Introduction
When Microsoft first introduced Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) in 2006, it represented a true discovery in application design and development. WPF allowed developers to make intuitive User Experiences (UX) for both standalone and browser-based applications. With simplified understanding of routed events in WPF, the event of complex GUI applications with separate UI and business logic has got simplified and provided a regular programming model. shortly after WPF’s first release, Infragistics released NetAdvantage for WPF 7.1 which provided developers with all the tools they needed to form more modern, mission critical line of business applications using WPF. Since WPF was first launched as a part of the .NET Framework 3.0 in 2006, it’s seen four major revisions since then. First with the discharge of .NET 3.5 in 2007, then .NET 3.5 SP1 in 2008, followed by .NET 4.0 in 2010, with the last major update being .NET 4.5 in 2012
What is WPF?
WPF is a rich UI framework which is employed by developers to create Windows desktop applications. It comes with built-in support for graphics, resources, data binding and far other. It makes use of Extensible terminology to define views and it does it during a declarative way.
The Roadmap for WPF
The roadmap below communicates priorities for evolving and increasing the scope of WPF for .NET Core through 2021 and into 2022. it’ll still evolve supported market changes and customer feedback, so please note that the plans outlined here don’t seem to be exhaustive or guaranteed.
Enterprises, ISVs, and Microsoft Partners have made the technology central to their business, building amazing vertical solutions and mission critical applications for his or her customers. WPF has amassed an obsessive, vibrant, community that uses it to form data-centric desktop business applications on Windows.
After almost three years of silence, the announcement of a replacement WPF roadmap provides real assurance to enterprises and developers alike. For those doubting whether their applications are built on ‘legacy’ technology, the confirmation that WPF features a future provides real peace of mind and confidence going forward with their productions. the discharge of the WPF roadmap, and Infragistics continued commitment to WPF, means businesses can arrange to the technology and expect updates and investment going forward.
Microsoft Roadmap For 2021
In the recent past, the Microsoft has come up with a roadmap for WPF in 2021 and it’s stating equality in terms of performance and performance compared to .NET Framework and the goals for the identical are set with the discharge of .NET Code 3.0. The roadmap has plans which special in work to be done so on ensure all the components are made available. For the identical, they’re acting on to validate the pull requests from the community and merge it.
Areas of Platform investment for WPF
Based on a survey Microsoft conducted at the build conference earlier this year, UserVoice suggestions, and interviews with an oversized number of WPF developers across a spread of market segments over the past few months, we’ve prioritized the subsequent areas for future investments to create to a WPF a much better platform.
Performance:
While WPF is actively being employed to create large-scale, high-performance applications like Visual Studio and Blend, further improving the performance of the platform supported customer feedback could be a priority for us. Some key scenarios we are looking to optimize during this context are application startup, scrolling and virtualization performance of Items Controls.
A recurrent complaint about WPF has been that it can be frustratingly slow. Microsoft have therefore announced their plans to enhance performance in
the following areas:
• Startup
• Scrolling
• Virtualization performance of Items Controls
DirectX interoperability:
The first scenario of interest here is to form it seamless for WPF applications to interoperate with newer versions of DirectX. The roadmap includes updates and enhancements to WPF’s interoperability with the varied DirectX APIs. Despite being a platform for creating rich UIs, calling DirectX APIs is usually surprisingly complicated. Furthermore, much of DirectX has advanced in recent years and WPF has not preserved. Microsoft is addressing this in its coming updates. As desktop applications become ever more complicated and want to be able to operate with modern video, streaming, and 3D images, WPF will need to work more effectively with DirectX. The roadmap promises this may happen.
Tooling:
We will continue to co-evolve WPF technologies alongside new platforms such as .NET/WINRT. However, understanding important tools for .NET developers is an essential factor for development.
Investments in a number of these areas might introduce dependencies on a specific OS version and/or are compatible risks. For these cases, the features will light support the host OS and/or might require you to opt in to use the feature.
When the WPF team began their research with developers to seek out out ways of improving the platform, the requirement for brand spanking new tools was consistently reported as a top request. As a result, the team will be refining and advancing tools for:
• Visual diagnostics – tools to assist debug apps in a verylive visual tree
• Timeline tools – to assist developers troubleshoot problems with their builds and improve performance
• Blend improvements – Blend for Visual Studio 2015 will help developers makesleeker, smoother UIs.
Supporting modern hardware:
After launch of WPF in 2006 user’s way of using IT has changed Dramatically; enterprises and individuals interact with a much vast range of hardware at work. and yes, it is true that mobile phones and tablet phones’ sales are incresing and desktops and laptops remain the primary means of carrying out ‘heavy weight’ and intensive tasks such as roles which involve analyzing excel data across multiple screens.
What is the future of WPF?
Microsoft will never admit that WPF demand is diminishing even though there are complexities. It is consistently focusing on certain parameters to improve the standard of WPF.
Current progress on WPF
Let’s first address a typical question regarding support: WPF could be a quintessential a part of the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework is defined as a component of the software, rather than an independent product. The support for .NET Framework is driven by the support life cycle all policy of the Windows OS. Extended support for the present recommended version of .NET (4.5.2) on Windows 8.1 is out there till 2023. we’ll still fix security issues and bugs reported by customers that impact an oversized cross-section of our WPF customers.
Improving WPF quality
The blog post announced plans for the longer term, as well as publicizing variety of fixes to the platform, including:
Some recent fixes in WPF which may be available in .NET Framework 4.6: –
– System.Windows.Input.Cursor is now support multi-image cursor
– Now it also Support for transparent child windows.
– Now we can use double tap gesture recognition by using common threshold
from registry
– In WPF Textbox control they improved text selection through double tapping.
– For the WPF Combo Box they Improved reliability of stylus input.
Tooling improvements and Visual diagnostics
Tooling for WPF was a top customer request revealed during the surveys. The 1 request from the surveys and 2 ideas on XAML Tools User Voice was the requirement for an UI debugger for WPF applications. We are super excited to announce that we are building a full suite of debugging tools for WPF apps that enable you to examine the live visual tree and modify the properties of the weather while debugging. we are going to even enable you to persist these changes back to your source.
Timeline tool
An oft repeated request from our customers and therefore the #4 request from the survey was better performance diagnostics tools for WPF. We are within the process of building a spanking new diagnostics tool for WPF applications which will enable you to troubleshoot problems like slow application startup, poor frame rate and other common performance issues. Combined with the already available Memory usage and CPU usage tools, we’ll provide you with a whole toolset right within Visual Studio to create fast and fluid WPF applications.
Blend improvements
Blend for Visual Studio 2015 has been redesigned to stay the well-liked tool for creating beautiful user interfaces for XAML apps. Blend encompasses a sleek New Look per Visual Studio to enhance the workflow between the 2 products. additionally, the new Blend relies on the identical technology as Visual Studio (including WPF!) to enhance shortcomings that Blend previously had, including a much better solution explorer and source control support. More importantly, XAML IntelliSense and basic debugging capabilities are now available in Blend. one amongst the first drivers for this investment was the support for asynchronous solution load and best at school version control that we could now provide for giant WPF solutions that are common in enterprises.
The WPF roadmap to the Visual Diagnostics and Timeline tool features doesn’t seem to be currently available in Visual Studio 2015 Preview and team is trying hard to induce it out as soon as possible. This is often just a sneak peek at the improvements that we are any time prepared to disclose for now. Stay tuned for more exciting news within the near future!
Conclusion
In this blog, we went over the WPF roadmap in detail. Some experts believe WPF will not sustain because of its complexity in style and overall cumbersomeness, which is becoming more apparent when compared to competing technologies. Converting enormously intricate nested styles with crazy bindings in visual trees is tricky. Adhering to WPF might be a challenge when you have a large project created using WPF and requires transformation.
Author Bio:
Technocrat and entrepreneur of a reputed Office 365 Addin Development Company with years of experience in building large scale enterprise web, cloud and mobile applications using latest technologies like ASP.NET, CORE, .NET MVC, Angular and Blockchain. Keen interest in addressing business problems using latest technologies and help organization to achieve goals.
