创建一个 WPF UI……如果在 VS2008 中使用设计器，我应该打扰吗？

Question

I am choosing between using WPF or Windows Forms for my application UI. We use Visual Studio 2008, and not the latest 2010.

To those who have created WPF apps in VS2008/2010: Is the designer mature enough in VS2008 to create a WPF app? Or should I stick with Windows Forms?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I've created a couple of good-sized applications using WPF and VS 2008. The designer is OK--what I found is that I ended up directly editing the XAML by hand. So the designer became more of a "print preview" for what I typed rather than a tool I used to create the markup.

For any non-trivial UI things (animations' being a prime example), I would encourage you to take a look at Expression Blend. Once you get past the "graphics designer-y" interface, it provides a much nicer way to specify animations.

VS 2010/.NET 4 provide some nice improvements, but you should certainly be able to accomplish what you're looking for in VS 2008.

Answer 2

One aspect that might be of interest is that using Winforms allows the application to run on other systems using Mono , eg Linux and Mac OS X. (The inverse statement is more intuitive though, it will not work if you choose WPF because Mono does not implement it.)

Also: Don't use designers, and if you have to, try to get Blend.