Beginning Web Development, Silverlight, and ASP.NET AJAX

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CHAPTER 8 ■ .NET 3.0: WINDOWS PRESENTATION FOUNDATION
Finally, Window1.xaml is the default window that the template provides. It is a basic
XAML page defining a window, and a grid is placed on it. The Grid is a basic layout control,
in which controls placed within it can appear using a “grid layout” methodology—
meaning that they appear at the coordinates specified using their x and y properties.
There are several layout controls available in WPF, allowing you to place controls in a
stacked or flow manner (you’ll be looking at these a little later on in this chapter). Here’s
the code for Window1.xaml:
The basic layout of the Blend IDE when you are editing a project is shown in
Figure 8-7. At the very left is the toolbar. To the right of this are the interaction tools,
where timelines, triggers, and animations are designed. In the center is the Designer/XAML
Editor. F11 puts you into Visual Design mode, where you can drag and drop XAML controls
onto the page, and use a code editor that allows you to tweak your current XAML
code. The right side of the screen is the management area, where you control your project,
your connections to outside data sources, and the properties of the components you
are currently editing.
Creating UIs with Blend
The left-hand side of the screen contains the control bar. When you hold the mouse
down on any of the control icons (they have a triangle on their bottom-right-hand corner),
the controls within that family will pop up. For example, if you hold the mouse on
the Button icon, the list of selectable controls (such as CheckBox and RadioButton) will
appear (see Figure 8-8).