wpf Documentation

1. Project Overview & Quickstart (dotnet/wpf) Copy Chapter

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a UI framework for building Windows desktop applications.

WPF supports a broad set of application development features, including an application model, resources, controls, graphics, layout, data binding and documents. WPF uses the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) to provide a declarative model for application programming.

WPF's rendering is vector-based, which enables applications to look great on high DPI monitors, as they can be infinitely scaled. WPF also includes a flexible hosting model, which makes it straightforward to host a video in a button, for example.

Visual Studio's designer, as well as Visual Studio Blend, make it easy to build WPF applications, with drag-and-drop and/or direct editing of XAML markup.

As of .NET 6.0, WPF supports ARM64.

See the WPF Roadmap to learn about project priorities, status and ship dates.

WinForms is another UI framework for building Windows desktop applications that is supported on .NET (7.0.x/6.0.x). WPF and WinForms applications only run on Windows. They are part of the Microsoft.NET.Sdk.WindowsDesktop SDK. You are recommended to use the most recent version of Visual Studio to develop WPF and WinForms applications for .NET.

To build the WPF repo and contribute features and fixes for .NET 8.0, Visual Studio 2022 Preview is required.

Getting started Copy Chapter

• .NET 6.0 SDK, .NET 7.0 SDK, .NET 8.0 SDK, .NET 9.0 SDK
• .NET Preview SDKs
• Getting started instructions
• Contributing guide
• Migrating .NET Framework WPF Apps to .NET Core

Status Copy Chapter

• We are currently developing WPF for .NET 10.

See the WPF roadmap to learn about the schedule for specific WPF components.

Test published at separate repo Tests and have limited coverage at this time. We will add more tests, however, it will be a progressive process.

The Visual Studio WPF designer is now available as part of Visual Studio 2019.

How to Engage, Contribute and Provide Feedback Copy Chapter

Some of the best ways to contribute are to try things out, file bugs, join in design conversations, and fix issues.

• This repo defines contributing guidelines and also follows the more general .NET Core contributing guide.
• If you have a question or have found a bug, file an issue.
• Use daily builds if you want to contribute and stay up to date with the team.

.NET Framework issues Copy Section

Issues with .NET Framework, including WPF, should be filed on VS developer community,
or Product Support.
They should not be filed on this repo.

Relationship to .NET Framework Copy Chapter

This code base is a fork of the WPF code in the .NET Framework. .NET Core 3.0 was released with a goal of WPF having parity with the .NET Framework version. Over time, the two implementations may diverge.

The Update on .NET Core 3.0 and .NET Framework 4.8 provides a good description of the forward-looking differences between .NET Core and .NET Framework.

This update states how going forward .NET Core is the future of .NET. and .NET Framework 4.8 will be the last major version of .NET Framework.

Code of Conduct Copy Chapter

This project uses the .NET Foundation Code of Conduct to define expected conduct in our community. Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported by contacting a project maintainer at [email protected].

Reporting security issues and security bugs Copy Chapter

Security issues and bugs should be reported privately, via email, to the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) [email protected]. You should receive a response within 24 hours. If for some reason you do not, please follow up via email to ensure we received your original message. Further information, including the MSRC PGP key, can be found in the Security TechCenter.

Also see info about related Microsoft .NET Core and ASP.NET Core Bug Bounty Program.

License Copy Chapter

.NET Core (including the WPF repo) is licensed under the MIT license.

.NET Foundation Copy Chapter

.NET Core WPF is a .NET Foundation project.

See the .NET home repo to find other .NET-related projects.

2. Official Technical Reference & Guides (dotnet/docs) Copy Chapter

.NET Docs

This repository contains the conceptual documentation for .NET. The .NET documentation site is built from multiple repositories:

• .NET docs
• ASP.NET Core docs
• .NET Desktop workloads docs
• .NET MAUI docs
• Entity Framework docs
• Community toolkit

API reference documentation is published from the following repositories:

• .NET API reference
• .NET MAUI API reference
• Android API reference
• Entity Framework 6/Core API reference
• Roslyn API reference
• Community toolkit API reference

These API reference doc repositories are public. Only some accept issues and pull requests. Others are pass-through repositories because API reference is generated directly from the /// in the product source. Some folders in dotnet-api-docs use the product repository as the source of truth.

The C# language specification documentation comes from the following two repositories:

• C# language design
• C# specification - draft

Our team's tasks are tracked in our project boards. You'll see monthly sprint projects, along with long-running projects for major documentation updates. The projects contain documentation issues across the repositories that build .NET docs. Issues are tracked in the relevant repositories. We have a large community using these resources. We make our best effort to respond to issues in a timely fashion. To create a new issue, click the "Open a documentation issue" button at the bottom of any of our published docs, or choose one of the available templates. The control at the bottom of each article automatically routes you to the correct repo and fills in some relevant information based on the article.

:purple_heart: Contribute Copy Chapter

We welcome contributions to help us improve and complete the .NET docs. This is a very large repo, covering a large area. If this is your first visit, see the Contributor guide for information on working with us. Look for issues labeled help wanted :label: for ideas to get started.

Before submitting a PR with 3rd party dependencies, see our policy on 3rd party dependencies.

We work to merge or close PRs in a timely fashion. We regularly review and approve PRs. We encourage contributors to respond to comments in a similar timely fashion. Many times, reviews identify small changes such as spelling or grammar issues, or word choice. Maintainers can accept those suggestions and merge the PR. In other situations, maintainers ask for more significant changes before a PR is ready to merge. We expect contributors to make those changes. Maintainers will help by answering questions or pointing to other resources, if needed.

We consider PRs to be abandoned when they've had no activity (either commits or discussion) in the past 30 days. Team members will close PRs that have been abandoned. Contributors can reopen and continue to work.

:bookmark_tabs: Code of conduct Copy Chapter

This project has adopted the code of conduct defined by the Contributor Covenant
to clarify expected behavior in our community. For more information, see the .NET Foundation: Code of Conduct.

:octocat: GitHub Action workflows Copy Chapter

• : Adds a comment to PRs that were not automated, but rather manually created that target the live branch.
• : Automatically approves and auto-merges PRs originating from the dependabbot[bot].
• : Creates a PR to generate the "What's new" article on the first of every month.
• : The current status for the entire repositories Markdown linter status.
• : Runs various Markdown verifications, beyond the linter, such as ensuring links and redirects are valid.
• : Builds the site for the PR in context, and verifies the build reporting either, success, warnings, or error.
• : Custom .NET build validation, locates code impacted by a PR, and builds.
• : Runs monthly, creating issues on projects that target .NET versions that are out of support.
• : Automatically updates the dependabot configuration weekly, but only if required.
• : Automatically synchronizes issues with Quest (Azure DevOps).
• : Manual bulk import of issues into Quest (Azure DevOps).