Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Interview Preparation Guide

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the presentation subsystem feature of the .NET Framework 3.0. It is pre-installed in as a part of Windows Vista, It is also available for installation on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003. It supports the rich User Experiences (UX) that have been made possible by advances in hardware and technology since the GDI based UI architecture was initially designed in the 1980's.

XBAP stands for XAML Browser Application. XBAP allows for WPF applications to be used inside a browser. The .NET framework is required to be installed on the client system. Hosted applications run in a partial trust sandbox environment. They are not given full access to the computer's resources and not all of WPF functionality is available.

XAML is an extensible markup language based on XML. XAML can be thought of as a declarative script for creating .NET 3.0 UI. It is particularly used in WPF as a user interface markup language to define UI elements, data binding, eventing and other features. It is also used in Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), in which the workflows themselves can be defined in XAML code.

You can enumerate all the descendants of a visual object as follows :

[C#]

// Enumerate all the descendants of the visual object.
static public void EnumVisual(Visual myVisual)
{
for (int i = 0; i < VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(myVisual); i++)
{
// Retrieve child visual at specified index value.
Visual childVisual = (Visual)VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(myVisual, i);

// Do processing of the child visual object.

// Enumerate children of the child visual object.
EnumVisual(childVisual);
}
}

The typical reason for specifying a read-only dependency property is that these are the properties that is used to determine the state, but where the state is defined in a multitude of factors. A typical example for a read-only property is IsMouseHover

This example shows how to 'register' an attached property as read-only. You can use dependency properties on any 'DependencyObject' types.

[C#]
public static readonly DependencyProperty IsBubbleSourceProperty = DependencyProperty.RegisterReadOnly(
"IsBubbleSource",
typeof(Boolean),
typeof(AquariumObject),
new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(false, FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.AffectsRender)
);

Here is an example :

[C#]

public class MyStateControl : ButtonBase
{
public MyStateControl() : base() { }
public Boolean State
{
get { return (Boolean)this.GetValue(StateProperty); }
set { this.SetValue(StateProperty, value); }
}
public static readonly DependencyProperty StateProperty = DependencyProperty.Register(
"State", typeof(Boolean), typeof(MyStateControl),new PropertyMetadata(false));
}

The following example shows how you can set an attached property in code.

[C#]

DockPanel myDockPanel = new DockPanel();
CheckBox myCheckBox = new CheckBox();
myCheckBox.Content = "Hello";
myDockPanel.Children.Add(myCheckBox);
DockPanel.SetDock(myCheckBox, Dock.Top);

The following example shows an application definition file. The application definition file defines a resource section (a value for the Resources property). Resources defined at the application level can be accessed by all other pages that are part of the application. In this case, the resource is a declared style. Because a complete style that includes a control template can be lengthy, this example omits the control template that is defined within the ContentTemplate property setter of the style.

[XAML]
<Application.Resources>
<Style TargetType="Button" x:Key="GelButton" >
<Setter Property="Margin" Value="1,2,1,2"/>
<Setter Property="HorizontalAlignment" Value="Left"/>
<Setter Property="Template">
<Setter.Value>

...

</Setter.Value>
</Setter>
</Style>
</Application.Resources>

Two types of the documents supported by Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) are the Flow format and fixed Format document. Flow format document alters the content to fit the screen size while fixed format document present content irrespective of the screen size.

An object, which has its state locked down, so that it becomes unchangeable, is known as a freezable object. Such objects perform better. It is also safer if they are required to be shared between threads.