Paulo Morgado

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The opinions and viewpoints expressed in this site are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Microsoft, my employer or any community that I belong to. Any code or opinions are offered as is. Products or services mentioned are purchased by me, made available to me by my employer or the manufacturer/vendor which doesn't influence my opinion in any way.

PDC2008: Are Windows Forms Dead?

This year’s PDC is all about the cloud (or cloudy as I call it) and the .NET Framework 4.0.

No one at Microsoft has ever told me that Windows Forms are dead (quite the opposite) but looking at the list of sessions for this year’s PDC I can only see WPF.

So the question remains: Are Windows Forms dead?

Posted: Oct 09 2008, 01:33 AM by Paulo Morgado | with 5 comment(s)
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Comments

Craig said:

I think there is just not much innovation in plain WinForms style rich client applications. Look at a WinForms application from 10 years ago (I know there were no WinForms then, so look at VB6 or Delphi app) and compare to today and there is not a lot of innovation in the UI department. WPF is the natural progression if you are looking for something new.

# October 8, 2008 10:07 PM

Herman said:

Far from it. WPF is not an option for companies who need to display tables with data. The fuzzy font issue that comes with WPF is a deal-breaker for a lot of companies that want to keep their customers.

# October 9, 2008 2:26 AM

Emanuele DelBono said:

In .NET Fx 3.5 there aren't innovation for Windows Forms.

I think that is dead months ago. I talked about it here: blog.codiceplastico.com

# October 9, 2008 3:10 AM

kamii47 said:

Nice Observation Paulo

# October 9, 2008 4:16 AM

Paulo Morgado said:

WinForms 2.0 added a few things like HTML-like flow layout and tables, but I don't see anything coming out of .NET 4.0.

Business applications are becoming more eye catching and data binding is a much.

Microsoft invested in a new paradigm but promised that it would be an alternative.

I haven't done anything worth noting in WPF but, from what I've seen, I like it. But still needs a lot more.

Control vendors play a big part in the WinForms application development. We can't demand Microsoft to supply all we want/like.

The question is: is Microsoft is not making a noticeable investment in WinForms, will control vendors continue to invest? Should I? If I'm starting the development of a new business application that must live for 5 years, should I even consider WinForms?

Just using XAML for the design (which would include designer support, of course) would be an improvement and something to show.

# October 9, 2008 4:56 AM
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