7. Graphics

WPF makes it easy to build visually stunning applications. It offers a rich array of drawing capabilities and is built to exploit the full capability of modern graphics cards. This enables designers to create intricate designs and use animation to bring the UI to life much more easily than before.

WPF's graphics architecture is not just for designers. The key aspect of the graphics support in WPF is its deep integration with the rest of the programming model. It is easy to add graphical elements into any part of your application without the disconcerting change in programming techniques required with many user-interface technologies.

Since WPF is a presentation technology, graphics is an important and substantial part of the framework. It would be possible to fill a whole book on WPF's graphical capabilities alone, so we can only really scratch the surface here. In this chapter, we will look at the fundamental concepts behind using graphics in WPF applications. In the next chapter, we will look at animation.