A large portion of software development occurs on the desktop, and there are a host of tools and languages you can use for creating graphical applications. In the past, creating applications with a graphical user interface (GUI) required a good understanding of not only a programming language but also how to deal with displaying pixels on the screen and the various hardware configurations your applications will run on. A lot of the functionality you take for granted as a developer these days had to be implemented manually, and to make things more interesting, the GUI had to developed non-visually using code.

Today, writing GUI applications has become much easier. With the increased use of frameworks such as .NET, you spend more time implementing higher-level features instead of fiddling with lower-level basic functionality. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which is a major component of the .NET Framework, allows you to easily incorporate graphics, videos, animations, 3D, sound, and more into your applications. Beyond just supporting all sorts of graphics/multimedia content, programs such as Expression Blend make it easy for even non-developers to take advantage of WPF's features using an easy-to-use visual IDE for designing cool-looking applications.

In this tutorial, I will explain how to create a simple WPF app using Expression Blend for the design and Visual Studio / Visual C# Express 2005 for the few lines of code that we will write. You can download and install a fully-functional trial version of Blend and the free version of Visual C# 2005 Express by clicking the links below:

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You only need a basic understanding of Blend and Visual Studio / C# for this tutorial, and this tutorial will go through in detail outlining what you need to do to create a simple application. If you already have Visual Studio 2005 installed, the instructions in this tutorial will apply to you also because Visual C# Express 2005 is, for the purposes of this tutorial, almost identical to the larger Visual Studio 2005 application.

At the end of this tutorial, you will have created an application that looks like the following image. Click here or on the image to run on your computer. If you are using Firefox, be sure to download the FFClickOnce extension to be able to run ClickOnce apps directly without having to download the files first:

Beyond just designing the look of your application in Blend, you will also learn how to use Visual Studio / Visual C# Express to make some text appear when you click on a button. One of the main goals of this tutorial is to get you familiarized with the integration between Blend and Visual Studio / Express to create something simple, and future tutorials will expand upon this to help you create more useful applications.

Do not let the length of this tutorial sway you. What can be explained in fewer pages has been expanded into many pages to help you better understand why and how some of the things work the way they do. Hopefully, if you are just starting out using Blend or Windows programming, you will find some of the detailed explanations beneficial.

 Anyhoo, let's get started...in the next section!

In the previous section you saw what we hoped to do and got a brief introduction to creating Windows applications. Let's get our hands deep into creating our application in this page.

Customizing the Window

The first thing we will do is customize the background and title of our Window. The Window is the default surface you build your desktop applications on, and it is what you see surrounding your application when you test it in your OS.

The following steps will help you customize the window:

1. Launch Expression Blend. If you do not have Blend installed on your computer, you can download a fully-functional trial version by clicking here.
   
   When the application loads, you should see a Startup window (if you have it enabled). From this Startup window, click on the New Project link:

[ select New Project from the startup window ]

2. After clicking on New Project, the Create New Project window will appear. Select Standard Application (.exe) as your Project Type, give your project a unique name, and make sure the language is set to Visual C#:

[ create a new Standard Application (.exe) ]

Press OK to close the Create New Project window and clear the design area for your newly created project.

3. What you see now is your main design area also known as the Artboard. It is where you will create, make, and break your designs. In our first order of business, let's change the size of our stage by making it smaller.
   
   Towards the left side of your screen, you should see a panel titled Objects and Timeline:

[ easily view all objects in your Artboard using the Objects and Timeline panel ]

This area provides you with a listing of all of your objects and controls on the stage, and this area makes it easy to select a particular object if it is buried below other objects.

4. Select the Window object from the Objects and Timeline panel. When you select Window in the Objects and Timeline panel, you will see your window outlined in your Artboard also.
   
   With your window selected, click on the Properties tab found on the top-right corner of your window:

[ select the property tab to view your selected window's properties ]

5. The entire right-side of your screen, also known as the Results panel, should completely change to display all of the various Window properties and settings that you can modify. From this Results panel, find the Layout area:

[ find the Layout area from your Results panel ]

In the fields for Width and Height, enter 400 and 300 respectively. You will notice your window's size has changed to fit the new values:

[ your newly resized window is ready! ]

5. With your Window selected, let's make some modifications. First, let's change the background color to the black/blue gradient that you saw in the sample application. While they provided steps are adequate, if you want some extra help on how to change the background color of a selected object, the second page of the Brushes tutorial should help you out.
   
   From your Properties panel's Brushes panel, change your Background brush to be a two color gradient with the first color being black and the second color being a nice shade of blue. Your Brushes panel should look similar to the following image:

[ select a two color gradient ]

6. Right now, your gradient background is horizontal - left to right. What we want is for the gradient to move vertically. Let's angle the gradient so that the color changes vertically. To change the fill angle color, click on the Brush Transform button from your Toolbox

[ click on the Brush Transform button ]

7. Once you have clicked on the Brush Transform button. You should see a large arrow superimposed over the area of your background in your Artboard. You can drag, rotate, and scale this arrow to adjust subtle details associated with the background.
   
   Drag and scale the arrow so that it is perfectly vertical with the ends of the arrow within the vertical boundaries of your window as shown in the following image:

[ your gradient now runs vertically ]

Your window should now look like what is shown in the above image.

8. With your background color set, let's change our application's title. The title is what is shown in the header of your window when you run your application. Right now, as you can see from the Artboard or by running the application by pressing F5, the title is Window1:

[ your window's title shown in Blend and rendered by the OS ]

To change the title, from your Properties panel, find the Common Properties panel. You will see a text field labeled as Title with the text Window1 displayed:

[ you can change the title from the Common Properties panel's Title property ]

9. Once you have found the Title text field, replace the current Window1 text with the text Simple Application. After you finished typing the new title, press Enter to apply the change. You will see that your window's title is now Simple Application:

[ your new Window title ]

With your application's window customized, let's shift our focus to adding things (properly known as Controls) to make our window more useful. Let's jump to the next section in the next section.

Customizing the Window in the previous section is only a small part of what we aim to accomplish in this tutorial. Let's make our application more useful by adding ready-made components called Controls in this and the next section.

Adding Controls

Controls are ready-made reusable components that are designed to make your life easier. In almost all applications, certain components are guaranteed to make an appearance such as Buttons for clicking, Text Fields for gathering input, etc. These components are so frequently used, that in order to save you the hassle of creating them yourself, WPF comes with many controls ready for you to use out of the box.

In this section, we will learn how to use two such controls - Label and Button - to display some text and add interactivity to our application.

Adding the Label Control

The Label control is one of the primary controls you will use for displaying simple text-based information. The following steps take you through adding and customizing the control for this application.

1. Let's first add our Label component. Click on the Document/Text category in your Toolbox to display a fly-out menu with controls related to using text:

[ expand the sub-group of Document/Text controls ]

2. From this fly-out menu, select the Label control. As you see in the above picture, it is the second to last control displayed. Once you have selected your Label control, the icon for your Document/Text category will be the Label:

[ your Document/Text category's icon is now the Label ]

3. Double-click on your Document/Text category, and since the Label is now the displayed icon for it, a default Label control will be added to your Artboard in the default top-left location in its Edit Text mode:

[ you'll be in the text editing mode by default when you first add your Label ]

Click elsewhere in your Artboard to leave the Edit Text mode and enter the more familiar Selection mode:

[ click elsewhere to remove focus from the text editing mode ]

4. What we want is for our control to be centered in our window with the large font and white-colored text as shown in our example window. Let's look at centering and vertically positioning your text first.
   
   There are two ways to do this. One way is to simply drag your Label to the appropriate location in the window. The second way which I will cover in this tutorial is how to use the various alignment properties.
   
   With your Label still selected, find the Layout panel located in your Properties panel:

[ your Layout panel provides graphical access to WPF's layout functionality ]

5. In the Layout panel, find the two sections marked HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment. You can even find them in the above image. For both HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment, click the Center button (the second of the four buttons):

[ press the Center button for Horizontal and Vertical alignment ]

After you have clicked the Center button for both the Horizontal and Vertical alignment, you will find that your label is now centered horizontally and vertically inside the window:

[ your label is now centered in your window ]

6. We are half-way done customizing our label! Positioning has been resolved, so let's shift our focus to the label text's font styles and color. With your Label control still selected, find the Text panel under your Properties panel:

[ the Text panel allows you to format how your text looks ]

From your Text panel, you can adjust the font and its related properties. Change the font size to 36, click on the B button to Bold your text, and change the font to something (anything!) else. I went ahead and changed my font to Trebuchet MS, but you can use whatever font you want.
 
The following two images show how my Text panel and Label now look like:

[ how your text panel might look like after making the above changes ]

[ how your Label now looks after the Text modifications ]

Notice that your label now reflects what your Text panel displays! The text is now a bit larger, bolded, and shows your new font selection.

7. Now, let's change the color of our label, so let's run over to the Brushes panel. In your Properties panel's Brushes panel, change the Foreground property to a lighter color such as a light blue:

[ to change the color, you go back to your Brushes panel ]

8. Your Label text will now display the light blue color you picked in the Brushes panel. While we are in this area, let's go ahead and change the Label's name. From the same Properties panel, directly above your Brushes panel, find the Name field:

[ your Name property refers to what your label will be called ]

The Name field right now should display the default <No Name> text. We want to change that to TextLabel, so click on the <No Name> text field and replace the selected text to TextLabel:

[ give your label the name TextLabel ]

9. The final step is to now remove the default Label text from our Label control. Right click on your Label and select Edit Text:

[ to edit your Label's text, right click on it and select Edit Text ]

10. After you have selected Edit Text, you will see the Label control's text highlighted for editing:

[ your Label text is selected - almost like when you first added your Label ]

With your text highlighted, hit your Backspace or Delete key to get rid of the text. We will provide the text later using code, and the only reason we kept this text for this long was to see how our text modifications change how the text looks like.
 
Once you have deleted your text and clicked elsewhere to remove focus from the Label's text field, this is what your Label control now looks like:

[ what your Label control looks like with the default text removed ]

Ok, you have successfully added and formatted your Label. In the next section, let's add our next (and final!) control, the Button.

In the previous section, you received a brief introduction to Controls and added your first control, the Label. You'll do something similar in this page using another control called a Button.

Adding the Button Control

Now that we have finished adding the Label control, let's shift our focus to our next control, the Button. Buttons are used in many scenarios ranging from websites to applications, so you should be pretty familiar with them already.

Let's add a button to our application:

1. From the Toolbox, find the Asset tools icon (see :

[ your Asset tools category contains a collection of popularly-used controls ]

2. If you click on the Asset tools icon, a menu with other often-used controls will display. Since the default icon already displayed is the Button, you can simply double click on your Asset tools icon to add the Button to the Artboard:

[ your Button is now added to the top-left corner by default ]

3. Once you double click on the Asset tools icon, which the Button is the default control for, your Button will be added to the top-left corner.
   
   Let's manually position the button. Click on the button and drag your mouse cursor to the bottom-center location and release the mouse. Your button will be positioned at the point where you released the mouse:

[ your Button control's new position ]

4. Now that your button has been centered, in your Properties panel find the Common Properties editor. From the Common Properties editor, find the Content field and change the default text from Button to Default Text:

[ change the Button's Content to say Display Text instead of Button ]

5. After you have entered Default Text, notice that the text doesn't fully display in your button:

[ your Button's content changed but it's width did not! ]

You will have to resize the button. Click on either the right or left draggable squares and move the mouse away from the Button control to stretch the button horizontally:

[ drag the left/right resize handles to make the Button wider ]

6. After you have stretched your button, you will notice that the stretching occurs only in the direction you moved your mouse cursor. That means that your button is no longer positioned in the center by skewed slightly in the direction of your stretch.
    
   To fix that, click on the center of your Button and drag it in the correct direction to position it properly:

[ after you resized the button, move it back to the center ]

7. Your button is now sized and positioned properly...again! With your button selected, look at the top of your Properties panel and find the Name field. The default value will be < no name >, so select that value and change it to DisplayTextButton:

[ give your Button the name DisplayTextButton ]

You have now finished adding your Button. Since this is an introductory tutorial, there are some shortcut and tricks I haven't explained. The following note contains one such trick:

Note - Stretching Equally

When stretching an object, if you hold down your Alt key, the stretching is done equally. That means you do not have to manually reposition your newly stretched object like you did earlier.

So your Window now contains a Label and Button control. In the next section, let's add some code to make them work well with each other.

In the previous section, you learned how to add a Button control. In this page, let's make the button more useful by making it do something when it is clicked.

Event Handling and Visual Studio / Visual C# Express Integration

We are done with the visuals of how our application looks like right now. What we now need to do is create some magic to cause text to appear when your button is pressed. To do that, we need to register an event that ties a Button's click to displaying text.

Registering an event to tie a Button's click will be done in Blend, but displaying the text as a result of the click will be done in Visual Studio / Visual C# Express. Let's look at how to do that:

1. With your button still selected, click on the Events button to the right of the Name field in your Properties panel:

[ press the Events button to view the list of events the Button supports ]

2. After you clicked on the Events button, your Properties panel will display a list of events your selected Control, in this case your Button, will support:

[ the list of events your Button supports ]

3. What we want is to display text when the Click event is fired. Select the empty field near the Click event (it should be the first event listed) and type the word DisplayText:

[ add the DisplayText event handler name to the Click event ]

The word DisplayText will be the name of your event handler, so make sure your Click text field has selection/focus, and press Enter.

4. Once you press Enter with the focus set on DisplayText, Visual Studio / Visual C# Express will launch. If you are asked by Visual Studio / C# Express how you want to open your project, select the option for opening the project normally.
   
   After a few seconds, you will see the C# code from your application's code-behind file displayed with an empty Event handler method using the name you provided in Blend earlier, DisplayText:

5. Inside your DisplayText method, add the following line of code:

private void DisplayText(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
  TextLabel.Content = "I'm all GUI Inside";
}

6. Once you have typed that line of code, hit the Save button or press Ctrl + S. Once you have saved your code, switch back to Blend and go to Project | Test or simply hit the F5 button to run your application.

You will start off with a blank window with just a button:

But after you click on the button, the text will display:

Great Success! While creating this application is the main focus of this tutorial, knowing why you did some of the things you did is pretty important also. In the next section, let's look at some of the behind the scenes work that makes your application work in the next section.

In the previous section, you wrapped up work on your application. In this page, you will learn about some of things that make your application work.

XAML and C#

Before we look at the code, let's briefly look behind the scenes at what goes on. There are two languages, for the purposes of this tutorial, that are at work: XAML and C#. Blend is essentially an editor that saves you the hassle of manually writing code to create graphical interfaces.

If you go back to Blend, click on the XAML tab  located at the top-right corner of your Artboard or a bit to the left of your Properties panel tab:

When you click the XAML tab, your Artboard changes to display the XAML code:

<Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" x:Class="SimpleApplication.Window1" x:Name="Window" Title="Simple Application" Width="400" Height="300"> <Window.Background> <LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,-0.04" StartPoint="0.5,1.04"> <GradientStop Color="#FF000000" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="#FF3E77BB" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush> </Window.Background> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <Button HorizontalAlignment="Center" Margin="0,0,0,19.003" x:Name="DisplayTextButton" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="113.71" Height="21.96" Content="Display Text" Click="DisplayText"/> <Label HorizontalAlignment="Center" x:Name="TextLabel" VerticalAlignment="Center" Width="340.507" Content="" Background="#00DEF6FF" FontFamily="Trebuchet MS" FontSize="36" FontWeight="Bold" Foreground="#FFAAD8FF" HorizontalContentAlignment="Center" VerticalContentAlignment="Center"/> </Grid> </Window>

While I won't explain what the above XAML actually does, it is basically a code-based representation of all of the point and click designing you did in Blend. In a nutshell, Blend allows you to generate the above XAML code without ever having to type a line of XAML code, but every little thing you do in Blend ends up having corresponding XAML tags added to it.

What this also means is that you do not need Blend to write WPF applications. You can even use a program like Notepad and manually write XAML code, and many text-based XAML editors such as XAMLPad already exist.

A language that in many ways is completely different from XAML is the C# code you wrote earlier:

private void DisplayText(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
  TextLabel.Content = "I'm all GUI Inside";
}

If you recall, you gave your Label control the name TextLabel. In the above line of code, what we do is set our TextLabel's Content property to the text we want. What I am doing above is the same as setting our Label's Content property in Blend to something else:

[ the Content property for your Label ]

By setting TextLabel.Content = "I'm all GUI Inside"; in C#, I am doing the code-equivalent of manually writing I'm all GUI Inside in our Content field. This brings us to the final and important point I want you to remember from this tutorial: Everything you can do in WPF/XAML, you can do using C#.

The converse, unfortunately, does not hold true. C# is extremely flexible and allows you to write things that go well beyond the visual/media range of WPF.

Going Further

For some of the details associated to what we have done, there are several tutorials on this site that can help you learn more than the basics covered in this tutorial. For a detailed look at customizing the look of your Controls, the Brushes tutorial will come in handy. The other major part of what you did involved binding an event to an event handler.

Events and event handlers are major topics by themselves, and currently the Event Handlers in WPF explains the relationship between events and their event handlers.

Conclusion

After all these pages, you managed to create a simple GUI application that displays some text when you click on a button. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the tutorial is this long because I wanted to be as detailed as possible to aid users not familiar with programming desktop applications on Windows using Blend and Visual Studio / Visual C# Express.

This simple application you created, you could easily get everything working in under a few minutes after you become familiar with WPF and C#. The biggest challenge, though, is getting familiar with both Blend and Visual Studio / Visual C# to a point where you "just know" where to click and what to type. That level of familiarity only comes with experience, so feel free to play around with Blend and create your own simple applications for fun.

Chances are, as you are experimenting, you will run into roadblocks when trying to create things you want to do but don't know how. It is during this quest for figuring out how to create something that you will find most useful in familiarizing yourself with WPF.

Just a final word before we wrap up. What you've seen here is freshly baked content without added preservatives, artificial intelligence, ads, and algorithm-driven doodads. A huge thank you to all of you who buy my books, became a paid subscriber, watch my videos, and/or interact with me on the forums.

Your support keeps this site going! 😇