We have a number of scripts that we use for various deployment and data import tasks. These are currently called through a number of command lines calls or batch files.
We'd prefer a cool little interface to run them and collect feedback rather than a plethora of drop downs. This will probably be developed in our developer's "20% time" so quickness and fun-ness are considerations ;)
Any suggestions?
If you need to to run on only Windows I would suggest using WPF. Otherwise for multiple platforms you may want to look at AIR.
A great place to start learning WPF I found is at NibblesTutorials
I doubt whether using AIR, WPF or any of the new presentation frameworks is going to implicitly inject "coolness" into interfaces for your command line apps. If anything, it will introduce technology risk. I would suggest sticking to a WinForms application and rather apply your time to making the user interactions clever. Useability and design is a skill and is not something that comes out of the box with any of the new presentation technologies (regardless of how much the vendor will say otherwise).
From what I've seen, WPF tends to have the edge in terms of speed and performance, which is something developers like. I'd recommend that. :)
WPF is fun IMO and I think I'm more productive with it (data binding, templates, etc helps me a lot). But you have a learning curve. So immediate quickness is compromised.
On the other hand after learning it you can create great stuff very fast. Recently I did a simple zoom mechanism in two hours. The app become a lot clearer and it wasn't for the looks.
The easy answer is, develop in what you have experience in. People who know .NET will be at ease working with WPF; people who know HTML/Flex/Flash will normally work more smoothly with AIR. Also people from a Java background tend to pick up AIR quickly because the AS3 is so similar to Java.
If you know both equally well (or equally poorly), it's probably best to decide on external factors. If being cross-platform is of value, then obviously WPF doesn't help you much. But on the flipside, if you plan to do windows-specific things (like hooking into DLLs or looking at the registry) then AIR is going to make your life very difficult.
Finally, if it would be useful to do "mashup" sorts of things, like reading in web content from external sites and working that into your interface, then generally speaking I find that sort of thing easier to do in AIR.