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Possible Duplicate:
When is Winforms the correct choice vs. WPF?

Hi, I have read various opinions but I do not get the final picture. Also is WPF replacement for WinForms or its an alternative for richer visual experience?

Community
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lojol
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  • It's not a replacement because WinForms isn't going away. Voting to close this. Try a more focused question. – H H Jan 31 '11 at 15:08
  • This would be a better question on Programmers.SE. However, I don't have the ability to migrate it. – Wonko the Sane Jan 31 '11 at 15:08

4 Answers4

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In short...yes.

That is to say that it can be viewed both ways.

What Microsoft has said in a nutshell is:

  • WinForms is not going away
  • There will be no more significant development being done on the WinForms platform.
  • Microsoft recommends using WPF
  • WPF will give you a richer UI experience.
  • WPF will allow you to more readily use design patterns for more standards based development.

I know that's about as clear as mud, but that's what they've said.

Steve Brouillard
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Alternative. Winforms isn't dead, it is fully supported on .NET 4.0. And about nothing you did in a Winforms project is salvageable when you convert it completely to a WPF app.

Hans Passant
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    WinForms is supported as it has a significant existing base but why you would even consider it an option for a new application as a legitimate alternative to WPF would be debatable. – Aaron McIver Jan 31 '11 at 15:13
  • @Aaron: 1) Building a WPF app incurs the cost of learning WPF. 2) Writing XAML with anything other than Expression Blend kinda sucks, therefore you also incur the purchase of Blend. While you can find good arguments to contradict these reasons, they are valid reasons. – Tergiver Jan 31 '11 at 15:16
  • @Tergiver Agreed on point 1...however writing XAML within VS especially VS 2010 is more then adequate. Design and layout of controls is easier to some degree within Blend but you do not "need" Blend to write XAML with the release of VS 2010. – Aaron McIver Jan 31 '11 at 15:22
  • @Tergiver: agree with #1, disagree with #2. I find Blend to be heavy-handed way to design WPF in many cases, and I'd be a little surprised to see that a majority of WPF programmers use Blend on a regular basis. – Wonko the Sane Jan 31 '11 at 15:23
  • @Aaron @Wonko: I havn't moved to VS2010 yet, but that was my experience when I forayed into WPF a year or two ago. As a single-developer on a very tight budget, I havn't been able to justify purchasing VS2010, let alone Blend. I'm actually very curious as to the percentage of (non-trivial) WPF apps developed with/without Blend. – Tergiver Jan 31 '11 at 15:48
  • Oh and 3) Windows 2000 is still out there. I have several clients that have no plans for upgrading their systems. – Tergiver Jan 31 '11 at 15:53
  • I do a ton of WPF development, and while I do use Blend every now and then, my primary UI design tool is Kaxaml. – Robert Rossney Jan 31 '11 at 18:18
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No, it is not, but the way it takes controls is way more dynamic and developer-friendly, especially when assisting the same approach in Silverlight which is starting to take the lights off Flash.

You may want to take a look at WPF in Wikipedia article.

Ken D
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Whatever we can do in winform, we can do in wpf as well. Only difference is winforms also works in older OS. From VS2005 onwards there isnt much addition to winform library and controls while there's huge addition in WPF libraries and controls. And VS2010 written fully on wpf. Based on these facts looks like microsoft is quite intrested in pushing wpf more. Also as in my network most of the new desktop software are choosing wpf. Winform will surely be there for next 5 years but I doubt its future after that.

Ravi Sharma
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