#14 – Page-Based Navigation

WPF applications can be structured as a collection of pages, with built-in navigation between pages.  This is different from the more traditional (Win Forms) document-based model, where the application displays a main window and dialogs that pop up.

To create a page-based application, you use a Page object as the top-level container in your application, instead of Window.

<Page x:Class="WpfApplication7.Page1"
      xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
      xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
      xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
      xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
      mc:Ignorable="d"  d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="300"
      Title="Page1">
    <Grid>
        <Label Content="This is a page, not a window." Height="28" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="52,75,0,0" Name="label1" VerticalAlignment="Top" />
    </Grid>

To make this page the main object loaded when the application starts, set the StartupUri attribute of your main Application:

<Application x:Class="WpfApplication7.App"
             xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
             StartupUri="Page1.xaml">
</Application>

Notice that we now get a main window with navigation controls at the top.