Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 102 posts

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#81

Post by pjmlp »

contextfree wrote: post #42
maxxxxx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don’t understand why instead of evolving WPF MS keeps cranking out similar but incompatible XAML frameworks like Silverlight, WinRT and UWP. If they had stuck to WPF and made the syntax less verbose and easier to understand and fixed some other warts WPF would be a kick ass development tool.

Because WPF is .NET based and internal Microsoft teams with C++ codebases (like Windows and Office) didn't want to take a dependency on .NET (or rather they tried with Longhorn and couldn't make it work).

I think it was more a thing of those teams torpedoing Longhorn efforts than actually trying.

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#82

Post by naikrovek »

m_fayer wrote: post #66
contextfree wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows UI platform team recently posted their roadmap for the platform https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d... and they have a GitHub issue thread requesting comment on the roadmap https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/717 , you might want to take a look and post your thoughts

Don't mean to be disrespectful, but that sounds an awful lot like the standard corporate non-reply of "Thank you for your feedback requesting the dead-obvious thing that everyone wants and that we know everyone wants but we are not doing for undisclosed internal reasons. Your feedback is interesting and novel and will be read and carefully considered if you will just put it right here into >/dev/null. Thanks for your…

You talked yourself out of trying.

Is it different if you send your comments to /dev/null or if they do? I think it is. In one scenario you at least gave it a try.

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#83

Post by OkGoDoIt »

phdsolutions wrote: post #24

Totally agree with previous comments about WPF having a steep learning curve. We recently released our photo-tagging application called Tag That Photo. It's currently available for Windows and built on the WPF platform (Mac client coming in future). It detects & recognizes faces in user's local photo collections, allowing them to tag people, add keywords and location data to the images. All the data can be written ba…

I’ve been looking for something exactly like this since the demise of Picasa. Just checked out the website, but I can’t figure out your pricing. Is it a one time purchase or subscription? How much does it cost? I’m not going to sign up for a free trial unless I know the pricing structure.

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#84

Post by pjmlp »

sdegutis wrote: post #54
klodolph wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. People are complaining about it in this thread, but I thought it was almost on par with Cocoa, overall. Just like Cocoa, you have to "drink the Kool-aid" a bit and decide to structure your application to match the framework rather than adapt the framework to match your preconceived notion of how your application should be structured. Once you did, You could get a lot of work done. Personally think that these…

After using Cocoa for about 10 years and React for maybe 1-2 years, I'd say that React is way easier for visual customization and hierarchy. Cocoa's hierarchy is more efficient but at a cost of being more verbose and tedious. But Cocoa was never meant to be very easy to visually customize, since part of the Apple Way ™ is that everything looks and works the same, which was probably a reaction to the over-customizatio…

> nobody wants or uses native desktop apps anymore, so that's a big plus for React (either via Electron or just plain web app)

The customers I served during the last four years beg otherwise.

Like them there are plenty of European companies willing to pay for native desktop apps.

And I mean green field development, not maintenance.

Not everyone has business cases that can stuff into Web or mobile phones.

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#85

Post by pjmlp »

maxxxxx wrote: post #64
contextfree wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

APIs were the same, just with some upgraded and new stuff I think the various name changes have been extremely confusing and created the perception of more "resets" than actually happened at the code and API level. They dropped the ball by not bothering to have a good compatibility and migration story across WPF->Silverlight->WinUI, but since Windows 8 they've been pretty good about maintaining continuity for WinRT A…

After trying WinRT and seeing that everything was async (WTF?) and a ton of APIs were missing I admit I stopped bothering to look any further. UWP (the UI part) is also not really a step up from WPF either.

Because any UI code that requires performance should be async and lenghty work must be done outside the main thread.

So Microsoft learned how lazy devs are and how ignoring such advises contributed to bad perception of GUI apps, e.g. Swing, and forced everyone to code the right way.

It is relatively easy to turn async code into sync, if really required.

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#86

Post by pjmlp »

Crinus wrote: post #10
gzimhelshani wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.Net Core is cross platform. So, WPF is cross plaftorm now as well

That is like saying C++ is cross platform so MFC is cross platform as well. WPF relies on Windows specific functionality.

MFC used to be cross platform (Windows / Mac OS System 7) during the early days.

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#87

Post by pjmlp »

Crinus wrote: post #22
nathanaldensr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is really unfortunate. If they did care, it could easily lead to a renaissance of desktop apps.

Why? The Windows desktop is by a gigantic margin the most popular desktop environment. Mac and Linux combined cover perhaps a 10% or less, so if 90% coverage isn't enough for such a renaissance, why would a +~10% change that (especially considering that most of that 10% is Mac where anything except Cocoa feels weird and wrong to a very picky userbase)? Also why would C# and WPF do that instead of the myrriads of othe…

Actually during the last 4 years, which I used to do consultancy on Windows native apps, all of the green field apps were either WPF or UWP.

The only exception was one that had to integrate with an existing Forms one.

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#88

Post by pjmlp »

Crinus wrote: post #48
colde wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because once you understand it, WPF and C# is fantastic to work with. It's hands down the best UI framework i have ever worked with. XAML makes it very easy to layout apps that scale well, and it's built-in states for controls and easy styling is very handy.

Personally i find writing XAML a step backwards when it comes to UI design and WYSIWYG tools like Lazarus which has some great layout tools are much better (and BTW personally i'd say that LCL is the best UI framework i've worked with, but it isn't without its warts - it just has less warts than anything else). But my question was more towards how making WPF portable will create a renaissance for the desktop consider…

Ever bothered using Blend?

Former Delphi / C++ Builder fanboy here.

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#89

Post by alkonaut »

m_fayer wrote: post #78
alkonaut wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those feel like they were created by orders from top management, because of some strategic decision (microsoft needed a flash alternative, or a Windows 10 store UI framework etc). They don't feel like the product that would come if DevDiv did their best to produce a sane UI framework. They feel rushed, semi-overlapping, half-finished. I imagine it should be possible to make just one more xaml framework which is cross…

Hopefully that last xaml framework is avalonia, it's definitely gaining steam.

Yes. But for one of these to really take off, I think what's needed is for one of the giants to throw their weights behind it. Basically "We're betting x billions on it, so you can be sure that lots of companies will be using this tech in the decade to come".

Re: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) on GitHub

#90

Post by m_fayer »

pjmlp wrote: post #85
maxxxxx wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After trying WinRT and seeing that everything was async (WTF?) and a ton of APIs were missing I admit I stopped bothering to look any further. UWP (the UI part) is also not really a step up from WPF either.

Because any UI code that requires performance should be async and lenghty work must be done outside the main thread. So Microsoft learned how lazy devs are and how ignoring such advises contributed to bad perception of GUI apps, e.g. Swing, and forced everyone to code the right way. It is relatively easy to turn async code into sync, if really required.

If that was really MS's reasoning I find it risible. There are many perfectly good reasons to have synchronous IO APIs. Yes, in the wrong hands they can make for janky UIs, but then the problem is not the tool, the problem is the developer.

MS's market was full of amateur-hour developers because their platform (WP7) was weak and lagging behind, thus incapable of attracting the top tier of devs. And then they poured gasoline on that fire with a barrage of silly incentives that were ignored by pros but attracted even more beginners. Now, to put a cherry on that fine mess, they attempted to remedy their bad business decisions with a technical solution that damaged the one asset they really had - an advanced and ahead-of-the curve app-development story. One own goal after another, really.

Post reply on HN