Anyone using WPF for real LOB applications?
We have all seen the clever demos of WPF showing videos mapped onto 3D elements. These look great but what about the real world of line-of-business applications that make up the majority of developers efforts. Is WPF just for nice eye candy?
I feel the eye candy demos are targeted mostly towards designers. Having said that, there is a huge potential in improving usability of LOB apps using WPF. Check this article about the potential of Silverlight.
Line-of-business applications have a notorious reputation for being all business and no pleasure. The fact is that "user experience" has never really been a top concern when developing line-of-business (LOB) applications. While many LOB-style applications are putting an increasing emphasis on usability, they often fall short on appeal. User experience is actually a combination of both usability and appeal.
While we discussing it, smart guys are building amazing apps:
Lawson Smart Office brings WPF goodness to the enterprise
IGT’s Next-Generation UI with WPF
We have started using it in peripherals to the main application, sort of as a POC as well as a learning opportiunity.
It's looking OK, but we only have 1 graphic artist here who is overworked, and without him, WPF apps still look graphically like developer designed apps.
As well as us coders not being graphical, we're largely still building Forms apps in WPF rather than leveraging fully the power of WPF. I'm sure we could do wonders with more resources and more experience, and am looking forwards to doing so.
We are also considering using Silverlight to appease the boss's belief that there is nothing you can do in a forms app that can't be done on the web. It's a dangerous line though, as he might start believing he's right and we were all just complaining about nothing (actually, he already does :) )
A friend of mine used WPF for some darn cool tree (as in tree-view) rendering where it did a little better than showing a simple sliding view. I might be able to talk him into putting it into the public domain or somedthing.
I am member of a Danish architecture group in which many of the members are focused solely on building WinForms app (I'm a web guy myself). During our meetings the topic of building Windows apps in Winforms vs. WPF has come up a number of times and each time after much the discussion the conclusion is that whiæe WPF does allow you to build some very nice looking apps they go for WinForms because they lose too much productivity at this point.
The main reason for sticking with Winforms is tools. They are improving though.
I worked on the Helios product in this setup. WPF on top of lots of other stuff, including C++.
WPF is what I would recommend if you were developing in .NET and wanted a smart client application with a heavily customized UI. If you were thinking about using a simple Windows-y UI, go with Windows Forms.
Just rolling out a WPF LOB application to about 400 municipal locations. Not heavy on the eye-candy but very heavy on databinding.
WPF is custom made for LOB!
Many drawbacks (ie no refactoring) were recently fixed in SP1, but tools are still, to put it mildly, retarded.
I find that ironic seeing that XAML was invented for easy tooling.
To use WPF, you really need to understand some fundamentals in the WPF object model, and I don't see the designer/developer workflow happening anytime soon.
There's a really steep learning curve, but it is worth it.
Tasks that used to be huge are trivial now, and conversely, tasks that used to be dead simple are near impossible.
IMO WPF is just starting to become a viable path for real software companies.. companies that have to maintain existing install bases are just now easing into .net 3.5 in their next-gen projects, and as part of that WPF is being considered..
i think the real issue is that WPF isnt for web apps, its for distributed apps, and as such there is a longer timeframe involved in getting it to market.. .net 3.5 may be used in a lot of hosted web apps, but it is just starting to show up in distributed apps, and with it WCF, WPF, etc..
i would argue that within the next 2 years you will see many WPF applications popup.. we are developing WPF apps right now for back end bank processing - so yes it is viable and being used for real apps - they just might not be out yet ;)