What software do i need to install to use WPF in VS2005

Question

Hi All, I have VS2005 and .net 3.5 installed on my machine I have heard of WPF and want to practice WPF solutions what other software should I install to write WPF program in VS2005 as it does not show any option for the same by default. Also any link for some cool stuff for beginners on WPF will be very helpful.

Please help

Answer 1

Vinay,

i don't think 2005 can do WPF and it definitely cannot handle .Net 3.5. VS2005 is 2.0.

Start with downloading VS2008 Express. It's free and will have the tools you need to get started with WPF.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/

Answer 2

Microsoft had release a extension called "VS 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WPF & WCF)" but it is not longer available and supported and Microsoft recommends that you upgrade to Visual Studio 2008.

Answer 3

I believe you'll need Visual Studio 2008 in order to do WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) development, however, there is a way to do some Silverlight (which is a subset of the "full" WPF technology) using Visual Studio 2005. See here:

Silverlight with Visual Studio .NET 2005

You'll need the .NET Framework 3.0 at least, as well as the Silverlight Developer Runtime

Don't forget, though, that you can effectively get a "free" version of Visual Studio (via the Visual Web Developer Express 2008 version) which, I think, will allow "full" WPF development.

Answer 4

Building the Perfect Developer Workstation for WPF by Tim Sneath should answer your question

Answer 5

You can get them from here: http://download.cnet.com/The-Visual-Studio-2005-extensions-for-NET-Framework-3-0-WCF-WPF-November-2006-CTP/3000-10250_4-10727672.html.

This was the last version Microsoft released before telling everyone to go with VS2008. If you can't do VS2008, this is an ok solution. We used it for a year and a half and have production UIs running based on it. The problems are that the designer is basically non-existent (so be ready to code XAML by hand), it can be a bit slow, and there's some bugs.

Re: 3.5, VS 2005 is incapable of handling 3.5 projects, linq, etc. If you really want, you can work outside of VS and just use msbuild 3.5. An interesting fact: .Net 3.5 replaces, among some libraries, the PresentationFramework assembly. The new version of this assembly includes additional methods and method signatures that are not included in .Net 3.0. This means that these new 3.5 methods will be accessible in VS2005.