Desktop: WinForms, WPF, UWA
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Recently, I had an interesting discussion with another CPer who took umbrage with my recent article which summarized a shift from WinForms directly to UWA/UWP XAML and ignored WPF XAML. I mentioned that WPF was indeed ignored by vast numbers of devs and that no shop I've worked in ever paid it more than scant attention. I also mentioned that many devs seemed to (perhaps improperly) connect WPF with Silverlight and MS killed Silverlight in the quiet of the night and many devs never felt much motivation to go to WPF. Not Reviving A Debate Or Anything Against WPF-minded CPer Of course, WPF is used all around, I'm sure. This post is not an attempt to revive a debate that ended up being a very good discussion. I think the CPer was definitely correct on many things he said. My point is the following (and I think it is interesting): Trying To Find XAML Control Solutions: Difficult Today, I was looking for a way to make sure my UWA (XAML-based) app's ListView would show the last selected item even when it lost focus -- keep it highlighted. Could Only Find WinForms Answers As I searched I could find nothing but WinForms answers about how to do that. Those answers are like 7 years old. Should Be Very Simple and Is In WinForms The answer should be very simple. WinForms Answer : In WinForms the answer is set the HideSelected property to false. This is something that is an obvious functionality in a ListView. So obvious that WinForms provided a property. Not so in XAML. Hmmm... Disclaimer Yes, I am a newbie to XAML and someone will surely post the answer to how to do this in XAML as soon as I post. Feels Like Microsoft Never Fully Developed XAML Either This kind of thing makes me feel like Microsoft never carried out the XAML development all the way either. Just thought it was very interesting. How about you? EDIT I also own this book Universal Windows Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed [
You can create your own controls if you need to.. WPF: how to make the selection item highlight color stay in the listBox even the listBox control loses the fucus?[^] Keeping the Selected Item Selected When Changing a ListView’s ItemsSource | Ben Gribaudo[^]
Caveat Emptor. "Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
MS has been working to bring the ability to run Win32 apps/WPF apps/Win Forms, etc, to run as appx so they can be downloaded from the app store.
Now that is an interesting situation. So they are undercutting their own technology future, because doing that means even fewer (if fewer is possible) will take up UWP.
There are many reasons for this. Here are a few: 1. It's something that's of interest to enterprises because they can offload many of their apps to use this technology without rewriting; it makes distribution easier for them if they run their own enterprise version of the Microsoft AppStore (this is something I know that businesses are keen on). 2. It opens up the opportunity for Microsoft to vastly increase the amount of applications it can deliver from the app store (as well as increasing the target devices if they ever do manage to get a mobile version out the door). 3. As Microsoft charge a fee for serving apps from the app store, this increase gives them an opportunity to tap into a very lucrative market here.
This space for rent
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Recently, I had an interesting discussion with another CPer who took umbrage with my recent article which summarized a shift from WinForms directly to UWA/UWP XAML and ignored WPF XAML. I mentioned that WPF was indeed ignored by vast numbers of devs and that no shop I've worked in ever paid it more than scant attention. I also mentioned that many devs seemed to (perhaps improperly) connect WPF with Silverlight and MS killed Silverlight in the quiet of the night and many devs never felt much motivation to go to WPF. Not Reviving A Debate Or Anything Against WPF-minded CPer Of course, WPF is used all around, I'm sure. This post is not an attempt to revive a debate that ended up being a very good discussion. I think the CPer was definitely correct on many things he said. My point is the following (and I think it is interesting): Trying To Find XAML Control Solutions: Difficult Today, I was looking for a way to make sure my UWA (XAML-based) app's ListView would show the last selected item even when it lost focus -- keep it highlighted. Could Only Find WinForms Answers As I searched I could find nothing but WinForms answers about how to do that. Those answers are like 7 years old. Should Be Very Simple and Is In WinForms The answer should be very simple. WinForms Answer : In WinForms the answer is set the HideSelected property to false. This is something that is an obvious functionality in a ListView. So obvious that WinForms provided a property. Not so in XAML. Hmmm... Disclaimer Yes, I am a newbie to XAML and someone will surely post the answer to how to do this in XAML as soon as I post. Feels Like Microsoft Never Fully Developed XAML Either This kind of thing makes me feel like Microsoft never carried out the XAML development all the way either. Just thought it was very interesting. How about you? EDIT I also own this book Universal Windows Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed [
I have used WPF outside on my personal projects and as has been said before WPF makes the simple complicated and the complicated simple. My experience is that it's a bit like doing web development - it can be a real PITA but when done right gives you something nice to look at... and that's pretty much what it comes down to - you can create 'nice' custom controls and it encourages loose coupling of the data and the UI.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Recently, I had an interesting discussion with another CPer who took umbrage with my recent article which summarized a shift from WinForms directly to UWA/UWP XAML and ignored WPF XAML. I mentioned that WPF was indeed ignored by vast numbers of devs and that no shop I've worked in ever paid it more than scant attention. I also mentioned that many devs seemed to (perhaps improperly) connect WPF with Silverlight and MS killed Silverlight in the quiet of the night and many devs never felt much motivation to go to WPF. Not Reviving A Debate Or Anything Against WPF-minded CPer Of course, WPF is used all around, I'm sure. This post is not an attempt to revive a debate that ended up being a very good discussion. I think the CPer was definitely correct on many things he said. My point is the following (and I think it is interesting): Trying To Find XAML Control Solutions: Difficult Today, I was looking for a way to make sure my UWA (XAML-based) app's ListView would show the last selected item even when it lost focus -- keep it highlighted. Could Only Find WinForms Answers As I searched I could find nothing but WinForms answers about how to do that. Those answers are like 7 years old. Should Be Very Simple and Is In WinForms The answer should be very simple. WinForms Answer : In WinForms the answer is set the HideSelected property to false. This is something that is an obvious functionality in a ListView. So obvious that WinForms provided a property. Not so in XAML. Hmmm... Disclaimer Yes, I am a newbie to XAML and someone will surely post the answer to how to do this in XAML as soon as I post. Feels Like Microsoft Never Fully Developed XAML Either This kind of thing makes me feel like Microsoft never carried out the XAML development all the way either. Just thought it was very interesting. How about you? EDIT I also own this book Universal Windows Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed [
raddevus wrote:
I was looking for a way to make sure my UWA (XAML-based) app's ListView would show the last selected item even when it lost focus
I'm not well versed in UWA matters but in WPF using a behavior would be one route you could take. Maybe not exactly what you're trying to achieve, but when working on a SignalR-WPF chat application I needed new items added to an
ItemsControlto scroll into view, which is not the default behavior of theItemsControl. I wrote a behavior to achieve this, which you can look at here: [SignalChat: WPF & SignalR Chat Application](https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1181555/SignalChat-WPF-SignalR-Chat-Application)."As beings of finite lifespan, our contributions to the sum of human knowledge is one of the greatest endeavors we can undertake and one of the defining characteristics of humanity itself"
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Really like your summary of the situation because that is my experience too. I've been using those old controls since Win3.1 -- okay Win95 --- okay I guess they get updated once in a while but it seems like those are the same controls we've been working with since Win95 and you're right there is plenty about them that is bad / crufty / cracked. But, since we've been working with them for 20 years we know how to get around those things. I remember about the time Vista released I started messing around with WPF / XAML and wasn't that impressed seemed like a bunch of stuff to learn to draw my own controls when I could more easily drop a windows treeview on a WinForm app and be done. I'm no graphic artist so I let the TreeView be a TreeView. Then the Silverlight debacle and all the rest just as you said. Now Microsoft does the head-fake to UWP. I start learning XAML again and it is pretty cool. But then you go to look for these things that must surely be easy even in XAML since people have been doing WPF / XAML, right? But you can't find the answers? It's all just crazy. EDIT Also, it is very interesting that the author changed that book's name to Building Windows 10 Apps from the previous name of Universal Windows Apps. Makes me feel like Microsoft whispered in his ear something like, "Uh, we're backing off the whole UWP/UWA thing, so..." ugh!
Just my $.02: WinForms are really easy. And I mean, REALLY easy, I've enjoyed using them for years. The click for me, when going to WPF, is: 4K monitors. If your resolution is high-res (such as, for 4K), WinForms are taking a really big fall. About close to 2 years ago, I got a laptop with 4K resolution. At this point, things starting to go downfall. What you see in the VS designer, is not what you will see visually. Some of the controls you create will look incredibly messy. The
AutoScaleMode: if you go withFont, it will look horrible. If you go withDpi, sometimes it's decent, sometimes not - what I've found is that most of the time, as long as I keep the form/control under 1900x1080, it's ok; and as a side-note, never go withNone. Now, add to that theAnchorproperty - which I used heavily to properly align controls. It seldom works on high resolution monitors. What you end up is pretty much "try to see if it works". And "if" it works, you need to then test at other resolutions. So, long story short, as monitors get higher and higher res, WinForms is losing ground. Now, onto WPF - really steep learning curve, but the results can be amazing. A lot of things will once again be "trial and error" at first, but once you get the hang of it, and if you have some pretty fancy UI in mind, WPF can definitely help you there. That, and Resharper :D Best, John-- Phot-Awe - Find the Photos you Love - FAST!
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
MS has been working to bring the ability to run Win32 apps/WPF apps/Win Forms, etc, to run as appx so they can be downloaded from the app store.
Now that is an interesting situation. So they are undercutting their own technology future, because doing that means even fewer (if fewer is possible) will take up UWP.
WPF and UWP are, one way or another, getting closer together with the formulation of XAML Standard. In a year or so, this will generalize XAML to the point that UWP, WPF, Xamarin.Forms (and Unity3D assets like NoesisGUI) will all work with the same basic XAML. Add that to the steady evolution of WebAssembly, and you'll end up with local HTML clients running C# and XAML somewhere around Q4/2018-Q1/2019.. if nothing goes horribly wrong. My money is on UWP and WPF devs eventually migrating to HTML5/electron running C# with some iteration of XAML Standard. At that point, the boundaries between web and desktop apps will be gone, and everything else can be deprecated. :cool:
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Recently, I had an interesting discussion with another CPer who took umbrage with my recent article which summarized a shift from WinForms directly to UWA/UWP XAML and ignored WPF XAML. I mentioned that WPF was indeed ignored by vast numbers of devs and that no shop I've worked in ever paid it more than scant attention. I also mentioned that many devs seemed to (perhaps improperly) connect WPF with Silverlight and MS killed Silverlight in the quiet of the night and many devs never felt much motivation to go to WPF. Not Reviving A Debate Or Anything Against WPF-minded CPer Of course, WPF is used all around, I'm sure. This post is not an attempt to revive a debate that ended up being a very good discussion. I think the CPer was definitely correct on many things he said. My point is the following (and I think it is interesting): Trying To Find XAML Control Solutions: Difficult Today, I was looking for a way to make sure my UWA (XAML-based) app's ListView would show the last selected item even when it lost focus -- keep it highlighted. Could Only Find WinForms Answers As I searched I could find nothing but WinForms answers about how to do that. Those answers are like 7 years old. Should Be Very Simple and Is In WinForms The answer should be very simple. WinForms Answer : In WinForms the answer is set the HideSelected property to false. This is something that is an obvious functionality in a ListView. So obvious that WinForms provided a property. Not so in XAML. Hmmm... Disclaimer Yes, I am a newbie to XAML and someone will surely post the answer to how to do this in XAML as soon as I post. Feels Like Microsoft Never Fully Developed XAML Either This kind of thing makes me feel like Microsoft never carried out the XAML development all the way either. Just thought it was very interesting. How about you? EDIT I also own this book Universal Windows Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed [
We started to work with WPF and MVVM years ago and I am very astonished that people still use WinForms. WPF/MVVM really does everything we need (for our standard product for company users). And I never found it difficult to get other developers' advice and examples for WPF. We also have some UPW apps in the store, but I cannot find companies working with them. Btw, I understood, that UWP is based on .Net Core and therefore will survive, when the Win32 kernel will die.
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Recently, I had an interesting discussion with another CPer who took umbrage with my recent article which summarized a shift from WinForms directly to UWA/UWP XAML and ignored WPF XAML. I mentioned that WPF was indeed ignored by vast numbers of devs and that no shop I've worked in ever paid it more than scant attention. I also mentioned that many devs seemed to (perhaps improperly) connect WPF with Silverlight and MS killed Silverlight in the quiet of the night and many devs never felt much motivation to go to WPF. Not Reviving A Debate Or Anything Against WPF-minded CPer Of course, WPF is used all around, I'm sure. This post is not an attempt to revive a debate that ended up being a very good discussion. I think the CPer was definitely correct on many things he said. My point is the following (and I think it is interesting): Trying To Find XAML Control Solutions: Difficult Today, I was looking for a way to make sure my UWA (XAML-based) app's ListView would show the last selected item even when it lost focus -- keep it highlighted. Could Only Find WinForms Answers As I searched I could find nothing but WinForms answers about how to do that. Those answers are like 7 years old. Should Be Very Simple and Is In WinForms The answer should be very simple. WinForms Answer : In WinForms the answer is set the HideSelected property to false. This is something that is an obvious functionality in a ListView. So obvious that WinForms provided a property. Not so in XAML. Hmmm... Disclaimer Yes, I am a newbie to XAML and someone will surely post the answer to how to do this in XAML as soon as I post. Feels Like Microsoft Never Fully Developed XAML Either This kind of thing makes me feel like Microsoft never carried out the XAML development all the way either. Just thought it was very interesting. How about you? EDIT I also own this book Universal Windows Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed [
raddevus wrote:
Just thought it was very interesting. How about you?
I'd rather deal with the quirks of HTML than WPF, which I won't tell you what it reminds me of every time I try to use it. Think Alabama voters and why they don't vote Democratic (usually.)
Latest Article - Class-less Coding - Minimalist C# and Why F# and Function Programming Has Some Advantages Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
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Mycroft Holmes wrote:
what benefit is there to UWP
There is very little benefit, really. And I think many people feel this way. The benefits that do exist are indirect. They are things like: 1. Only UWP apps will be admitted to the Windows Store. 2. Getting into the Windows Store makes it a bit easier (for indie devs) to deploy their apps to the population of Win10 users. 3. Uh...Microsoft is telling us that Win10 is the future and that UWP is _The Way_ to develop apps for that future (Win10). :| 4. I'm now attempting to make up more benefits...think...think... :rolleyes: Oh, yeah, WinForm technology is old and crufty and it is really bad for MVC (the pattern, not the microsoft thing) since so many of the Concerns are tied together in WinForms. So XAML does better binding and UWP is XAML based.
raddevus wrote:
it is really bad for MVC (the pattern, not the microsoft thing)
Really? Simply use the forms or controls as views and write yourself some nice baseclasses for the controllers (or presenters in my case). To completely get rid of the forms concept, you may also need some concept of a workspace. Easy as pie and I have ported code from ASP .Net web forms (a hack, I must admit) to WinForms, from there to WPF and from there to my own UI in XNA (now MonoGame).
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
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I'm curious, with the demise of yet another MS technology, the windows phone, what benefit is there to UWP. You have to remember winforms is the most mature windows development platform, I'd be astonished if there are things in there that have not made it into WPF yet. I pray to the great Ghu that those bastards at MS don't deprecate WPF. Yes I'm still bitter about the demise of Silverlight.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
Mycroft Holmes wrote:
what benefit is there to UWP
The "U" in UWP to me says it all: Universal. One codebase that runs on desktops, mobile (or at least used to :laugh: ), tablets, Xbox, SurfaceHub, HoloLens, and IoT devices. That may not be attractive to all developers or for all use cases, but from my admittedly narrow understanding it opens up some pretty slick possibilities without the effort it takes to get other approaches working on multiple platforms. Full disclosure: I'm not a developer but I am a Microsoft employee. Flame on. ;P
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raddevus wrote:
Just thought it was very interesting. How about you?
I'd rather deal with the quirks of HTML than WPF, which I won't tell you what it reminds me of every time I try to use it. Think Alabama voters and why they don't vote Democratic (usually.)
Latest Article - Class-less Coding - Minimalist C# and Why F# and Function Programming Has Some Advantages Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
:laugh: Is that an analogy for inbred? :-)
Nish Nishant Consultant Software Architect Ganymede Software Solutions LLC www.ganymedesoftwaresolutions.com
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You can create your own controls if you need to.. WPF: how to make the selection item highlight color stay in the listBox even the listBox control loses the fucus?[^] Keeping the Selected Item Selected When Changing a ListView’s ItemsSource | Ben Gribaudo[^]
Caveat Emptor. "Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
abmv wrote:
You can create your own controls if you need to..
That is good...I know I should feel like that is good. But when you are spoiled by WinForms development and you drag and drop the control and it "Just works" it's difficult to be excited by that. :)
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There are many reasons for this. Here are a few: 1. It's something that's of interest to enterprises because they can offload many of their apps to use this technology without rewriting; it makes distribution easier for them if they run their own enterprise version of the Microsoft AppStore (this is something I know that businesses are keen on). 2. It opens up the opportunity for Microsoft to vastly increase the amount of applications it can deliver from the app store (as well as increasing the target devices if they ever do manage to get a mobile version out the door). 3. As Microsoft charge a fee for serving apps from the app store, this increase gives them an opportunity to tap into a very lucrative market here.
This space for rent
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I have used WPF outside on my personal projects and as has been said before WPF makes the simple complicated and the complicated simple. My experience is that it's a bit like doing web development - it can be a real PITA but when done right gives you something nice to look at... and that's pretty much what it comes down to - you can create 'nice' custom controls and it encourages loose coupling of the data and the UI.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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raddevus wrote:
I was looking for a way to make sure my UWA (XAML-based) app's ListView would show the last selected item even when it lost focus
I'm not well versed in UWA matters but in WPF using a behavior would be one route you could take. Maybe not exactly what you're trying to achieve, but when working on a SignalR-WPF chat application I needed new items added to an
ItemsControlto scroll into view, which is not the default behavior of theItemsControl. I wrote a behavior to achieve this, which you can look at here: [SignalChat: WPF & SignalR Chat Application](https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1181555/SignalChat-WPF-SignalR-Chat-Application)."As beings of finite lifespan, our contributions to the sum of human knowledge is one of the greatest endeavors we can undertake and one of the defining characteristics of humanity itself"
That's a very nice article and a nice explanation of that behavior. I will look at that more closely. I was wondering if it would be a behavior which I find interesting since it feels like this simple thing takes a bit more processing power -- observing an event, instead of the thing just getting set and forgetting about it. Thanks very much. :thumbsup:
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Just my $.02: WinForms are really easy. And I mean, REALLY easy, I've enjoyed using them for years. The click for me, when going to WPF, is: 4K monitors. If your resolution is high-res (such as, for 4K), WinForms are taking a really big fall. About close to 2 years ago, I got a laptop with 4K resolution. At this point, things starting to go downfall. What you see in the VS designer, is not what you will see visually. Some of the controls you create will look incredibly messy. The
AutoScaleMode: if you go withFont, it will look horrible. If you go withDpi, sometimes it's decent, sometimes not - what I've found is that most of the time, as long as I keep the form/control under 1900x1080, it's ok; and as a side-note, never go withNone. Now, add to that theAnchorproperty - which I used heavily to properly align controls. It seldom works on high resolution monitors. What you end up is pretty much "try to see if it works". And "if" it works, you need to then test at other resolutions. So, long story short, as monitors get higher and higher res, WinForms is losing ground. Now, onto WPF - really steep learning curve, but the results can be amazing. A lot of things will once again be "trial and error" at first, but once you get the hang of it, and if you have some pretty fancy UI in mind, WPF can definitely help you there. That, and Resharper :D Best, John-- Phot-Awe - Find the Photos you Love - FAST!
Great post and info.
John Torjo wrote:
Now, add to that the
Anchorproperty - which I used heavily to properly align controls. It seldom works on high resolution monitors.I suffered this problem with my winforms when the new higher resolution and wide screens came out.
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WPF and UWP are, one way or another, getting closer together with the formulation of XAML Standard. In a year or so, this will generalize XAML to the point that UWP, WPF, Xamarin.Forms (and Unity3D assets like NoesisGUI) will all work with the same basic XAML. Add that to the steady evolution of WebAssembly, and you'll end up with local HTML clients running C# and XAML somewhere around Q4/2018-Q1/2019.. if nothing goes horribly wrong. My money is on UWP and WPF devs eventually migrating to HTML5/electron running C# with some iteration of XAML Standard. At that point, the boundaries between web and desktop apps will be gone, and everything else can be deprecated. :cool:
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abmv wrote:
You can create your own controls if you need to..
That is good...I know I should feel like that is good. But when you are spoiled by WinForms development and you drag and drop the control and it "Just works" it's difficult to be excited by that. :)
Quote:
But when you are spoiled by WinForms development and you drag and drop the control and it "Just works" it's difficult to be excited by that.
I work in WinForms with a team that requires ease of maintenance over innovation. Being a 20+ yr. programmer, I have learned that getting deeper into whatever you are using generates more functionality than any shiny new tech you learn from scratch. That doesn't mean that a better way of building things is ignored, just that you learn to sift value gained vs effort spent.
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WinForms, or better, the Common Controls, are very underappreciated; it is a mature product. A standard that is not just available on Windows anymore, as WinForms work just as happily under Linux. I'm sure that WPF is better for graphics, as advertised. I build tools for people that work. They don't care about flashy, they care about reliability and predictability. I'm not paid for animated borders, but functionality - and will probably still be maintaining WinForms code by the time that our great overloads predicted that AI will write code.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
I build tools for people that work. They don't care about flashy, they care about reliability and predictability. I'm not paid for animated borders, but functionality - and will probably still be maintaining WinForms code by the time that our great overloads predicted that AI will write code.
Absolutely agree. I’ve played with some of the newer GUI technologies myself and keep finding that the mature WinForms technology is the way to go. It might not be considered “flashy” but sure is reliable and gets the job DONE.
If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur! - Red Adair
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Recently, I had an interesting discussion with another CPer who took umbrage with my recent article which summarized a shift from WinForms directly to UWA/UWP XAML and ignored WPF XAML. I mentioned that WPF was indeed ignored by vast numbers of devs and that no shop I've worked in ever paid it more than scant attention. I also mentioned that many devs seemed to (perhaps improperly) connect WPF with Silverlight and MS killed Silverlight in the quiet of the night and many devs never felt much motivation to go to WPF. Not Reviving A Debate Or Anything Against WPF-minded CPer Of course, WPF is used all around, I'm sure. This post is not an attempt to revive a debate that ended up being a very good discussion. I think the CPer was definitely correct on many things he said. My point is the following (and I think it is interesting): Trying To Find XAML Control Solutions: Difficult Today, I was looking for a way to make sure my UWA (XAML-based) app's ListView would show the last selected item even when it lost focus -- keep it highlighted. Could Only Find WinForms Answers As I searched I could find nothing but WinForms answers about how to do that. Those answers are like 7 years old. Should Be Very Simple and Is In WinForms The answer should be very simple. WinForms Answer : In WinForms the answer is set the HideSelected property to false. This is something that is an obvious functionality in a ListView. So obvious that WinForms provided a property. Not so in XAML. Hmmm... Disclaimer Yes, I am a newbie to XAML and someone will surely post the answer to how to do this in XAML as soon as I post. Feels Like Microsoft Never Fully Developed XAML Either This kind of thing makes me feel like Microsoft never carried out the XAML development all the way either. Just thought it was very interesting. How about you? EDIT I also own this book Universal Windows Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed [
I moved over to WPF a number of years ago simply because it had been touted as the technology to replace WinForms. To me WPF biggest advantage is that you can program it in similar style to that of an ASP.NET WebForms application. However, this is about its only real big advantage. WPF documentation is notoriously fragmented, and in some cases just downright bad. The complexity in developing a nice interface with WPF is terrible. And like ASP.NET MVC, forces developers to take on more complexity than is actually needed. Having to rework templates for a single control simply to have it work in a manner consistent with how you may want it to work with your application is beyond ridiculous. And the time-worn excuse that WPF is designed to be highly flexible as a result, is pathetic. On average, how many developers really require such flexibility. I have never seen a need for it in my career. The problem is that Microsoft is still trying to set trends instead of maintaining mature platforms that have made it very easy for developers to build and implement applications. As a result, you have gotten such implementations such as ASP.NET MVC, WPF (with all the complexity), and LocalDB (supposedly to replace SQL Server CE). Though I believe that WPF would have seen many more developers gravitate towards it had Microsoft streamlined its interface design with less complexity, they don't seem to be interested in refining this development environment. The form designer is still terrible in that you cannot accurately gauge where anything will actually show up as with the WinForms designer. My complaint about a lot of this can be encapsulated around LocalDB. Though an excellent refinement for SQL Server Express it can hardly be seen as a real replacement for SQL Server CE, probably the finest desktop database ever produced to date. SQL Server CE served a very specific purpose for those developers concentrating on the desktop. And as of a recent Microsoft survey (I believe), 46% of all development, despite all the hype is still for the desktop. With a few refinements, SQL Server CE would have been a snap to deploy and would have remained the desktop database of choice for a long time. Instead, with the new directions of Microsoft under Nadella, who like all technology idiots with a "vision", he is enamored with cloud computing, which was a major factor in SQL Server CE's demise. Instead of offering both, SQL Server CE is simply removed from the product lineup. At the very least it could have b
