What exactly is WPF?

Question

I have seen lots of questions recently about WPF...

• What is it?
• What does it stand for?
• How can I begin programming WPF?

Answer 1

WPF is the next frontier with Windows UIs.

• Built on top of DirectX, it opens up hardware acceleration support for your .Net 3.0+ user-interfaces.
• Emphasis on Vector Graphics - UIs scale and render better
• Composable UIs. You could nest animated buttons in combo boxes.. the world's your oyster.
• Is a rewrite with only minimal core components written in unmanaged code VS GDI-User Dll based Winforms approach which is a thin managed layer over largely unmanaged code.
• Declarative approach to UI programming, User Interfaces are largely specified in a XML variant called XAML (eXtensible Application markup language) pronounced Zammel. This opens up WPF to designer folks who can specialized tools to craft UIs that the developers can then code up. No translation losses between wireframes to final product.
• MS 'allegedly' will not provide any future updates to Winforms. Heavily invested in WPF as the way forward
• Oh yeah, before I forget. Works best on Vista :)

You can get either Adam Nathan's WPF Unleashed Book or Chris Sells Programming WPF .. those seem to be the way to go. I just read the first chapter of Adam's (Lead for WPF at MS) book. Hence the WPF praise fountains :)