In PDC sessions i see only Framework 4.0, Azure and WPF.
My all applications is in windows forms and asp.net (codebehind) and framework 2.0 or 3.5. I see i'am obsolete, ok. But my questions is Windows Forms is dead, i need start migrate to WPF or Silverlight? or my Windows forms with Devexpress can leave more than 3 years?
It's not really dead or alive -- more like undead.
I don't think I'd say WinForms is dead... is DOS dead? Do you ever write a console app? There's way to many programs out there on Windows (really the majority of them) that use WinForms for it to just die. Remember Y2K and all those systems needing to be updated from Cobol (or was it Fortran?). Personally, I'm migrating to WPF, but there's still a time and place for WinForms I believe... C++ is still being used even though we all have C# now, kind of the same concept I think.
I've just installed VS2010 C# Express edition and there's still the option to create a WinForms project. I expect that the options still there in the full version too (I'm currently without an MSDN subscription so I can't get it at the moment).
So I think that there's still life in the technology.
By all means move to WPF or Silverlight, but do it because they offer you something you can't get from WinForms.
Windows Forms is no more dead than VBScript is dead. And I'm currently working with some fairly atrocious classic ASP VBSCript code, so I can assure you, it's not dead either (alas).
Win Forms will be around pretty much until Microsoft drops Win32 entirely, and even then it'll still be around in legacy systems for several more years.
Well, there are many differences between these two and probably it would be a good idea to establish some roadmap in order to migrate your application. There are many hundreds of websites for their comparison, but in order to answer your question, I suggest to start a new branch and start migrating while supporting your current models. With your current one you wouldn't have that much of problems either.
Related
Today, while I'm running a Silverlight project in the Internet Explorer by pressing F5 in Visual Studio 2012 in my Windows 8 machine, I found that McAfee started to block Silverlight XAPs (Which is loaded by Prism).
This leads me to think again about the future of Silverlight. I'm at the beginning of my LOB Application. Should I stop what I like to work in Silverlight and return back to WPF. I which that I can continue to develop in Silverlight until Windows 8 becomes rich like Silverlight. That is why I limit the Model and MVVM to PCL to be easier to be ported to WinRT in the future. Using await async and so...
Please advise me which is better for a LOB application that will run in three countries throw the Internet. Should I continue in Silverlight for zero deployment, or work in WPF or even Windows Forms and use clickonce?
The fact that McAffee blocked something has NOTHING to do with it's long term future. McAfee is nobody, they don't determine whether or not a specific technology can be used or not, or will be used in the future.
Silverlight seems to have reached a dead end, due to Microsoft realizing that if they create a multi-platform application environment, people might just stop using Windows.
WPF also seems to have been abandoned in favor or WinRT XAML, but of course WinRT XAML is not an option for us developers at the moment, simply because it is Windows 8-only, and our customers don't have Windows 8 or greater.
Besides, technically, WinRT-XAML seems to be really inferior to WPF XAML, and lacks many important features.
Of course winforms is completely useless and is not an option, unless you need to run your applications in my grandma's 80386 computer with an Hercules monochrome monitor
(exaggeration).
Seriously, that dead technology is not the answer to any of today's challenges. Things that you can do easily in any of the XAML-based technologies are either impossible or require a bunch of horrible hacks in winforms.
I suppose the definitive answer depends a lot on the usage scenario, for example:
Silverlight makes more sense if you have to publish your application in a web site and have anyone download it and use it.
WinRT XAML makes sense only if you target Windows 8, or want to create 'metro style' apps.
WPF makes sense if you want to create Windows Desktop applications, and have them deployed via ClickOnce or Windows Installer to a more limited and controlled set of users (because it needs installation of the .Net Framework, which Click-Once can deal with anyways).
winforms makes no sense whatsoever because it's a completely useless dinosaur technology that doesn't support anything.
Thank you very much for your answer and sharing your experience with me. I always try keeping WinRT as a strategy planning for each line of code I write. As I wish to migrate my code easily to WinRT in the future. The future is translated to me as may be within two years I may find myself in a situation that we will be targeted to migrate to something like Windows 9.
The best successful migration scenario - as I wish, it could be by increasing the usage of PCL at the client side as much as possible and test in a small piece of WinRT module.
We hope that Microsoft succeed in Windows 9.
I am sadly decided to shift to WPF instead of Silverlight in case that Silverlight depends on browsers that may not be supported in the future. As we here that Chrome, Safari and others are stopping supporting Silverlight. Why should I insist in relaying with such great technology that is dead before it finishes.
The main difficulties I could face in the future migration could be tied to two patterns:
- Prism.Regions: Windows Store has better than that.
- Prism.Modularity: Windows Store has no migration strategy to that.
At least at the moment I'm writing my thoughts Prism for Windows Store are far from implementing Regions and Modularity.
This is not a final answer but a clue of my what I should and should not to do.
I am at the initial stage of designing a client application. However, being new to WPF and having already gained some experience in Win forms development, time pressures on the project means that there is a risk to going down the WPF route. If time were no pressure, then I would say forget forms and design with WPF. However, I am not lucky enough to have this luxury. Having spent a little time investigating the Composite Application Block for Forms, I have decided that I will definitely develop the application within this framework. However, there are 2 versions of the CAB, 1 for WinForms that targets the .Net 2.0 runtime which has now been retired, and then the WPF version which targets .Net 3.5. Not being a fan of 'retired' code libraries, I would prefer to use the WPF version of CAB. This may be a silly question, but is it possible to use the WPF version of CAB for Win forms application developement? I do envisage at some point in the future moving to towards WPF. If I could use the WPF version of CAB I am hoping that this would make it easier to migrate the forms application to WPF.
It looks like somebody had the same idea that you did.
I found it by reading this thread on the CompositeWPF codeplex forum, discussing this very issue.
You should be able to do this without too many issues. We are currently using CAB to enable us to display SQL Reporting Services reports in WPF (along with a couple other items). It's a pretty simple implementation, but our architecture is WPF-based, not WinForms. As far as we've been able to tell, there wouldn't be much of a problem were it the other way around, and displaying both types of forms is done the same way.
It seems like these two technologies, already similar, are on a path to merge into a single technology. There are a lot more WPF-like controls in the Silverlight toolbox, and WPF now has Silverlight's VisaulStateManager. At this point, it's probably fair to say that Silverlight has even surpassed WPF in terms of the number of themes available.
How long until these two technologies become one? How long until the difference between a rich client app and a rich browser app is a simple compile-time setting?
EDIT
Let me clarify my question. I realize that any browser application needs to run in a "sandbox" for security reasons, and I also understand the desire to keep the browser plugin as small as possible, but there are several minor differences between the two technologies that could probably be massaged out without compromising either of these goals. For example, there could be a lot more overlap between UI controls and themes. Today, you can't just use a Silverlight theme in a WPF app, but how much of a leap would it be for Microsoft to make this possible?
I don't think they'll ever merge into one product. Microsoft has intentionally left a lot out of Silverlight to keep its footprint small. And then there's a plethora of security issues Silverlight must abide by when running in a browser. And of course they've designed it so it'll run on a PC or a Mac (unfortunately the same can't be said for the .NET Framework).
I am happy to see resources shared between WPF and Silverlight though. They were supposed to be similar from the beginning. As a result, it's relatively easy to port a Silverlight project into WPF. On the flip side, it's not quite as easy going from WPF to Silverlight simply because WPF has always had more features, but that's just the nature of the beast.
UPDATE:
So your revised question is interesting. It would be cool if Microsoft could make it possible for you to basically flip a switch to change the behavior of your app between Silverlight-like functionality and WPF. They would be facing a great deal of challenges though, not only with security but with the fundamental behaviors of some of the lightweight Silverlight controls vs the feature-rich WPF controls. These differences could potentially complicate things for the developer even further.
For example, in WPF there's a built-in multiple undo & redo system in the textboxes. In Silverlight there is no such thing so I actually had to write my own. In order for the developer to account for things like that they'd have to do build a lot of feature-checks into the application.
With all that said, I suppose a compile-time switch as you described might be feasible. But I still think it's unlikely Microsoft will create this kind of capability any time soon.
XAML and databinding may become closer between the two
but the rest of the framework will probably never be the same.
For once, you can not automate an Office application using Silverlight.
And that may never happen, unless MS decides to open a bridge of some sort
between the plug-in and the .NET Framework.
Security, consistence, and great UI are main driving forces in Silverlight.
If you can do something in Windows that you cannot do in Mac than
consistence is lost.
Silverlight installations has its own libraries built for specific operating systems. We as developers use what microsoft gives us that can run on those systems. WPF is full trust to the windows operating system which uses specific windows api calls.. So i'd say never will they merge.
Yes we will see that WPF and Silverlight becomes more and more alike, if the acutely will be merge? maybe It's not impossible but what we will see is just that what you stated that they will be more alike. So in the future you will not implement WPF OR Silverlight you will just implement XMAL.
I'm considering switching from MFC to WPF.
My first concern is that there are too many users who don't have .NET with WPF installed yet. Can anybody point to a source containing the WPF penetration numbers?
My second concern is speed.
Any other considerations?
I've been banging away at WPF for a while now. It is brilliant, but it still has (occasional) holes you've to plug yourself. However all indications are .NET 4.0 will be a significant step forward.
I would say start now. The WPF learning curve is REALLY steep, and it'll be a while before you'll be releasing software to users, believe me. Also do yourself a favour and get the WPF Unleashed book. It's superior.
Speed isn't a consideration. The power WPF gives is well worth any drawbacks with speed, which - coming from Windows Forms - I haven't noticed to be honest.
What kind of application are you developing? If it's a wide-distribution desktop app that you want your grandmother to install, your concern about .NET 3.0/3.5 adoption is valid. So far from what I've seen, performance is less of a concern.
WPF penetration
First of all, Windows Vista and Windows 7 both have WPF preinstalled, which accounts for 35% of the market automatically. Windows XP has had it as it had .NET Framework 3.0 as an option in Windows Update for over three years, and many applications ship with it, so it is likely to also be installed on a high percentage of Windows XP machines. StatOwl indicates that about 80% of NET Framework installations are version 3 or above.
If you're shipping on CD it is no big deal to include the latest .NET Framework on the CD and have it install automatically. If users are downloading your application, it can contact Microsoft's web server to download and install the latest .NET Framework. Online ClickOnce deployment also has this capability if you want people to be able to start their application directly from the web browser without installing it.
So the bottom line is, you probably don't need to worry about whether people will have WPF installed on their machines or not unless your target market consists primarily of dial up customers on Windows XP who don't run much third-party software (i.e., they just run Windows and your application).
Speed
Not an issue. I have a 200 MHz Pentium Pro with 384 MB RAM from 1998 that I test my software on, and my WPF applications have comparable performance with equivalent MFC applications. If your WPF application uses lots of fancy graphics and animation it will run slowly on ancient CPUs and graphics cards, but so would an ordinary MFC application with the same features.
Don't even bother trying to use WPF if you are sticking with Visual Studio 2008 for the next year or two. The experience will be way too painful. I'm talking about "my IDE crashed again" type of pain.
If you are going to use VS 2010 in the near future, then WPF is a blast. Download the beta, a couple of themes off CodePlex, are start playing. Once you get past the (freaking huge) learning curve I think you will find it to be quite enjoyable.
IMHO, you should wait for Visual Studio 2010 and WPF 4.0 to make the actual migration. They will close some very annoying gaps in the product.
Meanwhile, you can try it out. In terms of coding/readability -- it's going to be WAAAY better than with MFC =)
As for the performance and platform -- it shouldn't be a problem unless you have any very special circumstances (like if you can't require users to install .NET).
Also see this related question on switching to WPF from Windows Forms.
If you are thinking about a larger, modular, appliation I recommend checking out Prism. It's a bit of a beast itself, but you should be able to tackle it after coming to grips with C#, Dependency Properties and XAML. Plus, learning Prism gave me a much better understanding of WPF/Silverlight, at least from the development/binding side.
Mike Taulty posted an excellent 10 part video series on Prism. It's a great way to get your head around the platform.
I'd also recommend the pages linked to from the Getting Started page on codeplex. After all that, you're probably ready to tackle the Reference Implementation which comes with the download.
A previous answer of mine might also help clear up any remaining confusion around Controllers/Presenters in the framework that you might have (I did).
I have a small project that I will be working on shortly that collects employees time and what project the person was working on. Pretty straight forward. I was orginally going to work on it in WinForms but since im new to that I though maybe using Silverlight for the application since I will have a learning curve for each. Here is a couple of business requirements that i need to incorporate into the application.
-System will use an Access database hosted on a particular persons computer.
-Ability to generate and print reports
-Installed on the emploees desktop who will have access.
Would one technology be recommended over the other in terms of what I need to do. Here is a screen mockup of one of the pages I will need to create.
http://teewebco.com/images/main-copy.png
If you want access to the machine on which the application will run (e.g. to access a database, and to use printing), that pretty much rules out Silverlight, without jumping through a lot of hoops (e.g. having to install something on the user's machine anyway).
You say that WinForms will require a learning curve for you - well you might as well use WPF then, as it's a similar technology from the UI perspective as Silverlight. However, you can proably find a lot more resources online for WinForms though, and it's likely you'd be more productive in WinForms given its strong Visual Studio designer support.
Deployment with WinForms or WPF should be fairly easy with ClickOnce.
Since it's a local (desktop) app which needs to access a local resource (Access database), it's probably better to do winforms.
However, you might be better off doing this as WPF instead - it's more current than winforms.
Winforms and WPF are easier than Silverlight when you have to access a database because you can do it directly. If your install base uses only .net 2.0 then stick with WinForms, if you know they can install .NET 3.5 then try out WPF. Just be warned, there is more to learn with WPF and XAML but it's very rewarding especially if you want to get fancy.
Silverlight 3 lets your application to run on desktop as well.
So I'd write it on silverlight. Yet another technology to master.