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With the current state of .NET I wouldn't either. Once Microsoft makes up its mind about which way it wants to go for UI and distribution of desktop applicatio

by foepys 5y ago

With the current state of .NET I wouldn't either. Once Microsoft makes up its mind about which way it wants to go for UI and distribution of desktop applications, maybe. I don't want to use buggy, incomplete WinForms, deprecated, half-abandoned, buggy WPF, or unfinished WinUI.

foepys 5y ago
To the people downvoting this: WPF is complete, done, never to be changed again according to Microsoft. But nevetheless they have recently started fixing bugs for .NET 6. Notably not the one where returning from the Windows 10 lock screen made the application freeze. They called that production-ready for .NET 5. [1] WinForms is a mess. They reinvented the wheel when porting it from .NET Framework by changing APIs, then noticing that this wasn't a good idea because porting applications from .NET Framework would become a complete rewrite which would make WinForms on .NET pointless. So they stopped changing the APIs halfway through, which makes it still necessary to rewrite complex UIs. [3] The WinForms designer in Visual Studio does not work with third-party controls (even your own) when targeting .NET 5/6. You need to sign an NDA to get access to internal VS APIs to do that. They call that production-ready. [2] WinUI 3 is missing a lot of controls and features. But because Windows 11 needed to be released, they implemented the bare minimum that they needed for themselves and called it production-ready. It's a mess. A huge mess when developing a desktop UI application larger than a calculator. 1: https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/issues/2158 https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/issues/2158 2: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/windows-forms-designer-for-net-core-released/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/windows-forms-designer... > We are working closely with the control vendors such as Progress Telerik, DevExpress and GrapeCity on supporting their controls in the Windows Forms designer in the nearest future for .NET Core and .NET 5 projects. We are also collaborating with ActiPro, Infragistics, and SyncFusion. Situation unchanged, no access to the APIs without an NDA. 3: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/compatibility/winforms https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/compatibility/w...
- contextfree 5y ago
  Windows 11 doesn't currently use WinUI 3 at all, it's all still WinUI 2.x/UWP XAML based, including the new stuff. Actually I don't think WinUI 3 currently has any immediate advantages over WinUI 2.x from the app developer's point of view, except that there's a nice Visual Studio template for creating standalone Win32 apps using it, but I believe you can achieve more or less the same thing with a little more upfront work by just making an app that does its entire UI in one big XAML Island, and in fact that's how Windows Terminal works. The long-term advantages are supposed to come from WinUI 3's XAML and composition stack being decoupled from the Windows OS build.
thrower123 5y ago
Nah, just use WinForms. It's alwys going to work, and it's better than all the half-baked abandoned successor platforms.
- foepys 5y ago
  > It's alwys going to work That's a hope I currently do not share. There were multiple cases where Microsoft employees proposed features for WinForms that were only stopped by community members because it would have broken WinForms in very subtle ways. If Microsoft were on their own, it would already be broken. Also see the VS WinForms designer problem in the sibling comment. I have the feeling that the original WinForms designers quit Microsoft years ago and some juniors are left trying to force their new ideas into it to make a name for themselves.

by foepys 5y ago

foepys 5y ago

To the people downvoting this: WPF is complete, done, never to be changed again according to Microsoft. But nevetheless they have recently started fixing bugs for .NET 6. Notably not the one where returning from the Windows 10 lock screen made the application freeze. They called that production-ready for .NET 5. [1] WinForms is a mess. They reinvented the wheel when porting it from .NET Framework by changing APIs, then noticing that this wasn't a good idea because porting applications from .NET Framework would become a complete rewrite which would make WinForms on .NET pointless. So they stopped changing the APIs halfway through, which makes it still necessary to rewrite complex UIs. [3] The WinForms designer in Visual Studio does not work with third-party controls (even your own) when targeting .NET 5/6. You need to sign an NDA to get access to internal VS APIs to do that. They call that production-ready. [2] WinUI 3 is missing a lot of controls and features. But because Windows 11 needed to be released, they implemented the bare minimum that they needed for themselves and called it production-ready. It's a mess. A huge mess when developing a desktop UI application larger than a calculator. 1: https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/issues/2158 https://github.com/dotnet/wpf/issues/2158 2: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/windows-forms-designer-for-net-core-released/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/windows-forms-designer... > We are working closely with the control vendors such as Progress Telerik, DevExpress and GrapeCity on supporting their controls in the Windows Forms designer in the nearest future for .NET Core and .NET 5 projects. We are also collaborating with ActiPro, Infragistics, and SyncFusion. Situation unchanged, no access to the APIs without an NDA. 3: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/compatibility/winforms https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/compatibility/w...

contextfree 5y ago
Windows 11 doesn't currently use WinUI 3 at all, it's all still WinUI 2.x/UWP XAML based, including the new stuff. Actually I don't think WinUI 3 currently has any immediate advantages over WinUI 2.x from the app developer's point of view, except that there's a nice Visual Studio template for creating standalone Win32 apps using it, but I believe you can achieve more or less the same thing with a little more upfront work by just making an app that does its entire UI in one big XAML Island, and in fact that's how Windows Terminal works. The long-term advantages are supposed to come from WinUI 3's XAML and composition stack being decoupled from the Windows OS build.

thrower123 5y ago

Nah, just use WinForms. It's alwys going to work, and it's better than all the half-baked abandoned successor platforms.

foepys 5y ago
> It's alwys going to work That's a hope I currently do not share. There were multiple cases where Microsoft employees proposed features for WinForms that were only stopped by community members because it would have broken WinForms in very subtle ways. If Microsoft were on their own, it would already be broken. Also see the VS WinForms designer problem in the sibling comment. I have the feeling that the original WinForms designers quit Microsoft years ago and some juniors are left trying to force their new ideas into it to make a name for themselves.