WPF Beginner Tips

Question

I am starting out with WPF and am surprised at how completely different it is from anything I have done before, there is a lot to take in.

Can anyone recommend stuff that is worth knowing up front that will make life easier when it comes to developing a WPF app?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I'm not an expert or anything, but this couple of things are pretty important to know well in order to start coding "correctly" in WPF and not trying to force other GUI paradigms on the WPF model:

1. Use the Model-View-ViewModel pattern when designing your applications.
2. Use data binding wherever possible and design your classes in order to support it (observable collections, implement INotifyPropertyChanged).
3. Discover and understand how dependency properties work and how to implement your own properties correctly (check out the Framework Design Guidelines book, on the pattern section).
4. Develop an understanding about how controls are styled and how style templates can interact with data binding. I suggest KaXaml to do some testing.