Lesson 13 - DispatcherTimer and BackgroundWorker in C# .NET

In the previous lesson, Handling Rectangle Clicks in C# .NET WPF, we completed an application that rendered geometric shapes on a Canvas. In today's C# .NET tutorial, we're going to learn how to use DispatcherTimer and BackgroundWorker. We're going to try both classes on illustrative examples.

The Form Application Loop

If you remember our console tutorials, you know that when we wanted to repeat something, we simply put the code into a loop. If we wanted to count down 10 seconds, the code would look like this:

for (int i = 10; i > 0; i--)
{
    Console.WriteLine(i);
    Thread.Sleep(1000);
}

The result:

Console application
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

This can't be done in WPF. The operation above takes 10 seconds to complete. When you run a similar long-running operation, it's being executed on the form thread, making the form freeze. The application will stop responding, and after a few seconds, Windows will even offer to terminate it. This is because we've stopped the

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