Chapter 1. The road to Avalon (WPF)
This chapter covers:
- A brief history of Windows drawing
- A briefer history of web UI design
- The underlying theory and purpose of WPF
- Some slightly intemperate comments about Microsoft’s marketing department
When the development team at Microsoft started to work on their brand-new framework for developing user interfaces, they used the code name Avalon. Avalon, in British mythology, is the island where King Arthur was taken under the care of the Lady of the Lake—until the time when he will return. The name conjures up images of user interfaces with glimmering water and misty backgrounds.
The marketing department at Microsoft, whose job it is to make technology appealing to the masses, decided that a better, more appealing name would be Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Ah, well. If the name isn’t particularly appealing, the technology certainly is.
Building user interfaces (UIs) is an often underappreciated facet of development. We, the authors of this book, have architected systems, large and small, dealing with everything from the database, security, and communication, all the way to the UI. It’s hard to say that one part of the infrastructure of a system is more or less important than any other. To the user, the interface is the application. It doesn’t matter how brilliantly you build stored procedures or how carefully you make sure your communications are secure. If the UI is poor, the application is poor. Period.