WPF(Windows Presentation Foundation)： WPF，顾名思义，是一个用于开发Windows或桌面客户端应用程序的UI框架。它是与 .NET 框架一起使用的 GUI 框架的最新方法。引入它是为了开发在 Windows 操作系统上运行的 Windows 客户端应用程序，以及下一代 Windows 窗体。它具有开发、运行、执行、管理和处理 Windows 客户端应用程序所需的所有功能。
它通常提供用于组合或集成 UI、2D 和 3D 图形、数字媒体和文档的整体方法。它负责在 Windows 7 及更高版本的操作系统中开发、显示和操作 UI、文档、图像等。它是当前用于开发 Windows 应用程序的平台。
WinForms(Windows 窗体应用程序)： WinForms，顾名思义，基本上是引入到 .NET 框架中的一种基于 GUI 的方法。在 WPF 和 Silverlight 之前，它是用于构建 GUI 的 .NET 的主要 API。除了运行时和操作系统之外，它不需要任何类型的支持来开发独立应用程序。
人们可以开发在连接到 Internet 时易于部署、更新、管理和脱机工作的应用程序。 WinForms 的开发非常简单，因为它仅基于 UI 控件在画布上的拖放放置。它是用于开发桌面应用程序的旧平台。
WPF 和 WinForms 的区别：
|
WPF |
WinForms |
|---|---|
| It is based on DirectX with XAML support. | It provides access to the native windows library of common controls. |
| It uses markup language for designing UI allowing the design of complex user interfaces. | It does not use a markup language for design. In fact, it uses event-driven controls for the design. |
| It can render fast as compared to WinForms, complexity, and support. | It renders slow as compared to WPF. |
| It can be used to develop and design both windows applications and web applications. | It can only be used to develop and design windows applications. |
| It has unlimited UI customization and controls can be customized easily as it is totally written from scratch. | In this, controls are limited and difficult to customize. |
| It is easier to separate UO from back-end logic. | It is tough to separate UI from back-end logic. |
| It allows you to handle large data sets because of its in-built feature “user interface virtualization”. | It does not have a “user interface virtualization” feature. |
| It takes up more RAM than WinForms. | It takes a smaller memory footprint. |
| It is considered good when the application requires many media types, create a skinned UI, bind to XML, develop a desktop application having a web-like navigation style. | It is considered good if you want to develop an application without much added modern functionality, more online resources. |
| It offers effective and fully supported data binding as compared to WinForms. | It offers data binding but in a limited way. Therefore, it’s less effective as compared to WPF. |
| It also offers rich, interactive, animated, hardware accelerated, vector 2D and 3D capabilities for developing applications. | It does not offer any rich, Interactive, animated, hardware accelerated, vector 2D and 3D capabilities as compared to WPF. |
| It is a little bit tough, time-consuming, and complex to use WPF as compared to WinForms. | It is simple to use WinForms as controls can be used easily, it’s less time-consuming and less tricky as compared to WPF. |
| It has an inbuilt story boarding feature and animation model, it has the ability to use business objects in UI declaratively. | It does not provide such features. |