WPF - Would you put your money on it?

[kjetilk]

There's no doubt there's a lot of confusion around the future of WPF
in the community today. How much effort is Microsoft putting into it?
Is Silverlight and HTML5 getting all the funding? etc, etc.

With Scott Barnes initiative over at FixWPF.org and the thread here at
http://groups.google.com/group/ui-binders/browse_thread/thread/a3ea30e3442445c7/652d9a6c0583e4c5#652d9a6c0583e4c5,
there's finally some open and sound discussions around it.

However, the reason I open this thread is as simple as this: If it
were YOUR money you invested into building an app, train your
developers on a new platform, learning all the tools, and all the risk
coming with betting on a 'new' UI platform: Would you bet those money
on WPF?

The backstage here being that you're targeting users on the Windows
platform and your development teams are familiar with .Net (C#/VB) or C
++, which in practice means choosing between WPF, WinForms, MFC,
SilverLight, or ASP.Net if you're on the Microsoft stack.

And yes, off course the answer is always 'it depends'. But I'm not
asking what you would advise others to do. I'm asking what would YOU
choose?

My bet is currently on WPF and the main reasoning is this; Microsoft
needs a UI platform that runs natively on Windows. At least for the
next 5-10 years, I cannot see how Microsoft themselves would manage to
take the UI of the Windows OS to the next level without heavily
investing in WPF. Would they make the Control Panel and it's dialog
boxes run on Silverlight out-of-the browser? Or would they put
everything inside a browser component and develop them as web pages?
Or would the make it run natively on Windows, meaning choosing between
MFC, WinForms and WPF?

Personally I would like to believe that they'll go for option 3. And
if they do I can't see why they would choose to do it in MFC or
WinForms.

So my number one reason for betting on WPF is that Microsoft will need
to use it more and more themselves going further with their OS.

But I could be wrong off course. So what's your take on it?

[ArielBH]

Hey kjetilk,
Indeed there is a lot of confusion around WPF and SL and HTML5
altogether, but you are wrong on the assessment that WPF is vital for
Windows, it is not, ever since since the Lognhorn (Vista) Fiasco,
Windows Devision will not drive towards dependence on WPF or anything
else that is on the .Net Framework.
Regarding this issue, my bet is on HTML5 or plain MFC/native UI
development, on that matter I'm very curious about Project Hilo
(http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/developers/archive/2010/06/08/
introducing-project-hilo.aspx) wondering whether it will really take
off, so far I didn't ever get a direct answer to the question whether
it will support DataBinding.

But it doesn't mean Silverlight is dead, I believe that as long as
Scott Guthrie is pulling the strings Silverlight will keep on going,
WPF on that matter is a different story.
I hope that in this MVP Summit (happening this week) we will get road
map and strategy and just vague "Everything is OK" messages like we
got after the Muglia incident.
http://groups.google.com/group/wpf-disciples/browse_thread/thread/1df83c587e95d7d8

Ariel

On Feb 24, 9:42 am, kjetilk <kjetil.klaus...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There's no doubt there's a lot of confusion around the future of WPF
> in the community today. How much effort is Microsoft putting into it?
> Is Silverlight and HTML5 getting all the funding? etc, etc.
>

> With Scott Barnes initiative over at FixWPF.org and the thread here athttp://groups.google.com/group/ui-binders/browse_thread/thread/a3ea30...,