C# Mixing WinRT and Windows Forms

As far as I understand, I can use Windows Forms in Windows 8 Pro (non-RT) applications. However I was wondering if I can develop an app which has a nice WinRT interface for the main part as well as a WinForms part for the more complicated parts which benefit from stuff like TreeViews and which are complicated and useless to reimplement. Which development environment would I need for that?

回答1:

Windows Store Applications are intentionally limited and do not include the entire .NET Framework, including Windows Forms, and WPF/Windows Presentation Foundation. You cannot mix the two components. They are executed and managed in very different ways (see here for details about how Windows Store apps are executed).

However I was wondering if I can develop an app which has a nice WinRT interface for the main part as well as a WinForms part for the more complicated parts which benefit from stuff like TreeViews and which are complicated and useless to reimplement.

Even communicating from a traditional Win32 application to a Windows Store application is prohibited (for applications released via the Store -- see here for a discussion). So, building your application in two pieces really isn't very practical (and the user experience of swapping between the two applications may be unpleasant for many users).

There's an intentional design and usability model for designing a Windows App Store application that must be considered when developing a touch friendly application that does not lend itself to a typical Windows Forms application. Tree views for example might be replaced with a group/detail/detail type navigation.

I'd highly recommend you read through, if you haven't already, the UX guide for developing Windows Store apps. A transition between a modern UI application and a Windows Form application would be jarring to say the least, unless you spent an tremendous amount of effort trying to mimic the general UI principles established for a Windows Store application. While it's possible to do, and there are some 3rd parties that may provide reasonable components, it's never really going to be truly the same (and probably not worth the engineering effort to try to make it identical).

Some might suggest that you consider instead using WPF. Depending on the type of application and the current skill set of the developers, that might be a good fit for your needs. Again, there are 3rd party resources for mimicking the style of a modern Windows Store application that you could apply to your application if desired.

There can be a very steep learning curve for WPF if you have a reasonably complex data-entry/manipulation style application where you may need robust data validation, etc., typical of a line-of-business application. It's also hard to tell where Microsoft is going with technology these days -- WPF, while not deprecated, certainly isn't being enhanced like it once was. As Visual Studio 2012+ depend on it heavily, WPF isn't going away, but expect fewer new features. It's a robust platform generally speaking though, and it may meet your needs as is.

You may want to go through the exercise of modeling your application as a Windows Store application to see if the widgets and functionality you would need are present. Depending on your requirements, you may find that not everything is there yet (Windows 8.1 has some new goodies, so look at those too!).

Also, if you're familiar with JavaScript, you might also want to look at creating your application using WinJS. It's super powerful and can often use many existing JavaScript/HTML solutions, assuming they meet your UI and functional requirements.

回答2:

WinRT UI components can only be used in windows store apps and Windows Forms only in desktop apps so you will not be able to mixed both.
If you are looking into making a desktop app for windows 8, maybe you should look into using WPF.
If you are looking into making a windows store app, there is plenty of third party control libraries which have a TreeView including the WinRT xaml toolkit .