This PDC 2005 session was a great introduction to the top-level application framework used by WPF. We learned about the Application class. We learned about the various ways to store application settings. We learned about the various supported “user experience models,” and about the navigation-based model in particular.

I didn’t realize that WPF would have special support for “structured navigation” – that’s when you navigate to a page or series of pages that has a “finish” button at the end that brings you back to the page where you started the trail, akin to a traditional application that launches a wizard dialog, but all in the main frame of the application. I still don’t quite understand the programming model, but it didn’t look too complicated.

The session also talked about running WPF applications from a Web browser. The same application model is used for both Windows and Web apps, though there are special challenges for Web apps, especially as regards code access security.