I know Bas or someone posted recent suggesting a alternate WPF framework, does anyone know what it is? Are you happy with the metro look, and would you use it in a WPF forms over data application?

Our application is a code viewer and here we find that a "plain old (highly optimized) browser" is actually a great environment in terms of rendering performance and graphics flexibility. On the other hand, the more structured environment of .NET and WPF was appealing so we choose that. Had we been able to easily embed something like WebKit into the application we might have gone down that road.

There is a pretty sophisticated open-source WPF editor framework called Avalon - but in terms of flexibility with speed I still see the browser as being ahead of the game (but maybe I'm wrong, I'm still new to WPF). Obviously Visual Studio has a pretty performant WPF-based editor.

Since you've basically told nothing about what your little program does and what its UI requirements are, it's pretty hard to recommend anything.

As for using upper-case menu labels, I kind of fail to see the technical superiority of that but I guess you mean to imply that they were hip for doing it.

For simple applications I see nothing wrong with WinForms.

I wouldn't even venture to suggest that we don't support XP, because I know what the answer will be. The app is a typical forms over data application, and is the effort of 3 guys. Lots of forms and database stuff. Typically before people did what Office was doing i.e. use a Ribbon, but that is old fashioned now

1 hour ago, vesuvius wrote

I wouldn't even venture to suggest that we don't support XP, because I know what the answer will be.

You're not doing your company a service by encouraging them to stay on an OS that is not supported, is less secure and for which new products increasingly don't work on.

The longer you leave it, the harder the upgrade path will be.

That said, I've never upgraded past .NET 2.0 (never seen any features beyond that that I want), so I'm one to talk

7 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

That said, I've never upgraded past .NET 2.0 (never seen any features beyond that that I want), so I'm one to talk

No features that you want? Really? I'm having to do quite a bit of Java nowadays and coding without LINQ feels like trying to ice skate with sandpaper tied to your feet.

14 minutes ago, Sven Groot wrote

No features that you want? Really? I'm having to do quite a bit of Java nowadays and coding without LINQ feels like trying to ice skate with sandpaper tied to your feet.

I might not have LINQ, but that doesn't mean I don't have functional programming. I use my own library with functional extensions to IEnumerable<T> (which I wrote before LINQ was ever made), so I can still write stuff like System.IO.File.ReadAllLines("foo.txt").Map(x => int.Parse(x)).FIlter(y => y > 1).Sum(), and I can do it all from .NET 2.0.

I agree with you about Java though. So much stuff in Java is just really dumb. You can do it, but it's painful - like properties ( get_foo(), set_foo() ), delegates ( a whole damn class implements IRunnable ), generics which aren't really generic, no lambdas, no pinvokes etc. Java always feels to me like a poor man's C#.