Programming Model

The WPF class library consists of approximately 1,600 public types and more than 3,500 classes. As such, it has a considerably larger application programming interface (API) surface than either ASP.NET or Windows Forms. As you would expect from a .NET class library, all these classes can trace their ancestry back to System.Object. In addition, most WPF classes are based on so-called base elements: the UIElement, FrameworkElement, ContentElement, and FrameworkContentElement classes. These classes are responsible for basic item presentation and layout capabilities and are contained within the System.Windows namespace.

In addition to these four base element classes, a few other important base classes drive a lot of the functionality ...

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