4 ms·

I still don’t understand why instead of evolving WPF MS keeps cranking out similar but incompatible XAML frameworks like Silverlight, WinRT and UWP. If they had

I still don’t understand why instead of evolving WPF MS keeps cranking out similar but incompatible XAML frameworks like Silverlight, WinRT and UWP. If they had stuck to WPF and made the syntax less verbose and easier to understand and fixed some other warts WPF would be a kick ass development tool.

acct1771 7y ago
What evolutions are you looking for that aren't covered in their .NET Core/.NET 5 plan?
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  Debugging data binding is hard. There could be a tighter coupling and type safety between view model and view. MVVM could be better integrated. The syntax generally could be simplified (MVC did this when they introduced Razor). There is a lot of room for improvement. The foundation is very good but very hard to learn and you need a ton of obscure little tricks. The .NET 5 doesn’t address any of these. They do a lot of good stuff for server side development but the story for desktop development is bad.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread but you can get compile time warnings and autocomplete on data binding by adding a design time view model.
    - maxxxxx 7y ago
      To some degree yes but it really doesn't work well for complex cases. During runtime they spit out data binding warnings too but these are hard to trap. at least I haven't been able to figure it out.
  - wiso 7y ago
    Agree. That's why we have this for Avalonia XAML debugging (XAML is compiled to IL) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VtwwEL1SJM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VtwwEL1SJM
- m_fayer 7y ago
  A Windows UI framework that's modern and performant (so not WPF), at least somewhat competitive in flexibility and expressiveness and tooling with HTML/CSS (not WPF or UWP), and does not have a sandbox or mobile-style process lifecycle chained to its ankle (so not UWP). I'd throw xplat in there, but I think I'm already asking for too much.
  - contextfree 7y ago
    Windows UI platform team recently posted their roadmap for the platform https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/docs/roadmap.md https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d... and they have a GitHub issue thread requesting comment on the roadmap https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/717 https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/717 , you might want to take a look and post your thoughts
    - maxxxxx 7y ago
      It's hard to trust their roadmaps. They always look good but get abandoned every few years.
    - thrower123 7y ago
      From what I have seen, the WinUI story is a complete shitshow[1]. Apparently they realized that tying it directly to Windows releases was a bad idea, and want to packagize it into NuGet assemblies, but kind of can't. They appear to be trying to distance themselves from even calling it UWP anymore, which I suppose makes sense, because it was dead-on-arrival and never gained any momentum. Windows 8 is still casting a long shadow of half-baked bad ideas. [1] https://www.sharpgis.net/post/2019/05/14/The-future-UWP https://www.sharpgis.net/post/2019/05/14/The-future-UWP
    - m_fayer 7y ago
      Don't mean to be disrespectful, but that sounds an awful lot like the standard corporate non-reply of "Thank you for your feedback requesting the dead-obvious thing that everyone wants and that we know everyone wants but we are not doing for undisclosed internal reasons. Your feedback is interesting and novel and will be read and carefully considered if you will just put it right here into >/dev/null. Thanks for your time!"
contextfree 7y ago
Because WPF is .NET based and internal Microsoft teams with C++ codebases (like Windows and Office) didn't want to take a dependency on .NET (or rather they tried with Longhorn and couldn't make it work).
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  That's a big issue but it doesn't explain why instead of developing WPF they released WinRT and UWP.
  - contextfree 7y ago
    The purpose of WinRT was to avoid having to depend on .NET. Developing WPF to fix this would have meant rewriting the whole thing in C++, which is what Silverlight/WinUI sort of was, but I agree they dropped the ball on compatibility and migration
- pjmlp 7y ago
  I think it was more a thing of those teams torpedoing Longhorn efforts than actually trying.
ComputerGuru 7y ago
To be fair, UWP and WPF aren't that dissimilar (and both are XAML), with differences in the readymade UI elements and a stricter subset of the binding markup.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  They are dissimilar enough to make a port of a large app very difficult.

acct1771 7y ago

What evolutions are you looking for that aren't covered in their .NET Core/.NET 5 plan?

maxxxxx 7y ago
Debugging data binding is hard. There could be a tighter coupling and type safety between view model and view. MVVM could be better integrated. The syntax generally could be simplified (MVC did this when they introduced Razor). There is a lot of room for improvement. The foundation is very good but very hard to learn and you need a ton of obscure little tricks. The .NET 5 doesn’t address any of these. They do a lot of good stuff for server side development but the story for desktop development is bad.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread but you can get compile time warnings and autocomplete on data binding by adding a design time view model.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    To some degree yes but it really doesn't work well for complex cases. During runtime they spit out data binding warnings too but these are hard to trap. at least I haven't been able to figure it out.
- wiso 7y ago
  Agree. That's why we have this for Avalonia XAML debugging (XAML is compiled to IL) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VtwwEL1SJM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VtwwEL1SJM
m_fayer 7y ago
A Windows UI framework that's modern and performant (so not WPF), at least somewhat competitive in flexibility and expressiveness and tooling with HTML/CSS (not WPF or UWP), and does not have a sandbox or mobile-style process lifecycle chained to its ankle (so not UWP). I'd throw xplat in there, but I think I'm already asking for too much.
- contextfree 7y ago
  Windows UI platform team recently posted their roadmap for the platform https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/docs/roadmap.md https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/d... and they have a GitHub issue thread requesting comment on the roadmap https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/717 https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/717 , you might want to take a look and post your thoughts
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    It's hard to trust their roadmaps. They always look good but get abandoned every few years.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    From what I have seen, the WinUI story is a complete shitshow[1]. Apparently they realized that tying it directly to Windows releases was a bad idea, and want to packagize it into NuGet assemblies, but kind of can't. They appear to be trying to distance themselves from even calling it UWP anymore, which I suppose makes sense, because it was dead-on-arrival and never gained any momentum. Windows 8 is still casting a long shadow of half-baked bad ideas. [1] https://www.sharpgis.net/post/2019/05/14/The-future-UWP https://www.sharpgis.net/post/2019/05/14/The-future-UWP
  - m_fayer 7y ago
    Don't mean to be disrespectful, but that sounds an awful lot like the standard corporate non-reply of "Thank you for your feedback requesting the dead-obvious thing that everyone wants and that we know everyone wants but we are not doing for undisclosed internal reasons. Your feedback is interesting and novel and will be read and carefully considered if you will just put it right here into >/dev/null. Thanks for your time!"

contextfree 7y ago

Because WPF is .NET based and internal Microsoft teams with C++ codebases (like Windows and Office) didn't want to take a dependency on .NET (or rather they tried with Longhorn and couldn't make it work).

maxxxxx 7y ago
That's a big issue but it doesn't explain why instead of developing WPF they released WinRT and UWP.
- contextfree 7y ago
  The purpose of WinRT was to avoid having to depend on .NET. Developing WPF to fix this would have meant rewriting the whole thing in C++, which is what Silverlight/WinUI sort of was, but I agree they dropped the ball on compatibility and migration
pjmlp 7y ago
I think it was more a thing of those teams torpedoing Longhorn efforts than actually trying.

ComputerGuru 7y ago

To be fair, UWP and WPF aren't that dissimilar (and both are XAML), with differences in the readymade UI elements and a stricter subset of the binding markup.

maxxxxx 7y ago
They are dissimilar enough to make a port of a large app very difficult.