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I love programming with WPF but this morning my wife, who designs apps for mobile platforms, looked over my shoulder as said, "that's very nice but is anyone other than Microsoft actually using this stuff?".
I was stuck for an answer so could someone please point me to a list of significant real-world applications (other than ones written by Microsoft) that are written using WPF? Thanks in advance!
I'm not sure many companies put out that type of information. Most companies don't tell consumers what the application is written in.
For example, I didn't know until this past January that TurboTax was written in .Net.
The Quickbooks Report Center is written in WPF.
Lawson Smart Office
WPF Showcase
IGT
These are just a few that we actually know about.
Many of the above seem to be demo programs - quite a few even let you download source code.Quote:
Originally Posted by eclipsed4utoo
You're right that companies don't usually advertise what software they use, but I would expect that Microsoft would be bragging who's using it, just to encourage its adoption and boost interest among the developer community.
Do we have ANY evidence that WPF is being enthusiastically adopted by businesses for new software development?
One reason I'm asking is that I've noticed that on a lot of software developer forums like DotNetSlackers, CSharpCorner, DreamInCode, etc, the WPF forums have extremely light traffic - sometimes weeks go by with no new postings - which makes me think there's very little interest.
WPF seems a bit slow taking off. It didn't help that when WPF was first released in 3.0, the xaml designer for Visual Studio was read only, so folks looking for a Win Forms forms editor replacement were surely disappointed. Unfortunately, the xaml editor in VC# 2008 wasn't much better either. I'm hoping the one in 2010 is much improved, but although I have 2010 installed, I haven't used the WPF editor.Quote:
Originally Posted by plnelson
At any rate, early on Microsoft was thinking that UI designers wanted a full fledge designer like tool, so they created Expression. What I think they missed was the fact that regular developers still need a builtin editor to get work done (as not all outfits has dedicated UI designers). I think MS understands that now, but I believe this omission is partially responsible for a bit slower adoption.
Okay, enough about the lack of xaml editor support. Other than that, WPF just absolutely rocks. It's ability to customize controls, create hybrid controls is without peer. Custom controls that were tough to create with WinForms, MFC, or straight native Win32 programming can be easily done in WPF. One of the best features of WPF is its data binding capabilities. Sure WinForms had data binding (kind of), but in WPF it's really powerful. Once you take the time to ramp up on WPF, IMO you won't want to program in Windows any other way.