What are the most common mistakes made in WPF development? [closed]

Answer 1

Not realising how bad the font rendering is at the start of a project and being told by the client they can't stand looking at it because of how fuzzy everything looks.

Answer 2

Problem/Question: SO Question

How do I expose a DependencyProperty of a component in my user control to users? There are plenty of examples of how to expose a normal property by creating a new dependency property and binding, but none on how to expose a read-only property like FrameworkElement.ActualWidthProperty.

Solution: You need to expose a new Readonly DependencyProperty in your user control, and update it whenever your contained "component"'s ActualWidthProperty gets updated. This requires using DependecyPropertyDescriptor to get notified of changes that occur. SO Solution

Answer 3

Ivan Towlson did a really good presentation on this topic. Most of the information is in his slides, which you can get from here: http://hestia.typepad.com/flatlander/2008/08/codecamp-2008-.html

Answer 4

Using code - behind in views, which makes baby FSM cry.

Answer 5

Problem : The major issue I have seen so far is that people start coding in WPF with the winform UI model in mind.

Solution: WPF is not WinForms/MFC/Win32 So Forget all the UI side assumptions and norms you have used and learned while developing Windows based UI for last 20+ years.

It is very important to understand the core ideas behind this platform, This link- Major UI Development Breakthroughs in the new WPF platform will give an in depth view of WPF. Which lists out the following points. The highlighted ones are my favorite features of this platform.

10. Advanced Graphics
11. Drawing Object Model
12. Rich Application Text
13. Adaptable UI Layout
14. Flexible Content Model
15. Lookless Controls
16. Data-Driven UI
17. Consistent Styles
18. Triggers
19. Declarative Programming

Answer 6

Getting data binding to work properly between properties defined in ContentControls (Windows, UserControls, etc..) and properties on elements that make up the controls content. For example. Let's say I have a Window that looks like this:

<Window x:Name="MyWindow"....>
   <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=PropertyDefinedInMyWindow}" />
</Window>

Problem: No matter how often you update the "PropertyDefinedInMyWindow" it never gets reflected in the TextBlock. SO Question

Solution: You need to set the DataContext of the Window or tell the binding which element the property lives on. SO Solution