Updating the UI thread without exceptions

When working with managed threading in .NET applications, there are many pitfalls that developers must learn to avoid. One of the common mistakes developers make is writing code that updates a UI control in a Windows application from a non-UI thread. This kind of error will not be detected by the compiler. Developers will receive a runtime error indicating that a control created on the main thread cannot be modified on another thread.

So, how do you avoid these runtime errors? The best way to avoid them is by not updating UI controls from background threads at all. WPF helps avoid the problem with the MVVM pattern and data binding. Binding updates are automatically marshaled to the UI thread by .NET. You can safely update properties in your ViewModel classes from a background thread without causing errors at runtime.

If you are updating UI controls directly in your code, either in a WinForms application or in the code-behind file of a...