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As a developer for my company's internal LoB tools, I really enjoy WPF more than Winforms. I feel very empowered and, as a Microsoft shop, it seems to be really

As a developer for my company's internal LoB tools, I really enjoy WPF more than Winforms. I feel very empowered and, as a Microsoft shop, it seems to be really great for meeting a specific aesthetic and function for my users. Could I do it in a web app? Probably. But it would take a lot more work for me and I'd be battling compatibility with IE7 (yes, we're still on IE7) as the corporate web minimum spec. WinRT felt half-baked when I used it about a year and a half ago. Furthermore, I doubt Win8 is on the docket for quite some time. WPF hasn't been the 'cool thing' for quite some time (ever?), but both I and my users seem to really enjoy what it's doing for us. And that's good enough.

TheMakeA 12y ago
If you have the choice to deploy a WPF app, couldn't you ship something using chromiumembedded to get the benefits of a web app without worrying about browser compatibility? In the past, I've even dropped a CEF WebView into WPF and had the UI in HTML/CSS/JS.
- mu_killnine 12y ago
  Perhaps. I am not familiar with the project. But if you've already got a captive audience able to run anything .NET 4.0 and above (incl. async/await via Bcl.Async libraries) with the rich experience of WPF, why bother shoehorning a web application as a solution? Our users are in a manufacturing environment, on a well-known environment. It's practically like developing for a gaming console. And in that light, WPF seems to be a good fit.
  - emodendroket 12y ago
    I have pretty limited experience with desktop stuff (mostly Winforms) but with the SPA frameworks now it's about as expressive and deployment issues go away (which is nice in a small shop where you can't just foist them on someone else).
- jenscow 12y ago
  This is what I'm doing. We're able to produce a standalone desktop application and a web app using the same code and have it looking/working exactly the same, on different platforms.

TheMakeA 12y ago

If you have the choice to deploy a WPF app, couldn't you ship something using chromiumembedded to get the benefits of a web app without worrying about browser compatibility? In the past, I've even dropped a CEF WebView into WPF and had the UI in HTML/CSS/JS.

mu_killnine 12y ago
Perhaps. I am not familiar with the project. But if you've already got a captive audience able to run anything .NET 4.0 and above (incl. async/await via Bcl.Async libraries) with the rich experience of WPF, why bother shoehorning a web application as a solution? Our users are in a manufacturing environment, on a well-known environment. It's practically like developing for a gaming console. And in that light, WPF seems to be a good fit.
- emodendroket 12y ago
  I have pretty limited experience with desktop stuff (mostly Winforms) but with the SPA frameworks now it's about as expressive and deployment issues go away (which is nice in a small shop where you can't just foist them on someone else).
jenscow 12y ago
This is what I'm doing. We're able to produce a standalone desktop application and a web app using the same code and have it looking/working exactly the same, on different platforms.