CODEWITHSUNDEEP
wpfvisual-studio-2008user-interface
Ryan R
Ryan R

Reputation: 8461

Creating a WPF UI... should I bother, if using the designer in VS2008?

I am choosing between using WPF or Windows Forms for my application UI. We use Visual Studio 2008, and not the latest 2010.

To those who have created WPF apps in VS2008/2010: Is the designer mature enough in VS2008 to create a WPF app? Or should I stick with Windows Forms?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 183

Answers (2)

brunnerh
brunnerh

Reputation: 185553

One aspect that might be of interest is that using Winforms allows the application to run on other systems using Mono, e.g. Linux and Mac OS X. (The inverse statement is more intuitive though, it will not work if you choose WPF because Mono does not implement it.)

Also: Don't use designers, and if you have to, try to get Blend.

Upvotes: 2

Eric Olsson
Eric Olsson

Reputation: 4913

I've created a couple of good-sized applications using WPF and VS 2008. The designer is OK--what I found is that I ended up directly editing the XAML by hand. So the designer became more of a "print preview" for what I typed rather than a tool I used to create the markup.

For any non-trivial UI things (animations' being a prime example), I would encourage you to take a look at Expression Blend. Once you get past the "graphics designer-y" interface, it provides a much nicer way to specify animations.

VS 2010/.NET 4 provide some nice improvements, but you should certainly be able to accomplish what you're looking for in VS 2008.

Upvotes: 4

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