As to why you might use pages, see a previous blog.

A hyperlink in the xaml world is similar to the anchor tag in html, in the respect that it goes inside relevant other tags.
For example, to add a hyperlink to a textblock, specify the hyperlink inside the textblock:

<TextBlock>My test is going to be <Hyperlink NavigateUri=”chelsea.xaml”>chels</Hyperlink> and their lack of Deco
</TextBlock>

That specifies the hyperlink, and when you click on it the NavigationService will move to the chelsea.xaml page

With a WPF application, you have four options on how to display your top level page in a container:

1. Using a NavigationWindow – which gives you functionality akin to a normal WPF Window
2. U1sing a Frame directly inside the browser, also called an Xbap or browser application
3. Using a Frame inside another window
4. Using a Frame inside another page

These all have slightly different advantages, and I have done a description for each:

1. Hosting in NavigationWindow.
2. Hosting a frame directly inside the browser
3. Hosting a frame inside a window
4. Hosting a frame nested inside another frame

Why would you want to place a page within the browser?
It means you can run the WPF application over the internet or an intranet without any installation at all.
Thus far,I’ve mainly seen browser applications used as demos.

You create one using the visual studio new wpf browser application template.

What is useful though, is that you can write all your views (or dialogs) as pages by using the <page> xml construct.
Then you can put them into a class library (dll to us old-uns).
That enables you to have one project that is a WPF application, and one browser application both references the common class library.
Both types of application can reference the pages, and bingo you maintain your ui logic in one place.

Simply put, you can embed a page within another page.
Why would you want to do that?
It allows re-use for a start, as well as splitting functionality down into logical chunks.

In the following example, I have done just that:

First the top level window

<Window x:Class=”BlogSept.Window1″
xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation”
xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml”
Title=”Window1″ Height=”300″ Width=”300″>
<Grid>
<Frame Source=”page1.xaml” NavigationUIVisibility=”Visible”>
</Frame>
</Grid>
</Window>

Then page1

<Page x:Class=”BlogSept.Page1″
xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation”
xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml”
Title=”Page1″>
<Grid>
<Rectangle Margin=”46,68,54,132″ Name=”rectangle1″ Stroke=”Black” Fill=”Chocolate” OpacityMask=”Beige” Opacity=”0.6″ />
<TextBox Text=”Random text” Margin=”80, 190, 10, 10″ />
<Frame Source=”page2.xaml” />
</Grid>
</Page>

Notice how it embeds a copy of page2 inside it’s visual tree.
Here is page 2:

<Page x:Class=”BlogSept.Page2″
xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation”
xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml”
Title=”Page2″>
<Grid>
<Ellipse Margin=”42,71,64,118″ Name=”ellipse1″ Stroke=”Black” Fill=”BlueViolet” />
</Grid>
</Page>

With Xbap pages, you have a useful resource.

You can host pages within other windows or with a special xaml construct – a frame.
To do this simply declare the frame within a window:

if page1.xaml contains a page of further xaml, it’s contents will be displayed in the window

Well, not a lot actually.

You write your page, set your app.xaml’s startup uri to point to your page and run it!
It will appear in a browser if you created a browser application, or inside a NavigationWindow if it is a WPF application.

The WPF application will create a NavigationWindow instead of a Window to act as the top level container.
It also uses the page’s WindowTitle property for the caption in the NavigationWindow

The NavigationWindow class derives from Window and adds the navigation buttons and the navigation service for you.

I have spent the last few weeks writing a Xbap (or page navigation) application in WPF.

The first thing you have to get used to is that you need to forget Windows, everything is in terms of pages.
What is a page?
Actually it looks stunningly similar to a WPF Window.
You get to use exactly the same xaml markup constructs, dockpanels, textboxes etc etc.

The advantage of Xbaps over normal WPF application is that they run in the browser (firefox as well as internet explorer) and yet you still get all of the great WPF goodies, including animations and styles.
The only restrixtion is that they need to run under partial trust rather than full trust.

What does that mean in practice?
It means that whatever zone you pick for your xbap application confines its functionality.
For example, an internet zone xbap cannot access the local file system or the registry – which is only logical

That’s my advice.

I have been trying to get the combination of partial trust Xbap WPF appliction talking to a basicHttpBinding WCF service.
That’s not too hard.

What is hard is then getting that to talk to Entity Framework in partial trust (well it actually was medium trust IIS host of the WCF service).
It complained about a property IsReference which needed full reflection permission.

I ended up scrapping the EntityFramework bit , after losing much hair, and reverting back to Linq for Sql.
Now Linq for Sql also needs reflection permission, but I did manage to get it working – unlike the EntityFramework version.

It may of course been me doing something daft, but why do these technologies not get tested in partial trust????????

The Caliburn framework is a Composite framework for WPF, but built from the ground up to work for WPF.

It has been created as an open source project by Rob Eisenberg

So far, i have only read the documentation.
Documentation I heard you cry, that’s better than most open source projects already.

Sadly, I think it will be taken over by Composite WPF/Prism, as they have greater resources.
However, we should applaud Rob for the great work he has done on Caliburn and has no doubt influenced many great software developers out there using WPF.
Also, it does seem to provide extra functionalit, which could be used on top of Prism

SCSF is the Smart Client Software Factory and has been around, in a couple of guises, for a while.
It started out life as the Client Application Block, and then became Smart Client.

Now it has been given the Software Factory treatment which has improved it’s use, as you can right click on a project or solution and create appropriate elements – like view model and presenter in one go.

It also allows you to create Views as WPF UserControls, which is great. Also, you can create all of the good stuff in WPF like commands , routed events etc.

The only bad thing is that the application that gets generated is a Windows Forms exe. That enables it to support MDI as well as tabbed MDI and SDI, so not that bad!

It’s not a bad idea if you want MDI out of the box as a method of display