The Windows Presentation Foundation is one of the new "foundations" being introduced by Microsoft in .NET 3.0. WPP is a vital component to the future of application development, allowing developers to take control of the sheer power that is available at the desktop to develop rich, interactive, media-enhanced user interfaces.
My first professional programming experience was remodeling a text-based user interface into a Windows-based GUI using Visual Basic 3.0. The productivity enhancements brought by the new language allowed large-scale changes to be made in minutes instead of hours or days. The difference was astonishing. When I look at WPP today, I see the same leap forward. Compared to the Windows GUIs you are used to, you'll see a huge performance increase in the rich-media GUIs that are now available through WPF.
These differences will be clear both to you and to your users. There, on the screen, will be fast, responsive applications that take full advantage of the graphics hardware of the machines on which they run; this will provide a richer, more immersive experience than you have ever experienced. Furthermore, you'll achieve these miracles quickly and simply from within a comprehensive development environment.
WPF has a huge, varied application programming interface (API) that aims to make even the most complex tasks straightforward, and this book gives you the introduction you need to get started with it. In addition, this book gets you ready to go deeper, arming you with skills for designing, implementing, and deploying applications using WPF.
I hope you have as much fun reading this book as I had writing it!