Which WinForms CompositeUI framework to choose???

Question

Hi all,

my team is minutes before developing the head application for our company and we ran into roadblock in our design. my team develops WinForms application in C#, .NET 3.5.

The first thing we need to do in our design is to decide which CompositeUI framework to use. Well, first we were sure that we are going to use CAB. but is it the right choice considering P&P are not into it any more?? What about Acropolis? Is it stable enough and going to be here for the next few years??

So this is my question: what is the framework that is stable enough and is right for an application that will lead my team for the next 3-4 years?

your help is needed. thanks!

Answer 1

If you're going to do WinForms, the Smart Cient Software Factory is the way to go. From what I've seen in the market, most people are going away from WinForms and moving toward WPF. I'm in the process of evaluating what it will take for my company to move from WinForms to WPF at the moment. I love the support for WinForms right now, but if your time horizon is 3-4 years, I would strongly recommend you take a look at WPF instead.

Answer 2

If you want to stick to Winforms by all means, there are quite a few third-party solutions out there (for instance Empinia or the Genesis Hybrid Smartclient Framework being shown on CodeProject) as well besides the Smart Client Software Factory. The question here remains whether they're stable enough and have enough stamina to still be around in 3-4 years.

On the other hand, if you're looking at this fairly long time frame, considering WPF might really pay off. Yes, it's a learning curve, and yes, the tool support in VS 2008 isn't quite up to snuff just yet. But things will get a lot better with VS 2010, and Microsoft will be investing a lot of manpower in WPF - VS 2010 itself is written in WPF.

For WPF, there's P&P guidance in the form of Prism, which is very promising and looks very well thought out. Going into WPF also brings you additional benefits of basically knowing Silverlight "for free" (it's a subset of WPF, at its core). So that might be an additional benefit.

Marc

Answer 3

Glenn Block posted some guidelines a while ago that could be of interest.

And Brian Noyes actually did a port of parts of PRISM to WinForms but I don't know if it's good and stable enough to be used as your platform for the next couple of years. =)