Using WinForms and WPF in the same project

Neven Draskovic

Hey

I'm about to start a project (pretty large one) so I'm gathering informations that could help me decide which way to go. The application that should be the result of this project is intended for a large group of users that have very different levels of computer usage education. I'm mentioning this because one of requests is that the user interface is visually comprehensive and intuitive, but also "easy on the eye". For that reason, I started researching WPF. If I understand it correctly, WPF is intended for that purpose, to make the Windows applications more presentable. Since I never worked with WPF before, I need your advice. Is WPF enough on it's own (the project is an administration application, and as such, it contains many "business oriented" elements like reporting, single/multiple database communication/manipulation etc), or will I need to use WinForms too (or should I just stick to WinForms)? Also, are there some specific requirements concerning computer software/hardware (all of the computers that the application will be installed on are Windows based PC-s, but I'm not sure how much "machine power" do they have)?

Since this is my first project of this magnitude that I'm starting on my own (my superiors will help me, but they are not programmers, they can only explain the functionalities that need to be implemented), any advice would be more than welcome.
Thanks

2 Replies

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Neven Draskovic14y ago
Ok, I did some research and I don't think that WPF would bring anything that I cannot accomplish with WinForms (at least not for this project). I think I'll stick to WinForms, your comment only confirmed my opinion. As for the developing environment, I'll be using VS 2010 and most likely .NET 3.5. I already made some applications using that combination and they worked fine (sometimes I had to install some components on clients computer, but nothing out of the ordinary).

Thanks for your comment
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Vulpes14y ago
WPF is a more powerful platform for UI building than Windows Forms but it also has a much steeper learning curve due to the extra complexity and the need to learn XAML as well.

There are plenty of tools available for reporting and database whichever platform you use so I don't think that should be a factor in your decision.

If your experience is with Windows Forms, then I'd be inclined to stick with that as you can still build visually appealing applications. As WF has been around since .NET started in 2000/1 and hasn't changed all that much over the years, applications generally run fine on older machines and older versions of Windows. It will also still be supported in Windows 8.

However, if you're going to develop the application using .NET 4.0 (VS 2012), I'd suggest that the client machines should have at least a 1 GHz processor, 1 MB of RAM and be running Windows XP (SP3) or later.
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