised a lot of awareness of the possibilities. Strangely though, since VS 2008 shipped there doesn't seem to have been a lot of mention of this part of the package. So I thought I'd take a look at how easy (or not) document handling really is in WPF
If you look at it, you'll see that it's Part 1 of what will be at least a two part series, maybe more. Part 2 is written (in my head) and just needs the time to be put down over there on devCity. Hopefully it will be done no later than next month.
(Oh and if you were hoping the examples will stand comparison to the NYT or British Library you'll probably be in for a disappointment, but the articles will enable you to harness the technology at an easy level.)
This week I published an article on something I've been wanting to write about for a while. Using WPF Controls in Windows Forms.
Whenever I see a question along the lines of "How can I include an image alongside each item in a list of items or use more than one font, or use a mix of background colors?" I usually find myself muttering "WPF!". This is a lot more sociable and positive than many of the things I mutter as I sit here each day, but finally I've realised that I need to do something about it.
The result is this article, which works through the steps needed to harness the rich UI features of WPF to the more familiar paradigm of Windows Forms.
The example used will show you how easy it can be to use a WPF control in a Windows Forms application and you can use this article as the stepping stone to creating your own. I've used a WPF ListBox as an example and even the unadventurous one I've created will give an idea of what can be done.
I picked a ListBox purposely as it gives me an opportunity to show how DataTemplates work too.
If you're interested in WPF and want to know more about either of these topics then I hope you'll check out my articles.