Comments on: WPF adoption

By: Judah

Judah — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:41:34 +0000

I didn’t say WPF databinding is perfect; rather, it’s a hell of a lot better than WinForms binding.

By: Georgi

Georgi — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:05:37 +0000

Let me mention one more thing why WPF will be adopted slowly – it has outstripped the hardware an average office and home computer has. It behaves (regarding performance) nice on a system with good 3D-accelerated adapter but will lag as hell on a slower computer where software-emulated rendering is performed.

Let me mention that I do love the way WPF is implemented – it strictly follows W3C DOM 2 specifications (http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Programming/Internet/W3C_DOM/Specifications/). There is a true Model-View-Controller architecture which makes the GUI layer as detached from the underlying OS as possible.

By: Keigan

Keigan — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:54:44 +0000

I happen to be equally comfortable in photoshop and illustrator as I am in VS (admittedly without an IDE I would be lost) so I love being able to do pretty much anything I want in WPF. That really is what it offers… a tangible way to make beautiful UI possible. It creates that connection.

I also recognize that I am rare. Most of the developers I work with either can’t or have no real desire to make things visually compelling. I also don’t think most coders have access to a designer, at least one who gives a damn about what the coder is doing. That said, it is going to take more than just showing people the art of the possible… it will take time and (I think more importantly) better tools to get any widespread acceptance.

By: The Death of Windows Forms - Part 2 « Castalian

The Death of Windows Forms - Part 2 « Castalian — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:29:34 +0000

[...] The proprietor of said company (Philip Wright) has now chosen to construct a disquisition into WPF adoption. I have chosen to go a little further into reasons Philip states as [...]

By: vesuvius

vesuvius — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:57:17 +0000

I’m afraid Judah, it is you that is off the mark. WPF databinding is phenomenal, but it is also not without it’s drawbacks. Try create a menu and toolbar, with all the images and event handlers and you will soon find that you are writing boilerplate XAML where in winforms it takes 2 minutes.

I will write an answer to this post in my blog and link to it later (longish article not self promotion – oh well, I care about this subject).

I would also recommend you read http://castalian.wordpress.com/2008/01/07/the-death-of-windows-forms-part-1/ and http://castalian.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/windows-forms-still-ahead-of-wpf-in-lob-applications/

I am just about to start writing part 2 to the death of windows forms.

By: Judah

Judah — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:23:58 +0000

James is wrong; there is a business need to move to WPF: less code to write. WinForms support for databinding, for example, is so basic it’s almost useless. We have to write tons of boilerplate code like:

checkBoxClickHandler(..)
{
if(checkBox.Checked)
{
textBox.Text = “checked”;
label1.Enabled = true;
….
}
}

Ugly, boring stuff that is time consuming to produce and painful to maintain.

WPF databinding takes care of all this. Less code to write, fewer bugs.

Phil’s prediction is realistic: in a couple years, it will overtake WinForms.

Which begs the question, Phil, are you planning on becoming a WPF component vendor in a few years, or stick it out with WinForms?

By: Duncan Smart

Duncan Smart — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:22:33 +0000

I think the .NET 3.x install process is a joke. It should take users a few minutes at most to get .NET client stuff installed, but (seemingly) because of Windows Installer, these things take an age (OK, 20 mins) with copious amounts of disk thrashing. If the install experience were more like Silverlight or Adobe AIR even, then we might be getting somewhere.

By: James

James — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 09:55:08 +0000

The problem is that their is no business need to move to WPF. If I convert my app to WPF then I gain zero sales and lose money that could have been earned by doing something else.

In this economic climate, fiddling with unproven and unnecessary technology that provides no tangible benefits to customers is never going to happen.