Some WPF stuff…

Posted by  on Friday, August 22nd 2008   

From Chris, WPF Photo Print.

The joke at work is often, “Microsoft designed WPF to fit two niches, photos, and RSS readers.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with a photo printer. WPF seems to be good at “media”, less good at line of business applications. Bil discusses this very issue here.

I love DataTemplates in WPF. The rest — ah, isn’t as interesting to me anymore. Unless I needed the media features or DataTemplate feature, I wouldn’t use WPF for a line of business application anymore. I’d do web with a rich client (as needed) or WinForms. The barrier to entry for a large LOB application in WPF is too high for most.

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5 Comments   

5 Comments Already

commenter
indyfromoz Said,
August 22nd, 2008 @9:09 pm  

There are numerous examples available which illustrate the power of WPF. Yes, WPF is perhaps not the technology to use if the LOB application does not some fancy eye candy, for complex UIs, WPF is the way to go (imagine fade-in/fade-out transitions in Winforms!).

my two cents.
indyfromoz

commenter
Aaron Said,
August 22nd, 2008 @10:04 pm  

I see a few examples on your web site. I’m looking for a real set of real-world, in use, WPF applications. Or, even better, consumer-oriented stuff, with some complexity. The more complex the UI, the more difficult WPF becomes.

commenter
indyfromoz Said,
August 23rd, 2008 @6:00 am  

Have you watched the first 25 minutes of the show by Billy Hollis available on DNRTv? If no, I suggest you spend half an hour watching the video, you will realise what I said above is true. Also look at http://www.scrumdesk.com.

cheers,
indyfromoz

commenter
Aaron Said,
August 23rd, 2008 @11:00 am  

Indyfromoz –

No, I haven’t watched the video you referred to.

I looked at ScrumDesk — it’s not as much a line of business application as I was thinking — it’s less data entry focused.

I can do simple animations, etc. on the web. Why should I do a thick install, with a heavy framework like WPF? I still stand behind my comment that WPF is too difficult for most to succeed at. It’s just too complex. Silverlight 2.0 stands to be a better WPF in some ways as they’ve removed some of the complexity.

commenter
commenter Said,
March 24th, 2009 @7:34 am  

I’ve been using WPF a little recently and agree that it’s far too complex. I’m constantly gob-smacked when looking at WPF examples.
Setting the backcolor of a control to a systemcolor, for example, required googling to find the ridiculously unguessable binding string that I needed to do the job. …and then it didnt display properly in the VS designer.

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