WPF - Why was it formed?
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Hi, Having worked with Various Micrsoft programming languages for many years, now I am dabbling into WPF for a project. I don't know a single bit about it, but as I started to read the manual, I got confused as to what is the real purpose of WPF? Why would you put your UI in painful XML tags when you can use Windows forms? If it were to separate UI completely with the behaviour, aren't the developers doing that already with clean layering architecture with the forms based applications? and why somebody would like to load a desktop application on a browser? If its a browser based application, it should be developed in ASP.NET. Thanks,
The original idea was to create a single design platform for web and desktop (Silverlight - WPF - WinRT) - it does not succeeded too much...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Hi, Having worked with Various Micrsoft programming languages for many years, now I am dabbling into WPF for a project. I don't know a single bit about it, but as I started to read the manual, I got confused as to what is the real purpose of WPF? Why would you put your UI in painful XML tags when you can use Windows forms? If it were to separate UI completely with the behaviour, aren't the developers doing that already with clean layering architecture with the forms based applications? and why somebody would like to load a desktop application on a browser? If its a browser based application, it should be developed in ASP.NET. Thanks,
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Hi, Having worked with Various Micrsoft programming languages for many years, now I am dabbling into WPF for a project. I don't know a single bit about it, but as I started to read the manual, I got confused as to what is the real purpose of WPF? Why would you put your UI in painful XML tags when you can use Windows forms? If it were to separate UI completely with the behaviour, aren't the developers doing that already with clean layering architecture with the forms based applications? and why somebody would like to load a desktop application on a browser? If its a browser based application, it should be developed in ASP.NET. Thanks,
Perhaps it's a solution to a problem that didn't exist.:confused:
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
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The original idea was to create a single design platform for web and desktop (Silverlight - WPF - WinRT) - it does not succeeded too much...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote:
The original idea was to create a single design platform for web and desktop (Silverlight - WPF - WinRT)
No it wasn't. Originally, the vision was for WPF to be usable everywhere and WinRT wasn't even a twinkle in Steve Sinofsky's eyes at that point - bear in mind that WPF was developed before Vista was released. I guess that no one has read Adam Nathan's books then. The original remit was spelled out there.
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WPF = WTF from my view point :-O
I feel the same way about ASPX, Javascript, CSS and MVC, probably for the same reasons, outside my comfort zone. Having said that I was fiddling with a winforms app in vs2013 and they have changed to DataRow construction and I was completely lost. Did not help that I was trying to show a young kids the basics on a strange machine. bloody embarrassing!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Hi, Having worked with Various Micrsoft programming languages for many years, now I am dabbling into WPF for a project. I don't know a single bit about it, but as I started to read the manual, I got confused as to what is the real purpose of WPF? Why would you put your UI in painful XML tags when you can use Windows forms? If it were to separate UI completely with the behaviour, aren't the developers doing that already with clean layering architecture with the forms based applications? and why somebody would like to load a desktop application on a browser? If its a browser based application, it should be developed in ASP.NET. Thanks,
preaa wrote:
If it were to separate UI completely with the behaviour, aren't the developers doing that already with clean layering architecture with the forms based applications?
No they aren't. Have you seen how hard it is to get a complete break and clean layering going in Windows Forms?
preaa wrote:
and why somebody would like to load a desktop application on a browser? If its a browser based application, it should be developed in ASP.NET
Again no. There are much better alternatives to the bloat that is ASP.NET for web based applications, unless you are talking about ASP MVC. You are looking at the state of the world as it exists now, not back in 2003 when WPF was heavily under development. Back then, doing fancy UIs in ASP.NET was extremely limited. The reason that WPF was invented, and this is from the team that wrote it in the first place, was because Microsoft wanted to provide developers to create the types of applications that people were used to seeing in films and TV shows, but which were not easily achievable in the technologies that were around at the time such as Windows Forms and MFC. They offered several advances over these technologies, including breaking away from using GDI/GDI+ for rendering, display independence, a sophisticated binding mechanism, animation, markup extensions, dependency properties and so on. I would suggest that you start by reading Adam Nathan's excellent WPF Unleashed, as well as articles by Josh Smith, Sacha Barber, Dan Vaughan, Karl Shifflett, Jesse Liberty and so on.
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote:
The original idea was to create a single design platform for web and desktop (Silverlight - WPF - WinRT)
No it wasn't. Originally, the vision was for WPF to be usable everywhere and WinRT wasn't even a twinkle in Steve Sinofsky's eyes at that point - bear in mind that WPF was developed before Vista was released. I guess that no one has read Adam Nathan's books then. The original remit was spelled out there.
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
no one has read Adam Nathan's books then
Wrong!
Quote:
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is Microsoft’s premier technology for creating Windows graphical user interfaces (...) it’s also the basis for Silverlight, which has extended WPF technology onto the Web and into devices such as Windows phones
(from the unread book...) And even Sinfosky went home - he is behind WinRT, which is the next step, as it tries to unify development technologies in the Web-Desktop-Mobile line, based on the same idea of WPF...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Hi, Having worked with Various Micrsoft programming languages for many years, now I am dabbling into WPF for a project. I don't know a single bit about it, but as I started to read the manual, I got confused as to what is the real purpose of WPF? Why would you put your UI in painful XML tags when you can use Windows forms? If it were to separate UI completely with the behaviour, aren't the developers doing that already with clean layering architecture with the forms based applications? and why somebody would like to load a desktop application on a browser? If its a browser based application, it should be developed in ASP.NET. Thanks,
Well I think most of the other members already said why is was formed, but I would like to add the following. Please go and have a look at some of the articles drafted by Sacha Barber[^], which makes use of xaml (wpf, silverlight, metro), then I would like you to ask yourself one simple question; how easy / difficult / impossible would that have been in WinForms... Kind regards,
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
no one has read Adam Nathan's books then
Wrong!
Quote:
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is Microsoft’s premier technology for creating Windows graphical user interfaces (...) it’s also the basis for Silverlight, which has extended WPF technology onto the Web and into devices such as Windows phones
(from the unread book...) And even Sinfosky went home - he is behind WinRT, which is the next step, as it tries to unify development technologies in the Web-Desktop-Mobile line, based on the same idea of WPF...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
If you had read the book properly, and this goes back to his original version which predates Silverlight, he has a whole chapter devoted to the history. Perhaps you might want to revisit your original answer and cover what the original motivation of WPF was. Of course, I've only been doing WPF since 2008 and was one of the reviewers for his later books, as well as being friends with several members of that team so what do I know about their original motivation.
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote:
based on the same idea of WPF...
And there's the kicker - based on the same idea, not developed alongside. Oh, and the WinRT implementation is still way behind what WPF did back in .NET 3.5 when it was released, as was Silverlight until version 5 and as is Windows Phone's implementation.
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If you had read the book properly, and this goes back to his original version which predates Silverlight, he has a whole chapter devoted to the history. Perhaps you might want to revisit your original answer and cover what the original motivation of WPF was. Of course, I've only been doing WPF since 2008 and was one of the reviewers for his later books, as well as being friends with several members of that team so what do I know about their original motivation.
Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote:
based on the same idea of WPF...
And there's the kicker - based on the same idea, not developed alongside. Oh, and the WinRT implementation is still way behind what WPF did back in .NET 3.5 when it was released, as was Silverlight until version 5 and as is Windows Phone's implementation.
Clearly we read different editions (mine is WPF 4 + Silverlight) - but you right, the original goal does not included as much as Web (and for sure WinRT much later, there was no argument there, I was merely pointing out the continuity I see there)...
Quote:
Microsoft recognized that something brand new was needed that escaped the limitations of GDI+ and USER yet provided the kind of productivity that people enjoy with frameworks like Windows Forms. And with the continual rise of cross-platform applications based on HTML and JavaScript, Windows desperately needed a technology that’s as fun and easy to use as these, yet with the power to exploit the capabilities of the local computer. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the answer for software developers and graphic designers who want to create modern user experiences without having to master several difficult technologies. Although “Presentation” sounds like a lofty term for what I would simply call a user interface, it’s probably more appropriate for describing the higher level of visual polish that’s expected of today’s applications and the wide range of functionality included in WPF!
It seems a paragraph from the original (as Silverlight comes some pages later)... I also found it interesting (you just made me re-read parts of that book :))
Quote:
In short, WPF aims to combine the best attributes of systems such as DirectX (3D and hardware acceleration), Windows Forms (developer productivity), Adobe Flash (powerful animation support), and HTML (declarative markup).
Some one may add this book to CP's recommendations (CM started it some time ago), as it explains much about the ideas behind WPF...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Ahhh, I'd read the OP's screed as it only starting in a browser, as per Silverlight (hence the bit about Flash)
PB 369,783 wrote:
I just find him very unlikeable, and I think the way he looks like a prettier version of his Mum is very disturbing.[^]
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I feel the same way about ASPX, Javascript, CSS and MVC, probably for the same reasons, outside my comfort zone. Having said that I was fiddling with a winforms app in vs2013 and they have changed to DataRow construction and I was completely lost. Did not help that I was trying to show a young kids the basics on a strange machine. bloody embarrassing!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt :)
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Hi, Having worked with Various Micrsoft programming languages for many years, now I am dabbling into WPF for a project. I don't know a single bit about it, but as I started to read the manual, I got confused as to what is the real purpose of WPF? Why would you put your UI in painful XML tags when you can use Windows forms? If it were to separate UI completely with the behaviour, aren't the developers doing that already with clean layering architecture with the forms based applications? and why somebody would like to load a desktop application on a browser? If its a browser based application, it should be developed in ASP.NET. Thanks,
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Clearly we read different editions (mine is WPF 4 + Silverlight) - but you right, the original goal does not included as much as Web (and for sure WinRT much later, there was no argument there, I was merely pointing out the continuity I see there)...
Quote:
Microsoft recognized that something brand new was needed that escaped the limitations of GDI+ and USER yet provided the kind of productivity that people enjoy with frameworks like Windows Forms. And with the continual rise of cross-platform applications based on HTML and JavaScript, Windows desperately needed a technology that’s as fun and easy to use as these, yet with the power to exploit the capabilities of the local computer. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the answer for software developers and graphic designers who want to create modern user experiences without having to master several difficult technologies. Although “Presentation” sounds like a lofty term for what I would simply call a user interface, it’s probably more appropriate for describing the higher level of visual polish that’s expected of today’s applications and the wide range of functionality included in WPF!
It seems a paragraph from the original (as Silverlight comes some pages later)... I also found it interesting (you just made me re-read parts of that book :))
Quote:
In short, WPF aims to combine the best attributes of systems such as DirectX (3D and hardware acceleration), Windows Forms (developer productivity), Adobe Flash (powerful animation support), and HTML (declarative markup).
Some one may add this book to CP's recommendations (CM started it some time ago), as it explains much about the ideas behind WPF...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
If you have the WPF 4 version, take a look at the inside front cover. And yes, I started Nathan's book at the 3.5 release.
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preaa wrote:
If it were to separate UI completely with the behaviour, aren't the developers doing that already with clean layering architecture with the forms based applications?
No they aren't. Have you seen how hard it is to get a complete break and clean layering going in Windows Forms?
preaa wrote:
and why somebody would like to load a desktop application on a browser? If its a browser based application, it should be developed in ASP.NET
Again no. There are much better alternatives to the bloat that is ASP.NET for web based applications, unless you are talking about ASP MVC. You are looking at the state of the world as it exists now, not back in 2003 when WPF was heavily under development. Back then, doing fancy UIs in ASP.NET was extremely limited. The reason that WPF was invented, and this is from the team that wrote it in the first place, was because Microsoft wanted to provide developers to create the types of applications that people were used to seeing in films and TV shows, but which were not easily achievable in the technologies that were around at the time such as Windows Forms and MFC. They offered several advances over these technologies, including breaking away from using GDI/GDI+ for rendering, display independence, a sophisticated binding mechanism, animation, markup extensions, dependency properties and so on. I would suggest that you start by reading Adam Nathan's excellent WPF Unleashed, as well as articles by Josh Smith, Sacha Barber, Dan Vaughan, Karl Shifflett, Jesse Liberty and so on.
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
he types of applications that people were used to seeing in films and TV shows
Bloody Minority Report has got a lot to answer for!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Hi, Having worked with Various Micrsoft programming languages for many years, now I am dabbling into WPF for a project. I don't know a single bit about it, but as I started to read the manual, I got confused as to what is the real purpose of WPF? Why would you put your UI in painful XML tags when you can use Windows forms? If it were to separate UI completely with the behaviour, aren't the developers doing that already with clean layering architecture with the forms based applications? and why somebody would like to load a desktop application on a browser? If its a browser based application, it should be developed in ASP.NET. Thanks,
WPF - Why Program Functionally...need I say more?
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I feel the same way about ASPX, Javascript, CSS and MVC, probably for the same reasons, outside my comfort zone. Having said that I was fiddling with a winforms app in vs2013 and they have changed to DataRow construction and I was completely lost. Did not help that I was trying to show a young kids the basics on a strange machine. bloody embarrassing!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
Mycroft Holmes wrote:
I was fiddling with a winforms app in vs2013 and they have changed to DataRow construction and I was completely lost.
If you keep fiddling, you will go blind. ;) Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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Clearly we read different editions (mine is WPF 4 + Silverlight) - but you right, the original goal does not included as much as Web (and for sure WinRT much later, there was no argument there, I was merely pointing out the continuity I see there)...
Quote:
Microsoft recognized that something brand new was needed that escaped the limitations of GDI+ and USER yet provided the kind of productivity that people enjoy with frameworks like Windows Forms. And with the continual rise of cross-platform applications based on HTML and JavaScript, Windows desperately needed a technology that’s as fun and easy to use as these, yet with the power to exploit the capabilities of the local computer. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the answer for software developers and graphic designers who want to create modern user experiences without having to master several difficult technologies. Although “Presentation” sounds like a lofty term for what I would simply call a user interface, it’s probably more appropriate for describing the higher level of visual polish that’s expected of today’s applications and the wide range of functionality included in WPF!
It seems a paragraph from the original (as Silverlight comes some pages later)... I also found it interesting (you just made me re-read parts of that book :))
Quote:
In short, WPF aims to combine the best attributes of systems such as DirectX (3D and hardware acceleration), Windows Forms (developer productivity), Adobe Flash (powerful animation support), and HTML (declarative markup).
Some one may add this book to CP's recommendations (CM started it some time ago), as it explains much about the ideas behind WPF...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is. (V)
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Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter wrote:
Windows desperately needed a technology that’s as fun and easy to use as these...
They failed there then.
Now with added Silverfish. WTF? :zzz:
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Well thanks a lot again for the kind replies.. I think I should look at Windows RT as well along with WPF.. Best
WPF has the richest xaml-based feature set. Silverlight was pretty much a stripped down version of WPF. WinRT xaml looks like a stripped down version of silverlight ("looks like", because I haven't done anything worthwhile in it yet, it's just first impressions). In any case, as long as you get the xaml principles down along with MVVM, you'll be up and running on all xaml platforms in no time. The learning curve can be quite steap though, it's a lot to take in at first. But it's real fun imo.
