Full WPF Development

Question

I was lucky to work for a company in which all of our new development efforts are all in WPF. In this situation, many other developers? Do companies accept this as their primary user interface platform? As developers, we all see value in this, but are they buying companies?

Answer 1

I think the main problem for companies in adapting this new technology is

• XAML learning curve and new user interface concepts
• Developers should forget all the knowledge they have gained about Winforms technologies (or equivalent UIs); most people are reluctant to give up their experience.
• The need for a new skill called "UX Integrators" that should be able to work with a new RIA tool called Expression Blend to style / integrate design with code.
• The need for a new platform requirement (.NET3.5) and a new set of tools make companies or customers think twice before they go this route. Usually they think this can be a "risky" way.

My company focuses mainly on Microsoft RIA technologies such as WPF and Silverlight. And we help other companies load up their WPF development efforts by creating a Proof of concept / Prototype to show the power / lightness of WPF.

Answer 2

I am developing WPF at a large semiconductor company. So far it has been a hit and miss. I was given quite free possession to decide which development platform I used if we could support Windows Vista and later. Given that I had a rather short development timeline for a fairly large application, and only two GUI developers to work on it, WPF seemed like the right choice. However, as I move on, some more WPF warts show up ... JUst addresses the "airspace" issues when integrating DirectX with .NET 3.0 into a WPF implementation. Or look at the sorry state of the design tools in Visual Studio 2008. Still with these problems, they are relatively minor compared to the development cost for creating a fully skin-friendly interface that supports RTL languages ​​and animations. At some point, someone (who worked at least Microsoft) suggested that I look at SDL as an alternative to WPF. Yes, right.

Another issue that I am facing is that the developers are still not learning the WPF / Blend tools. Most of the designers I know mock launching anything else besides Adobe tools on a Mac. Developers must translate their projects into workable code. I hate those diving d *** ks.

In any case, my company leaves technological solutions to the people who use it. Therefore, WPF was a natural choice, given my requirements. I do not regret it, but I would like it to be a little more mature before they released it with Vista. There are some critical fixes in .NET 3.5 that I need. However, I do not want my users to download .NET 3.5 when .NET 3.0 is on their Vista system.

Answer 3

Our company also does most of the new developments in WPF. It works well enough for us. However, it took the organization 2-3 months to overcome the learning curve and begin the “WPF way of thinking”.

Similar to Louis’s point of view, I think one of the reasons she slowly takes over the industry is because designers hesitate to study the Expression package. When there are enough Expression designers, I think the company will see more immediate benefits from using WPF.

One of the key benefits of WPF is vector graphics. As we develop applications that can be used on small laptops and hard PCs, the ability of the user interface to scale for different monitor sizes is very useful.