When creating a new GUI, is WPF the preferred choi

Question

Most restrictions and tricks with windows forms are common to most programmers. But since .NET 3.0 there is also WPF available, the Windows Presentation Foundation. It is said that you can make "sexy applications" more easy with it and with .NET 3.5 SP1 it got a good speed boost on execution.

But on the other side a lot of things are working different with WPF. I will not say it is more difficult but you have to learn "everything" from scratch.

My question: Is it worth to spend this extra time when you have to create a new GUI and there is no time pressure for the project?

Answer 1

For the last 3 1/2 years I've been doing Windows Forms development (at two companies). Both applications were used extensively and ended up having GDI problems. Large Windows Forms applications will eventually run out of GDI resources - causing the end user to have to reboot.

Answer 2

WPF requires either Windows Vista or Windows XP SP2, which is not an onerous requirement, but it is a relevant one. If you want to run on Windows 2000 (which some people still do), then WPF won't work for you.

WPF is also a newer technology and not as proven as Windows Forms so you might choose Windows Forms as a less risky option, particularly for larger applications.

That being said, yes WPF is the future. Visual Studio 2010 is being rewritten in WPF, which will probably be the largest WPF application to date and it will also be a real test for the technology.

Obviously, legacy Windows Forms applications would be another situation where it is the correct choice.

Answer 3

WPF makes it much easier to hand off the forms design work to an actual designer, not a developer in designer's clothing. If that's something you'd like to do, WPF is your answer. If the classic Windows styled buttons are fine, then Windows Forms is probably the way to go.

(Multiple answers make the claim that you should use WPF if interface design is "important to you" but that's pretty vague. Interface design is always "important".)

Answer 4

If you have an MSDN license, check out Expression tools. It's designed explicitly for WPF, exports directly to Visual Studio and it may help ease your transition.

Answer 5

Consider WPF if interface design is important to you, because WPF can deliver better UI experience. But Windows Forms has on its side the years of evolution, so it's proven to work and you can find many versed programmers for that platform.

Also portability may be an issue, WPF only works with Windows XP SP2 and up.

Also, WPF has a steep learning curve, meaning it's not easy to deliver a quality product without having specific WPF experience.

Answer 6

WPF enables you to do some amazing things, and I LOVE it... but I always feel obligated to qualify my recommendations, whenever developers ask me whether I think they should be moving to the new technology.

Are your developers willing (preferrably, EAGER) to spend the time it takes to learn to use WPF effectively? I never would have thought to say this about MFC, or Windows Forms, or even unmanaged DirectX, but you probably do NOT want a team trying to "pick up" WPF over the course of a normal dev. cycle for a shipping product!

Do at least one or two of your developers have some design sensibilities, and do individuals with final design authority have a decent understanding of development issues, so you can leverage WPF capabilities to create something which is actually BETTER, instead of just more "colorful", featuring gratuitous animation?

Does some percentage of your target customer base run on integrated graphics chip sets that might not support the features you were planning -- or are they still running Windows 2000, which would eliminate them as customers altogether? Some people would also ask whether your customers actually CARE about enhanced visuals but, having lived through internal company "Our business customers don't care about colors and pictures" debates in the early '90s, I know that well-designed solutions from your competitors will MAKE them care, and the real question is whether the conditions are right, to enable you to offer something that will make them care NOW.

Does the project involve grounds-up development, at least for the presentation layer, to avoid the additional complexity of trying to hook into incompatible legacy scaffolding (Interop with Win Forms is NOT seamless)?

Can your manager accept (or be distracted from noticing) a significant DROP in developer productivity for four to six months?

This last issue is due to what I like to think of as the "FizzBin" nature of WPF, with ten different ways to implement any task, and no apparent reason to prefer one approach to another, and little guidance available to help you make a choice. Not only will the shortcomings of whatever choice you make become clear only much later in the project, but you are virtually guaranteed to have every developer on your project adopting a different approach, resulting in a major maintenance headache. Most frustrating of all are the inconsistencies that constantly trip you up, as you try to learn the framework.

You can find more in-depth WPF-related information in an entry on my blog:

http://missedmemo.com/blog/2008/09/13/WPFTheFizzBinAPI.aspx