What Is XAML?

A quick introduction is provided on XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) which is an XML-based markup language developed by Microsoft to separate UI look and feel design from implementation of application behaviors.

What Is XAML? XAML (pronounced "zammel") stands for eXtensible Application Markup Language, which is an XML-based markup language developed by Microsoft.

The main purpose of XAML is to solve the longstanding GUI application development problem, where the UI look-feel and the behavior of the application are implemented by the same source file of a specific programming language like C#. Responsibilities of UI designers and programmers can not be truly separated.

By using XAML, GUI designers can now implements GUI design in XAML documents and programmers can implements application behavior in specific programming source files. Then an XAML processor can be used to convert XAML documents into partial classes definition files to be compiled together programming source files.

The following diagram (source: progware.org) shows XAML documents are processed to help WPF application GUI design:

XAML Process Flow
XAML Process Flow

XAML sounds very interesting. But I could not find any clear documentation on how to create an XAML document for a simple application and process it without using Visual Studio. If anyone knows how to do this, please help.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Introduction of C# (C Sharp)

 Data Type and Variables

 Logical Expressions and Conditional Statements

 Arrays and Loop Statements

 Data Type Features

 Floating-Point Data Types

 Passing Parameters to Methods

 Execution Environment Class

 Visual C# 2010 Express Edition

 Class Features

 C# Compiler and Intermediate Language

 Compiling C# Source Code Files

 MSBuild - Microsoft Build Engine

 Memory Usages of Processes

 Multithreading in C#

 Async Feature from C# 5

 System.IO.FileInfo Class

 System.Diagnostics.FileVersionInfo Class

WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation

 What Is WPF?

 System.Windows.Application Class

 System.Windows.Window Class

 HelloWPF.cs - First WPF Application

 System.Windows.Controls Namespace

 WPF Button Click Test

 Compiling WPF Applications with MSBuild

What Is XAML?

 Partial Classes and Partial Methods

 Archived Tutorials

 References

 Full Version in PDF/ePUB