Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF • Hacker News Board

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#51

Post by jenscow » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

TheMakeA wrote: post #9

mu_killnine wrote: post #4

As a developer for my company's internal LoB tools, I really enjoy WPF more than Winforms. I feel very empowered and, as a Microsoft shop, it seems to be really great for meeting a specific aesthetic and function for my users. Could I do it in a web app? Probably. But it would take a lot more work for me and I'd be battling compatibility with IE7 (yes, we're still on IE7) as the corporate web minimum spec. WinRT felt…

If you have the choice to deploy a WPF app, couldn't you ship something using chromiumembedded to get the benefits of a web app without worrying about browser compatibility? In the past, I've even dropped a CEF WebView into WPF and had the UI in HTML/CSS/JS.

This is what I'm doing.

We're able to produce a standalone desktop application and a web app using the same code and have it looking/working exactly the same, on different platforms.

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#52

Post by grokys » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:29 PM UTC

andwaal wrote: post #48

grokys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all the features that is needed to create rich applications, while having a nice developer experience I wouldn't say that is true. For example even renaming a Window/UserControl in Visual Studio doesn't work correctly. There are a ton of things that could be improved about WPF, not least (off the top of my head): * Use Direct2D instead of DirectX9. The renderer used by WPF has been shown to be very inefficient comp…

The form renaming im absolutely with you on, horribel. Once you tried it you learn to stick with your original name. Direct2D vs DX9 is probably a valid point, I have never faced any issue with this. The rest of them I don`t think I follow you on. Two trivial image tasks, one ugly syntax and two issue I can`t seem to have encountered. It should be noted that I always have used telerik`s awesome UI components together…

Also: regarding multiple selection, this series of blog posts explains the problems: namely that there is no built in way to do MVVM multiple selection with virtual list boxes, a common use-case at least for me.

http://grokys.blogspot.it/2010/07/mvvm-and-multiple-selectio...

(unfortunately the images seem to have expired, grr)

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#53

Post by triangleman » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:31 PM UTC

I'm planning on developing a collaborative helpdesk application for my small team (perhaps 30 users), having only previous experience in standard HTML/CSS/JS/PHP/SQL development.

I was thinking of going the web application route but I get the sense that a Windows executable is the way to go here, with its faster/more responsive interface. Major features needed: Embed and modify web pages in tabs (recreate a web browser), social "ticker" or feed, lots of cross-connections between different types of content (KB articles and tickets, for instance).

Should I go with a WPF application? I would have to teach myself XAML and C#. It would be limited in scope so that's good but it could still take forever.

Make a browser plugin in HTML/CSS/JS?

Make a full page Angular app?

In all these cases I'm going to have to learn something new, learning about Windows development may help me get ahead at my company more than other technologies, but if this project takes too long then it won't be worth it.

Any thoughts?

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#54

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:32 PM UTC

_random_ wrote: post #27

I am a Microsoft fan but my thinking recently is like this: why WPF => why Windows => why Microsoft? If crappy HTML5 and JS are their agenda, then what's the point sticking to their ecosystem?

So you can leverage your/your team's existing knowledge of C#/the .NET Framework, which seems like a good enough reason. Lots of Web sites are still built on ASP.NET MVC.

Also, one unfortunate aspect of the .NET community is a lot of people know next to nothing about anything outside the MS ecosystem and have a blindly dismissive attitude toward it (at least until MS latches onto it like they have with Angular and others).

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#55

Post by jenscow » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:32 PM UTC

_random_ wrote: post #32

steven777400 wrote: post #11

WPF is dead in the sense that Microsoft doesn't want to be promoting a non-cloud, non-mobile technology. WPF is alive in the sense that it is the best solution for meeting certain customer needs today. For example, we have a very heavy desktop application that needs to run on Windows 7 PCs with IE 8. When we started developing this application a year ago, the cost to do it in HTML5/CSS/JS given the maturity of the to…

Enjoy it while it lasts, Bootstrap/HTML and JS are so lame after XAML and C# :(.

In my opinion, Dart makes JS less lame (via dart2js). It's the closest you'll get to C# in the browser.

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#56

Post by rwallace » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:34 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #33

I've been doing Windows development for over a decade now. WPF was too different from WebForms (or less often, WinForms) to get most of the other developers on every team I've worked on to agree to switch to it. I wish we had switched way back when, because it is a much better design than (Web|Win)Forms. That said, now that I'm on my own, I'm not switching to it. The legacy windows-only apps I support I'm sticking to…

Well, one nice thing about using JavaScript and HTML 5 for the front end is it does, as you say, give you a lot of decoupling, which means you don't actually have to use Node for the back end; you're free to use C++ or Python or whatever you find best.

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#57

Post by goalieca » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:39 PM UTC

WPF died to me because of its complexity. I absolutely hated my last job doing development in that environment.

The complexity of the design was overwhelming and yet pointless. Architected to space it was. Take a look at the signature and inheritance diagram for the "Rectangle" class.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/system.windows.shapes.rect...

How can they possibly extend upon that without making it uglier!? Just leave it in maintenance mode like with all the other failed MS GUI frameworks.

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#58

Post by rmsaksida » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:40 PM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #33

I've been doing Windows development for over a decade now. WPF was too different from WebForms (or less often, WinForms) to get most of the other developers on every team I've worked on to agree to switch to it. I wish we had switched way back when, because it is a much better design than (Web|Win)Forms. That said, now that I'm on my own, I'm not switching to it. The legacy windows-only apps I support I'm sticking to…

Why is Node your only readily available option? There's nothing stopping you from writing the backend in C# (or anything else) and the client code in HTML and JavaScript.

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#59

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:41 PM UTC

mu_killnine wrote: post #13

TheMakeA wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have the choice to deploy a WPF app, couldn't you ship something using chromiumembedded to get the benefits of a web app without worrying about browser compatibility? In the past, I've even dropped a CEF WebView into WPF and had the UI in HTML/CSS/JS.

Perhaps. I am not familiar with the project. But if you've already got a captive audience able to run anything .NET 4.0 and above (incl. async/await via Bcl.Async libraries) with the rich experience of WPF, why bother shoehorning a web application as a solution? Our users are in a manufacturing environment, on a well-known environment. It's practically like developing for a gaming console. And in that light, WPF seem…

I have pretty limited experience with desktop stuff (mostly Winforms) but with the SPA frameworks now it's about as expressive and deployment issues go away (which is nice in a small shop where you can't just foist them on someone else).

Re: Is WPF dead: the present and future of WPF

#60

Post by forgotAgain » Wed, Oct 15, 2014, 9:42 PM UTC

There is another question beyond WPF being dead or not.

Is there any single UI framework that a dev can invest in for Microsoft's various platforms and have confidence that they won't be moving to some other UI framework in 12 months?

They seem to be in disarray moving forward in this area.