WPF 4.5 Unleashed – Book Review

WPF 4.5 Unleashed – by Adam Nathan – covers WPF, the desktop system that was preferred by Microsoft till Windows Store Apps/UWP.

Unfortunately, while these are close the apps have several annoying limitations compared to WPF.

I really enjoyed reading the book and learning about WPF, which has some fantastic features. It is sad that it seems to have been abandoned by MS in favor of UWP. But apps stores do have some conceptual advantages, and a lot of people that didn't consider it convenient to buy PC apps directly from seller prefer to buy MS (at least in theory – the older Mac app store had lot of developers dropping out because of problems, including the inflexibility of upgrade systems).

It'd be nice if UWP was more universal, and followed .NET core into more platforms. I'm not holding my breath for this though – it'd be a major project. I guess Xamarin.Forms and others will have to do for now.

Overall, I'd strongly recommend the book for people who want to learn about WPF. But keep in mind that some of it (not all as UWP is somewhat close) may be a waste of time…