Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 Unleashed

Choosing Between WPF Standalone and WPF XBAP

There are specific scenarios in which an XBAP application has an advantage over ASP.NET, WinForms, or a standard WPF application. For one, you can use XBAP to easily create a user experience that typically does not exist inside a browser application. This includes Windows-like menus, context menus (right-click), interactive drill-down data, real-time spell-checking, masked edit controls, data list scrolling, hotkeys and shortcuts, managing the user’s cursor, and many more features. This type of rich user experience is typically limited to a standalone Windows client. However, with XBAP, you can run a client with these features hosted directly inside the browser. In this way, you get the added benefits ...