Talk:Windows Presentation Foundation

History section missing
When was WPF first conceived? When first released? Version history? &mdash; Timwi (talk) 16:40, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Not only is the article poorly written, it is yet another one written in the present tense with no history at all. This, like far too many articles, guarantees that in a few short years the article will have to be re-written. Every computer technology has a rise, a peak use, and a decline. None of the first part is examined here.

Mydogtrouble (talk) 12:06, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Plain language description of what it is
So I've been wondering for a while what exactly this is. This article isn't currently very useful for finding out what people are usually referring to when they talk about "WPF applications." But I just ran into a wonderfully clarifying remark on Ars Technica that helped a lot: "In 2006, Microsoft released WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), a .NET library for producing GUI applications." From this article. I'm sure this is to some degree an over-simplification, so I wanted to put it here to hear the corrections. But in the interests of making technical articles understandable, it'd really help if I could put something this concrete into the first paragraph of the lead. Maybe it's not always just a .NET GUI library. But apparently it is usually used that way? Could I phrase it as something like "It is a .NET library often used for producing graphical interfaces for applications."?

--Qwerty0 (talk) 20:12, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Executive Summary?
I'm a Microsoft specialist and know most of their things very well, but I don't know what this WPF exactly is, because I'm no longer used to all the current technologies and especially the used terminology. And looking at this huge article with the .NET Framework stack, its codename during development and a lot of useless things, it doesn't help to get a quick understanding of what this is.

What I'd quickly need to know if this:
 * Is this browser-based or a client technology? Or some mix?
 * If it's browser-based, then are there any plug-ins necessary? (No.) Or does it only work with IE?
 * If it's a client technology (looks like it is) then how does it run there? Is this any .NET extension or what?
 * What's the difference between a normal .NET application and a WPF application?

Ok, the german version of this article is a lot better. From what I understand now, it's just using a part of the .NET Framework. And a part that is UI centered. This same code can be used in Silverlight applications. So there's some kind of separation of what can be used and what not. It should be mentioned on how this separation works which parts of the framework can be used and which not. Especially what the limitations (compared to a normal .NET application) are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.134.254.25 (talk) 15:57, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

--193.134.254.24 (talk) 15:01, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Should show code examples
There should show code examples to feel what it is. VictorPorton (talk) 19:17, 6 April 2024 (UTC)


 * @VictorPorton I agree - I have put a brief Hello, World! style example with an explanation of what it's doing Bugghost  🎤:🐛👻  18:14, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Cleaning up Architecture section
Last couple of days I've rewritten a lot of this article as most of it was very outdated, based on very early .Net Framework versions of WPF when it was first released. There were extensive references to XBAPs (unsupported in all browsers since about 2015, no longer supported in WPF .NET at all), instructions on how to get WPF running in Windows XP, a diagram of how WPF fit in with .Net Framework 3 (from 2008), lists of 3rd party tools that have been deprecated for nearly a decade, etc etc. It was old old. I've reworked most of it but the parts I haven't touched are the Features section and the Architecture section. The Features section is possibly over-detailed and old but generally fine.

The Architecture section, however, is a wall of very dense unstructured stream-of-consciousness style technical text. Going through the edit history of this article, this section has basically been untouched since it was first added in 2007. Based on how outdated the rest of the article was, I'm pretty confident that this section will have outdated details in it too, but I honestly cannot be bothered to comb through all of it to check, especially as a lot of it is obscure implementation details that aren't relevant to developers who just use WPF as a library. It also desperately needs some better formatting and sub sections because at the moment no one, including me, can be bothered to read all that - and especially not anyone who came to this article to learn the basics about WPF.

I've put a template on that section saying it's overly detailed, but really I want to delete it completely and write a much shorter version, because it's currently not helpful, it's too detailed, and it is a copyediting nightmare - but on the otherhand it does contain a lot of cited information, so deleting it may be controversial. Does anyone have any objections to me simply deleting it? If no objections I will do so soon. Bugghost 🎤:🐛👻  11:01, 16 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Its been a few days now, so I think that's enough notice. I've deleted the Architecture section for the reasons outlined above. If anyone disagrees feel free to revert, I'm happy to compromise if other people think deletion is a step too far BugGhost  🎤  12:44, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your work on this article. I'm glad someone like you came along to modernize it. Another thing jumping out at me is the bulleted lists. A non-list article should keep bulleted lists to a minimum. If you're willing, we should try to convert those to prose. – Novem Linguae (talk) 01:49, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I agree about the bulleted lists, by far the worst offender is the Features section, which is next on my update warpath. Main changes would be converting to prose like you suggest, and removing some of the unnecessary detail. BugGhost  🎤  06:51, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Sounds good! – Novem Linguae (talk) 08:54, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This is now done - the Features section has been de-bulleted and condensed. I merged several sections that I felt were similar (ie. Media services + Direct3D + Effects → Media & Graphics; Documents and text; Alternative input and accessibility), deleted some outdated or irrelevant things, and added a bunch of citations where they were needed. There are still some bullets in the article but I feel what remains is justifiable. Probably could do with a second pass but I think I'm done for the day at least. BugGhost  🎤  16:09, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I read a couple of the sections you worked on. Very nice work. Looks much more like a standard Wikipedia article now. – Novem Linguae (talk) 17:15, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Hi Novem - sorry to bug you, I've done some more work on this article and earlier I upgraded the content rating from a "Start" to a B - it's my first time overhauling an article, and its my first time changing a letter content rating - do you think that's a roughly accurate class? (I won't be offended if you think that's an overrating) BugGhost  🎤  21:35, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It is my impression that Content assessment of stub, start, and C can be given by anyone, but that B, GA, A, and FA need to be given through a more formal process and should not be self-assigned. Because of this, I'd recommend that it be set to C.
 * B class is usually assigned by someone in the WikiProject, but Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science looks a bit inactive.
 * It could be a fun project for you to nominate this article for GA (good article). You may need to improve the sourcing though. Books and textbooks would probably be the ideal computer science sources. Documentation websites such as learn.microsoft.com may be a bit more WP:PRIMARY than is ideal for an encyclopedia (encyclopedias like WP:SECONDARY and WP:TERTIARY sources).
 * As always, thanks for your work on this article. It's always nice to see a newer editor come in and do a great job.
 * P.S. If you want to ask questions in real time, make friends, etc. you may be interested in WP:DISCORD. The channels #english-wikipedia and #quality-articles would be great places to ask the many questions you're sure to have about how to get this article to GA. – Novem Linguae (talk) 23:07, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh sorry, I didn't realise B was a class you couldn't self-assign - I've changed it to a C like you suggested, and will have a look at what the GA nomination process is. I'll take a look into the sources as well - I agree that there's a lot of first-party ones at the moment. Thanks again for the advice and the kind words, and the discord invite (on the fence about joining though, as I've never really got the hang of discord - but will take a look) BugGhost  🎤  10:23, 26 May 2024 (UTC)