Graphics, Multimedia, and Printing

Abstract

Graphics, video, sound, and printing are the hallmarks of a traditional rich client on the Microsoft Windows operating system. When it comes to multimedia, the Microsoft .NET Framework delivers a compromise, providing support for some of these features while ignoring others. For example, you will find a sophisticated set of tools for two-dimensional drawing and event-based printing with GDI+ and the types in the System.Drawing namespaces. These classes wrap GDI32.dll and USER32.dll, which provide the native graphics device interface (GDI) functions in the Windows application programming interface (API), and they make it much easier to draw complex shapes, work with coordinates and transforms, and process images. On the other hand, if you want to show a video file or get information about the current print jobs, you will need to look beyond the .NET Framework.