Deployment
- WPF's deployment model offers both standalone and XAML Browser Applications (XBAP, pronounced "ex-bap") flavors. The programming model for building either type of application is similar.
- Standalone applications are those that have been locally installed on the computer using software such as ClickOnce or Windows Installer (MSI) and which run on the desktop. Standalone applications are considered full trust and have full access to a computer's resources.
- XAML Browser Applications (XBAPs) are programs that are hosted inside a web browser. Pre-.NET4 XBAP applications run in a partial trust sandbox environment, and are not given full access to the computer's resources and not all WPF functionality is available. The hosted environment is intended to protect the computer from malicious applications. XBAPs can run as fully trusted applications in .NET 4, with full access to computer resources. Starting an XBAP from an HTML page or vice versa is seamless (there is no security or installation prompt). Although one gets the perception of the application running in the browser, it actually runs in an out-of-process executable different from the browser.
Read more about this topic: Windows Presentation Foundation