Chapter 9. WPF and IronPython
This chapter covers
- Introduction to .NET 3.0 and WPF
- WPF and XAML
- Controls and layout
- Loading and transforming XAML at runtime
- XPS documents and flow content
The .NET framework has been around for a while now—the first pre-beta release was in July 2000. You can see the major milestones in the life of the framework in figure 9.1.
The most prevalent installed version of .NET (and the minimum requirement for running IronPython) is version 2.0, which dates back to 2005. It includes dramatic improvements to the C# language (including support for generics), the runtime, and numerous class libraries.
.NET 3.0 and 3.5 build on the 2.0 version of the CLR. Although they add many new assemblies and improvements, they don’t include a new version of the CLR. .NET 3.0 is a standard part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and is available as an add-on for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Note
Most of .NET 3.0 hasn’t yet been ported to Mono. You can see the status of the Mono implementation, called Olive, at http://www.mono-project.com/Olive.
The four major components in .NET 3.0 are listed in table 9.1.
Table 9.1. The major new APIs of .NET 3.0
| Name |
Purpose |
|---|---|
| Windows Presentation Foundation |
A new user interface library |
| Windows Communications Foundation |
Library for working with web services |
| Windows Workflow Foundation |
For creating, managing, and working with workflows |
| Windows CardSpace |
For managing digital identities. |