I am currently writing LOB in WPF.. Some background before I make my point.





http://blogs.msdn.com/jaimer/archive/2007/12/18/wpflob.aspx





http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=455





http://blogs.msdn.com/jaimer/pages/WPFLobWhy.aspx





http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/2007/10/wpf-and-windows-forms-integration.html





My point.





"WPF LOB is really only going to take off when Microsoft invest heavily in bringing the same components that you find straight out of the box in Windows Forms."





Hold on: Have you not read Daniel Moths intergration bit. Yep. See link above. But it feels like a hack..Sorry it is not a typical hack but it feels like one. It feels like MS wanted to release this technology but have not finished all the components yet, lets put a hack in place so that nobody can complain about it. It makes me very nervous about using a bit technology that needs this type of component in it.. Sorry MS you could not win either way on this one "Dammed if you do dammed if you don't ."





Hold on: You can make amazing interfaces! Yes nobody can disagree with that one, but making basic interfaces takes a long time. Buttons for example require resizing frequently you end up putting them out of size frequently.. Yes I know you should use themes and styles. But your average developer wants straight out of the box a standard set. Standards are good, yes you can enforce them yourself it just take Time.. Time is money. It also slows down the development of building a mock up test application, to sell the idea at the start of project. I presently build them in Windows Forms, but to be honest that should be WPF.





WPF should be the future of ALL windows development it is a very sexy bit of technology but it requires probably a new version of VS to get it to the point where your average LOB developer is actually going to look to commit to it seriously. The time investment at the moment is huge, versus Win Forms development. Window Forms should really not have a place going forward, MS just need to smooth the bumps that are in the way and deliver a little more on standards and controls.

Anyway with the frustrating aside and my moan. I have decided to publish as much of my control kit as possible over the next couple of months. Hopefully that will help either developers close the time gap needed to get going. I will post more on this soon, and maybe even split it off in a dedicated site for the community.

Just reading Scott Gu posting
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/19/net-3-5-client-product-roadmap.aspx

It outlines some of the major improvements that they are trying to make.
This sentence is music to my ears..

"We’ll also be delivering improvements that enable a more integrated application install experience for both MSI and ClickOnce based solutions, and support a more consumer friendly user experience that is easy to build."

Were do I sign to get onboard on this one.. I have crossed my toes they don't drop this idea. It is essential to pushing WPF out and making Winform deployment smoother than it is at the moment . I deploy one application at the moment by ClickOnce and I can tell you it is seriously painful in places..

Looking forward though to the changes.