Not a programming question........ A Programming Rant !
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WPF For a win forms developer seems a backward step . Data binding is all well and good , but what if I want to have something that combines a list view and a tree view ? Get into a grown up discussion with your controls and it seems to be you end up fighting the microsoft designers ideas. Its a leap forward for web developers who have had years of working with dumb controls , but for win forms developers I have yet to come across one single advantage . Whopidy do it is defined in XML . So what ? (For win forms apps remember)
Perhaps it's not relevant, but for me, I can write the requisite XML a HELL of a lot more quickly than I can drag, drop, open properties for item #1, set them, move onto next control etc - but then the designer for webforms in VS has always sucked, so I guess it was more of a needs must....lol That's borne out though by some work I've been doing recently with the DSL tools (which are SOOOO funky btw!) - using a designer for things just slows me down so much it feels like swimming through treacle - as soon as I look at the schema, I'll be hand coding!
C# has already designed away most of the tedium of C++.
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Perhaps it's not relevant, but for me, I can write the requisite XML a HELL of a lot more quickly than I can drag, drop, open properties for item #1, set them, move onto next control etc - but then the designer for webforms in VS has always sucked, so I guess it was more of a needs must....lol That's borne out though by some work I've been doing recently with the DSL tools (which are SOOOO funky btw!) - using a designer for things just slows me down so much it feels like swimming through treacle - as soon as I look at the schema, I'll be hand coding!
C# has already designed away most of the tedium of C++.
Ok what if you do not want data binding , and you want to add a tag to a row ?
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Ok what if you do not want data binding , and you want to add a tag to a row ?
The only reason I'm using tags in windows forms is because of the lack of databinding in for example treeviews. So I don't think it's really an issue. WPF is quite flexible, when it comes to custom controls. I have created controls in WPF that for example support a combination between a tree and a listview. At first it's hard to create, but once you understand how they composed the various controls it's quite doable to create your own fancier version of most controls. I think WPF is a good alternative, but that doesn't necessarily mean that winforms developers should all move over to WPF. It all depends on where you have expertise in and what the customer wants.
WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "What? Its an Apple MacBook Pro. They are sexy!" - Paul Watson My blog
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WPF For a win forms developer seems a backward step . Data binding is all well and good , but what if I want to have something that combines a list view and a tree view ? Get into a grown up discussion with your controls and it seems to be you end up fighting the microsoft designers ideas. Its a leap forward for web developers who have had years of working with dumb controls , but for win forms developers I have yet to come across one single advantage . Whopidy do it is defined in XML . So what ? (For win forms apps remember)
Okey dokey - let's see; have you looked at things like Dependency Properties or routed commands? When you work longer with WPF, you find out that it is actually a step forward. Why do you think there's a problem with listviews and treeviews? I haven't had a problem with them - and I can do far more with them than I can easily do in WinForms.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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WPF For a win forms developer seems a backward step . Data binding is all well and good , but what if I want to have something that combines a list view and a tree view ? Get into a grown up discussion with your controls and it seems to be you end up fighting the microsoft designers ideas. Its a leap forward for web developers who have had years of working with dumb controls , but for win forms developers I have yet to come across one single advantage . Whopidy do it is defined in XML . So what ? (For win forms apps remember)
The only big problem I have with WPF is the performance. I agree there are not much advantages of WPF over WinForms yet for a certain class of applications especially apps that do simple table editing or simple data interfaces. As with all technologies, WPF is not perfect it has several good points and several pain points.
Proud to be a CPHog user
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WPF For a win forms developer seems a backward step . Data binding is all well and good , but what if I want to have something that combines a list view and a tree view ? Get into a grown up discussion with your controls and it seems to be you end up fighting the microsoft designers ideas. Its a leap forward for web developers who have had years of working with dumb controls , but for win forms developers I have yet to come across one single advantage . Whopidy do it is defined in XML . So what ? (For win forms apps remember)
WPF consists of a lot more than XML. It sounds like you don't like Xaml.
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The only reason I'm using tags in windows forms is because of the lack of databinding in for example treeviews. So I don't think it's really an issue. WPF is quite flexible, when it comes to custom controls. I have created controls in WPF that for example support a combination between a tree and a listview. At first it's hard to create, but once you understand how they composed the various controls it's quite doable to create your own fancier version of most controls. I think WPF is a good alternative, but that doesn't necessarily mean that winforms developers should all move over to WPF. It all depends on where you have expertise in and what the customer wants.
WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "What? Its an Apple MacBook Pro. They are sexy!" - Paul Watson My blog
WillemM wrote:
I have created controls in WPF that for example support a combination between a tree and a listview
Article not found error ;)
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
WillemM wrote:
I have created controls in WPF that for example support a combination between a tree and a listview
Article not found error ;)
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
WillemM wrote:
I have created controls in WPF that for example support a combination between a tree and a listview
Article not found error ;)
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
WPF consists of a lot more than XML. It sounds like you don't like Xaml.
What does it give me ? I have no problem with defining a control in Xaml , and I am sure that as soon as I get used to the element names it will speed up a lot . But what advantage does it give me ? I can't envisage that for a win forms environment xml twiddling is ever going to be as fast or as reliable as a graphical gui . The specific problem I have is that I have code in winforms that creates a list view . I have a collection of my objects . What I would do in 2005 is to iterate over the collection and create list view items , then set the tag property of each to the object that gave rise to the list . This is because I have an awful lot more data in the objects than can sensibly be displayed but the tag can allow me to get all the underlying data . I dont want two dips to the data source as its time critical and milliseconds matter , I know it can be done in wpf , but it seems to be like wrestling a control .
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Here ya go: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms771523.aspx[^]
WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "What? Its an Apple MacBook Pro. They are sexy!" - Paul Watson My blog
Thanks .
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What does it give me ? I have no problem with defining a control in Xaml , and I am sure that as soon as I get used to the element names it will speed up a lot . But what advantage does it give me ? I can't envisage that for a win forms environment xml twiddling is ever going to be as fast or as reliable as a graphical gui . The specific problem I have is that I have code in winforms that creates a list view . I have a collection of my objects . What I would do in 2005 is to iterate over the collection and create list view items , then set the tag property of each to the object that gave rise to the list . This is because I have an awful lot more data in the objects than can sensibly be displayed but the tag can allow me to get all the underlying data . I dont want two dips to the data source as its time critical and milliseconds matter , I know it can be done in wpf , but it seems to be like wrestling a control .
I was wrong