I can't resist. My first machine was a Commodore Vic-20... with 3.5K of user RAM and built in BASIC.

I make them myself. If you want custom work just message me. I'm a UI designer for a game software company. ;P

Couldn't resist:

void EnableFromValue(bool enabled)
{
FirstControl.Enabled = enabled;
SecondControl.Enabled = enabled;
...
}

WPF has that nice "Device Independent Pixel" feature that WinForms lack, so location isn't as readily predictable as a developer would like (this was brought elsewhere in these forums: What is the big deal with WPF[^]) Not sure why you included VS in your short list, but a data entry application is somewhere we would agree. Check out that article link. Found it after my last posting in this thread.

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

So, you can't design a WinForm and see the results without compiling/testing/debugging? How is it mission-critical to see EACH instance of a textbox or button you create?

Because it's not just the textbox or button, but its appearance, location, etc. I'm a game UI designer and the aesthetics often matter as much as the function. If you want "plain vanilla" appearance and function then the usual cycle is shortened as there isn't much new - but you aren't being very creative.

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

It is not a feeling; compare it to WinForms and it is immature. The XAML-designer ate roughly 20Gb of my harddisk before crashing the IDE. You run into all kinds of crap that has already been solved before.

Agreed. That's the bad thing about Microsoft. They start off with some wonderful technologies that look promising and then just let them die. And of course typically never let them completely mature in the first place. WinForms has had a LOT of developer feedback. For the longest time it was the only game in town and it's what everyone got used to. XAML/WPF comes along and there has been resistance to learning a new paradigm (as if that's a surprise!) even when some things have really needed to be overhauled. A case in point. Even with XAML/WPF I'm presently still stuck with the the standard file load/save/print dialogues - Microsoft (last I knew) never developed versions for the framework. The code is ancient and doesn't seem to grasp asynchronous operations very well. The result? I've seen some weird hangs just saving several image files to a USB drive. ...What on earth were you doing that used 20GB? Hell, I've run XAML on an old XP machine with VS 2010 and a HDD of less the 20GB in size. Never had the IDE crash. I had it give up on some malformed XAML, but never had to go as far what's happened to you.

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

No, it doesn't.

For me it does, which is what I meant.

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

Some people/companies/governments prefer recognizable, consistent UI's, and will not pay to have some hardware-accelerated animations and gradients. They'll pay to not have those.

Yep, those are the people who have stubbornly stuck to Internet Explorer 6, Windows XP, etc. If they are willing to pay for it, I'll give it to them. I don't need animations or gradie

It's not WPF that attracts me to the methodology, but XAML. The ability to see immediate results for my UI design is mission critical. The code-compile-test-debug-compile-test cycle is a major slowdown. But XAML does have that unfinished feel. Things you would think would be part of the markup system, aren't, it omits standard elements, etc. An example of the last one is the lack of 3D primitives (sphere, torus). And the documentation is quite poor. And of course the solid entanglement with the Microsoft platform that currently exists is what stopped the Mono project from trying to import things over. But given a choice of WinForms vs. XAML? XAML/WPF wins every time (at least on Windows platforms).

Ooh! Bookmarked. Thanks for that link.