Does it perform drawing by itself, or uses the native UI components provided by Windows in any way?
WPF sort of uses native controls because WPF is the new native way to render controls in Windows - what you consider native is legacy win32, and basically slowly on the way to history.
MS did a lot of optimization in DirectX to allow WPF efficiently to render using the GPU. This is a new "native" interface that is also used to render the Vista upward AERO interface. WPF goes directly to a native layer that then does whatever it can in the GPU - including text rendering.
Now, the reall tricky part in your question is "native UI components provided by windows in ANY MEANS" - well, these low level functions are provided by Windows, so the answer is yes. Primitive drawing operations in a new API were added, but they were added specifically FOR WPF, which is now considered to be sort of the new "native windows presentation layer". MS is slowly moving away from the Win32 API towards WPF for generic presentations (Direct X etc. stays around - WPF is way too generic to be usable for example for high performance first person shooters). As such, given WPF is the new "native components layer", the question gets really tricky to answer ;)
In WPF you can skin all of the controls in whatever way you please by overriding the templates. You absolutely can't do this with win32 controls, so therefore it can't use them.
It uses DirectX 9 to perform all its drawing. It doesn't use WinForms controls
Related
We were able to use automation tool and it was able to identify html objects on Winforms while on WPF it does not since it is rendered as an image.
My main question is what does Winform CEFSharp uses to render and why WPF not able to use a similar rendering mechanism?
Warning: it is a very generic answer. I briefly looked at CEF source (briefly - 3-5 minutes) and the rest are my guesses based on my own WPF/WinForms interop experiences. I've had quite a few. I also played a bit with early Chromium builds. However, all of that was a few years ago, so it may simply be out dated. Maybe Chromium has now first-class WPF support. I have not found any information about that, but if this really happened, I encourage you even stronger to follow the last paragraph.
--
I doubt that there is any reason behind this other than time-cost to implement -
either on CEF or Chromium project.
WinForms and WPF are totally different GUI frameworks, written in different eras, using different architectures, different rendering techniques, different platform features, etc. This is as different as it can be, down to the idea of a "Window" itself.
In WinForms, almost every control is a separate small window-like thing, has a system-wide handle, has a system-tracked region, etc. All controls render themselves almost directly by unmanaged win32 GDI+ functions.
In WPF they don't. In WPF there's only one handle per whole window, controls don't render themselves. Instead they have a definition of their "look" and the WPF renders them to the 'surface', which is then blitted/streamed (sorry, dont remember) to target device.
That's true that CEF uses different approaches. For WinForms they make heavy use of a 'browser component' taken directly from Chromium, for WPF they render to bitmap and show/update the bitmap periodically.
Why? My guess is that it's because Chromium already provided a COM/OCX/ActiveX/whatever component, and WinForms can use it almost directly, thanks to the everything-has-a-handle "feature" - if you can call it a feature - one of the goals and successes of WPF was to eliminate that.
However, I don't think that Chromium at that point of time provides any such component for WPF.
If it does not exist, then for WPF there are only two options - one could embed the WinForms component in WPF window through a special 'host' intermediate control, but that actually hits the performance and also has many problems when some advanced rendering features (like movie streaming) are used. Diagnosing and fixing them is complex, hard, and even unstable (crosshosted components behave very differently on different windows and .net versions, even on .net patches sometimes change them, it can work one one, and freeze on other, hang and render as black on next and cause a blue-screen on another)
Other option for WPF is to use the "offscreen" mode. Chromium can render to a bitmap, so why not. Render to bitmap, and display that. Simple. Quick. No problems.
So, I'd say, it all boils down to a famous quote from Eric Lippert:
The question is "why does [snip] not have this feature?" The answer to that question is always the same. Features are unimplemented by default; [snip] does not have that feature because no one designed, implemented and shipped the feature to customers.
It's great we can at least display Chromium in WPF apps. If you think it can be done better and that it's worth doing, it's open source, feel free to implement it - if not in CEF, then in Chromium itself.
Actually, I have started learning WPF. I have few months of experience in developing Windows Forms applications. Though, I am getting the meaning of a WPF application, but still I am not able to differentiate the difference between two, on the basis of their output.
With reference to this Link: Device Independent Pixel (DPI), I have learnt that whenever the operating system render a WPF application it manages its size itself according to its resolution.
So to check this difference, I created two demo applications in both frameworks and changed the resolutions as well.. but I didn't find any satisfactory difference. Which could explain it is a WPF application and this one is a Windows Forms application.
It does not create any scroll bar on maximizing and doesn't make the button big or small on changing the resolution.
I have read somewhere that Visual Studio 2010 has been rewritten in WPF. But in my experimentation I saw that, (on changing the resolution of desktop) it makes text and graphics unreadable/blurry. On re-sizing its window, everything was getting hidden except the menu-bar. And the menu-bar content was shifting its positioning, e.g. far right one menu items were shifting down. Why?
Kindly make me correct & explain a little more bit (this display issue) too.
To answer this question properly I should write a whole chapter, but I keep it short:
There are three major differences between a WPF application and a Windows Forms application: Layout, Render, Presentation
Layout:
WPF layout system provides a greater flexibility in arranging the elements on the fly. It is based on the Element Bounding Box (as opposed to precise pixels in WinForms) and Measure and Arrange mechanics (as opposed to UpdateLayout in WinForms) that automatically and dynamically finds the place for each element without any need for a manual update.
Basically, all elements bounding box are measured first and then are arranged using multiple methods such as Measure, MeasureCore, ArrangeCore, MeasureOverride, etc.
Unlike WinForms, where you have a pixel-perfect size for everything, in WPF you have much more options and complexity such as Width, ActualWidth and DesiredSize (and even Transforms as LayoutTransform) for the same element.
This is why
As you type in a WPF TextBox, its width might increase and push other elements away or even push some elements into a new row (like the menu bar you've observed)
As the size of a control changes, it affects the available space for other elements. So their size and location might change accordingly.
When the window is being re-sized or resolution is changed, it immediately updates the layout and changes the size of elements in order to fill or fit the space. Here you'll find out more about Layouts.
using Margin alone (without using layout capabilities) to arrange elements is not the best idea in WPF. As it's the WinForms mindset which isn't much helpful while developing WPF.
Render:
WPF uses double data type for Layout (as opposed to pixel-perfect WinForms) and therefore you might see the edges blurry sometimes, but it can be avoided with SnapToDevicePixels=true.
WPF is much more efficient in utilizing the GPU to render a GUI. Try a grid of 30x30 TextBoxes in a Windows Forms application and a WPF application. No matter how messy you write the WPF, it never blinks and it still runs much faster than Windows Forms. Even adding a handful of animations, visual effects and styles on them does not hurt your performance like in Windows Forms.
Remark: To avoid a speed decrease and blinking in a Windows Forms application, you should set DoubleBuffer of the form to "true".
You can use any Transform as RenderTransform to easily implement smooth zoom/rotate, or develop custom GPU-based shader effects, and much more in WPF. (I think everyone agrees that doing such things in WinForms is feasible but real pain and you most likely will give up and move to GDI+ or DX if not out of frustration then because of the bad performance.)
And the last and the most important:
Focus on presentation:
When develping WPF Applications you have to stop thinking in Windows Forms: No more UI events, accessing controls by their names and writing logic in code-behind and start to think in WPF: Binding, Commands, Resources, Styles, Templates, Converters, DependencyProperties and their callbacks.
The real power of WPF lies in separation of 'View' and 'Logic', Which can be achieved using the MVVM pattern.
It makes the most visually-complicated problems quite simple and easy to develop and easy to write Unit Tests for.
Once you got the hang of it, you will realize there's no limit in how you can present the data or show off an awesome GUI looks.
If you've planned to switch to WPF, you've made the right decision. Always stick to MVVM and AVOID CODE-BEHIND AT ALL COSTS! (i.e. unless you are doing a pure UI operation: do not write code in .xaml.cs files, do not access x:Name in cs files and avoid UI events.)
Windows Forms (WinForms) and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) are two different ways of building the user interface for your application. Windows Forms is the older technology and its controls are found in the System.Windows.Forms namespace. WPF is a newer technology and its controls are found in the System.Windows.Controls namespace.
WPF
Pros:
Powerful styling and skinning structure
Easy to create your own look and feel
Does support Windows Forms
The future technology for developing Windows Vista applications
The ability to reuse existing code
Highly advanced data binding possible
Cons:
Declarative vs. procedural code
Requires .NET Framework 3.0
Compared to Windows Forms, still in development phase
Requires Dx9 compatible video card for advanced graphics
Windows Forms
Pros:
Extensive documentation to be found on the Internet
Plenty of examples
Does support WPF
Cons:
How long will this be supported? (I've read somewhere that Microsoft is just developing WPF now, only maintenance for Windows Forms).
Design your own look and feel in an application is a lot of work.
I am very confused about WPF and Windows Forms. What is the usage of WPF over Windows Forms?
What is the usage of WPF?
WPF is a new platform for developing applications for Windows (and for browsers). WPF is not necessarily there to replace Windows Forms. With WPF, it is easier to add 3D, video, and animations to your application. Because it is XAML based, it is also easy to bind to XML data, for example, data from a webservice, and dynamically load it as content.
WPF also, in my opinion, better seperates the UI programming from the business logic. It is easier to have an advanced WPF designer build your UI with a tool like Expression Blend, and yourself as a programmer, focus more on the back-end. In that way, it is more like having an HTML and CSS frontender creating a slick design for your site, while you work on the back-end.
Windows Forms has (as for now) more third-party controls available though, and if you don't really have a need for the stuff that WPF brings, then you certainly don't have to switch to WPF.
Have you seen WPF or WinForms, choose wisely ?
In short, WPF is the next UI platform for Microsoft Windows. It learns a lot of lessons from previous technologies, but the risk is immaturity of tooling and third-party components.
One benefit is the separation of concerns. You can build your application without worrying too much about UI stuff like layout, colours, fonts, etc. Then you can pass it to a designer who can make it look amazing (hopefully) without needing to understand code (using Blend or some other tool).
From a purely pragmatic point of view, my choice of which framework to employ is often down to which third-party controls I need to use (although you can use a WPF control in a WinForms app, for example - using hosting controls).
One more thing I like about WPF is that the core graphics processing has been shifted from GDI+ to DirectX. That makes a huge performance benefit when you are working on 3D or heavy grid/time series plotters as it tries to consume your GPU (graphical) resources rather than CPU.
I am programming simple Windows apps. I don't need DB support. Why would I use WPF instead of WinForms?
One obvious answer is that WPF offers a richer user experience than WinForms, allowing for animations (even 3D) in the user interface, for example.
From a development perspective, it goes a long way to enforce the separation of the User Interface (in the XAML) from the business logic (in VB.NET or C#), which is always a good thing.
A Google search for "WPF vs WinForms" brings up lots of pages that discuss this issue. I won't repeat all their findings here, but this page raises some interesting points:
Databinding in WPF is superior to what Windows Forms offers.
UI and C# business logic can be cleanly separated in WPF
Storyboard
Data/control templates – a much cleaner way than anything Windows
Forms can offer.
Styles – cool and simple. Its so easy to style all your buttons in an
application to have the same look and
feel.
Even if the VS designer breaks, its easy to code XAML.
UI virtualization – I’ve got grids with 100K rows, ticking off a moving
market. Performance would be dreadful
if it wasn’t for UI visualization
which come for free.
3D support.
Nothing scientific but, UI development feels quicker in WPF –
maybe its just because a WPF
application looks cooler at the end of
an iteration, or maybe its because
development really is quicker.
I can add a User Experience engineer to my team, and with no C#
knowledge he can work magic in
Expression Blend and give the
front-office trading application a
makeover that is guaranteed to win
over the business users.
WPF is the current platform for developing Windows desktop applications. It is a modern, advanced, hardware accelerated framework for developing applications that maintain separation of concerns. It supports advanced rendering of 2D vector and 3D graphics, providing an immense range of capabilities for building rich, interactive, and quality user interfaces.
WinForms, on the other hand, provides a basic platform for developing "classic" Windows apps with your standard look and feel using standard controls. It does not offer the rich, hardware accelerated, vector 2D and 3D capabilities that WPF offers. WinForms applications tend to have much greater coupling between application behavior and UI (view), which presents a less flexible platform upon which to develop applications.
As for which one you choose, it entirely depends on your needs. If you need vector graphics, 3D rendering, the ability to create rich, interactive, animated, modern user interfaces, and/or wish to maintain separation of concerns, WPF is definitely the right choice. If you need none of that, and just need to create a simple UI that solves a simple problem, WinForms will meet your needs just fine.
To learn.
To have greater (i.e. any) control over the appearance of your program
To benefit from easier data binding, triggers, styles
(I don't see what DB support has got to do with it)
WPF can utilize hardware acceleration to some degree, but that is expected to improve over time.
Also, because of XAML, you have more options for "doing stuff", declarative vs. programmatic, or a mixture of both.
Microsoft no longer does active development on WinForms, they are strongly pushing WPF, and for good reason.
WPF allows for much easier "resolution agnostic" designing. To achieve that in WinForms, it is a lot more work.
The MVVM pattern was already mentioned in one of the comments, this allows one to do real unit testing vs. GUI-based testing on your code, that is a big win, in my experience.
Nobody mentioned about better testing capabilities of the WPF applications (if they are written in the correct way, for example based on the MVVM pattern).
A
Anywhere Execution due to XAML.
Can be used as WinApp, WebApp, Mobile.
Whereas WindowsForm Internal UI representation is in C#.
B
Binding -->Simple object to object data transfer.
C
Common look and feel(Styles) -->can define look and feel styles commonly and use it for bunch of controls.
D
Directive Programming -->Binding objects in XAML.
E
Expression blend and Animation-->WPF uses DirectX, and DirectX can be used for animation.
F
Faster Execution(Hardware Rendering)
WPF internally uses DirectX (Hardware rendering) while Winform internally uses GDI (mostly uses Software rendering).
There are two ways by which a computer renders display on monitor.
1) (CPU) Software rendering -->In case of CPU rendering ,the CPU drives the whole logic of rendering display on monitor.CPU also does other operations like running applications,performing memory management,running OS. So on top of it its extra load to display things on monitor.
2)(GPU) Hardware rendering -->Its Specialized kinda processor, specifically meant for rendering and display faster on monitor.
Now in WPF, this rendering is further optimised in
>Tier 0 mode (Software rendering) uses DirectX7 internally,
>Tier 1 mode (Partial Hardware rendering) uses DirectX7 to DirectX9 internally,
>Tier 2 mode (Hardware rendering) uses DirectX9 internally.
G
Graphic Independence (DIP) -->Means resolution independence
Resolution --> Total number of pixels that fits into screen/monitor
Pixel --> Simple dot on screen.
Windows form uses pixels as a measurement unit, so when pixel changes then win forms has to adjust itself that means we have to write logic for it.
But WPF does not use pixels as a measurement unit but uses DIP(Device independent pixels)
1 DIP = 1/96th of the inch.
At last Testing --> Better unit testing with use of MVVM pattern.
If you want to have a rich user interface like the image posted in your previous question, I'd recommend going with WPF. Aside from making it easier to create a nice-looking application, it's also the technology Microsoft will push in the future. There's almost no new development for Winforms.
The single most important difference between WinForms and WPF is the fact that while WinForms is simply a layer on top of the standard Windows controls (e.g. a TextBox), WPF is built from scratch and doesn't rely on standard Windows controls in almost all situations.
A great example of this is a button with an image and text on it. This is not a standard Windows control, so WinForms doesn't offer you this possibility out of the box. Instead, you will have to draw the image yourself, implement your own button that supports images or use a 3rd party control. With WPF, a button can contain anything because it's essentially a border with content and various states (e.g. untouched, hovered, pressed).
check this article it will help you:
https://www.wpf-tutorial.com/about-wpf/wpf-vs-winforms/#:~:text=The%20single%20most%20important%20difference,controls%20in%20almost%20all%20situations.
I just installed visio, and the installer almost seemed like it was built in flash.
The buttons kinda glowed when I hovered over them, and when I clicked on 'continue' the form phased out in a cool way.
I'm assuming it was built in WPF.
Anyhow, so are WPF more flash-like (visually speaking).
Do they have new properties where you can make forms phase out nicely/smoothly compared to winforms?
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft. However, I don't work on Visio, WPF, CLR or Silverlight team. So, the following is my personal take on these technologies. If you want to quote me, don't do it implying it's the official Microsoft position. :-))
Update: Anything I say below about Flash/Flex/AIR might be wrong, as I have not worked with these technologies and what I know about them is based on what I read on the intertubes. :-) If you notice anything wrong, just shout in the comment and I'll correct it.
To the best of my knowledge, the Visio installer is not built with WPF. It's all unmanaged code; it's just people took a lot of care to make it really polished.
WPF is the new UI platform for building standalone applications for the Windows OS. It supports a declarative UI language - XAML, and related CLR types to program against. WPF is a different platform than WinForms, although it is possible to build applications that mix UI built with both. WPF supports a lot of things that WinForms does not, like bitmap effects, animations, control styling and so on and exposes them both in XAML or through code. Also, WPF relies heavily on vector graphics, as opposed to the pixel graphics in WinForms. In short, WPF is quite powerfull and allows building very snazzy UI. (Don't take my word for it, though, as I am biased; go check around for what people are saying about it or buiding with it. :-))
WPF and WinForms do not compete with Flash/Flex. WPF and WinForms are both UI frameworks for building standalone client applications. As far as I know, Flash/Flex are frameworks for building rich internet applications - RIA (though lately people started interpreting this abbreviation as rich interactive applications).
Adobe did come up with AIR about half a year (or maybe a year) ago, which allows building standalone client applications, so you could say that Adobe is trying to position Flash/Flex/AIR to compete with WPF. Of course, that's my take on it and I doubt Adobe's official positiong is anything like that.
If you want to compare particular MS technnologies with Flash/Flex, take a look at Silverlight - it's the MS RIA platform.
Silverlight is related to WPF in the sense that they share XAML and the corresponding CLR types. Silverlight supports only a subset of what WPF offers, though, as it is not targeting Windows OS only and thus is limited by the fact that it has to be portable.
Quick update to reflect the changes in the year since I've written the answer :-)
With Silverlight 3 shipped, SL and WPF are getting even closer and sharing bigger set of supported features. In addition, most of the new XAML controls are built for platform at the same time. Thus, SL/WPF are getting to a point of singularity...
Also, SL 3 supports out-of-browser applications. In that sense, SL is not only starting to compete with Flash/Flex, but it is also encroaching on AIR's turf.
And no, I still don't work on the WPF or Silverlight team. :-)
WPF is being used as a replacement for WinForms, and as a competitor to Flash in the form of Silverlight. WPF consists of an entirely new object model that sits on top of DirectX (at least the desktop version). You can create WPF windows, controls, etc, entirely using C# or another .Net language just like you can render WinForms. However, Microsoft has also created a markup language called XAML (eXensible Application Markup Language). Nodes in an XAML document (XML) map to objects in a similar fashion to the way ASP.Net maps to web controls. XAML typically exists in a .Net project alongside a code-behind style C# file (or VB.Net or whatever). The C# file interacts with the objects generated by the XAML. This is fairly consistent with the "graphics via markup, logic via code" model that Microsoft and others are pushing.
One of the overlooked features when discussing WPF is the completely awesome data-binding that Microsoft wrote for WPF. The new data binding framework is a quantum leap beyond Windows Forms 2.0 data-binding. Microsoft added a couple of new interfaces that make it much easier to make an object or collection emit data-biding events properly. They also provided a very rich set of data-binding classes. You can bind anything to just about anything else. You can bind one-way data to control, control to data, two-way control to data and back, control to control, etc.
Back on the graphics side of the house, WPF makes it fairly easy to make an existing control look like anything. WP lets you compose your own template for what a class of buttons should look like, or one button, or all buttons. Or radio buttons. Or labels. You get my drift. Imagine if CSS included the ability to define what an input button would look like using other HTML controls.
They also provide a number of layout controls. You can continue to use exact positioning like in WinForms, or you can leverage of variety of techniques to make your window act more like a web page that grows and shrinks with resizing, etc.
The downsides: It is too easy to create spectacular effects that crawl on slower machines. Some of the graphics do not take advantage of hardware of graphics cards, though Microsoft has incrementally improved support for this. I believe when 3.0 first came out drop shadows were rendered purely using software. I think 3.5 or 3.5 SP1 changed it so that WPF would utilize graphics hardware for the task. Microsoft has said they will continue to enhance WPF in this fashion.
WPF is .Net 3.0 and above, which runs on XP SP2, Vista, and Servers 03 & 08. So don't plan on deploying WPF to a customer with Win2k desktops.
Summary: If you are doing desktop programming in .Net, you should be doing it in WPF unless you are targeting Win2k. You can avoid the downsides of WPF, and there are many upsides. Microsoft will probably throw away WinForms in some future release, or at very least you will stop seeing new features, etc.
As far as Silverlight goes, the betas for SL 2.0 look good. I think that Silverlight will require some wide-spread adoption. Microsoft has already tried to get this going. The NBC Olypmics site used Silverlight, and Major League Baseball uses it for its MLB.tv product. As soon as Silverlight gets a good install base I think you will see the Microsoft side of the development world starting swinging away from Flash and to Silverlight.
Edit after using Silverlight 3 and MVVM:
I have moved away from WPF and am doing a lot of Silverlight 3 development. But I think my comments here will still apply to the WPF developer.
I have been using the MVVM pattern in my app (think MVC with a twist). The Microsoft Patterns and Practices team has released a set of libraries known as Prism that supports various aspects of MVVM. There are WPF and Silverlight versions. Take a look at MVVM and Prism if you are going to be doing WPF or Silverlight development.
You can do a lot of flash w/ Winforms, or with custom components. But if you want out-of-the-box bang-whizz availability, WPF is the way to go.
Yeah, I think the intention is to be flash-like, it seems to me that MS has set its sights on taking down Adobe.
The way I see it: WPF is to Flash as WinForms is to Flex. WPF has more emphasis on vectors and states than on programming.