I was wondering your opinions on the current and future state of developing for the desktop. I had hoped a clear successor to WinForms for developing LOB applications would have started to emerge by now... in my opinion it has not. WPF had some steam, and then Silverlight...then the announcement about HTML5 and CSS being the preferred development platform for Windows 8. Now they did backpeddle at the BUILD event and made it clear that HTML5/CSS was for Metro apps, not LOB.

I have done some very limited stuff in WPF and XAML, BIG learning curve that make me nervous to invest the time in.

WinForms still seems the most productive.

I cannot see the answer being browser driven, not yet at least for hardcore data-centric business apps.

But again does anyone see a path forming for the desktop?

If you had to start a new LOB project right now, heavy on data and functionality, what would you use to develop it?

On a side note has anyone else tried the Windows 8 developer release? Boy I hope that changes A LOT before RTM. It seems like Microsoft is a little lost right now and trying to play catch up with competitors like Apple and Google and tailoring to the masses that wants "apps" and widgets, not "real" business applications.

Keith Chisarik

Keith,

I’m with you on the confusion on what to use to develop LOB applications. The whole Windows 8 focus seems to be on developing applications for couch potatoes that simply want to surf the web, e-mail, and order stuff from places like Amazon.com.  For  those old enough to remember, Windows 8 and the Metro interface remind me of Microsoft’s  Bob interface. Microsoft does need something for tablets, but tablets are not going to replace every business PC any time soon.  Touch applications are not the type of applications my organization (local government) is developing. My users are still asking for more keyboard shortcuts so they can enter more data faster.

Even with all the announcements from Microsoft it seems to me the only realistic choices for LOB applications is Windows Forms or Web ASP .Net.  For now I’m sticking with Windows Forms using StrataFrame. It works, my staff is comfortable with it, and I have no compelling reason to move to anything else. Windows 8 will support .NET and the bulk of the PCs in my organization are still running Windows XP and will be for some time until our legacy applications,  provided by the State of California,  are updated.  I looked at Idea Blade since they have been pushing Silverlight as the platform for LOB applications, but given the cost and effort to retrain staff and the applications that we have already developed using SF it doesn’t make financial sense to switch.  The only real benefits I can see for web apps are the lack of deployment to the desktop clients and the possibility of running in a thin client environment.  I’ve been using AppLife Update to deploy SF applications so I don’t have any deployment issues and I can’t move to thin clients or even virtual PCs due to legacy app issues I don’t control. The only thing that sort of worries me is that it’s been over a year since there has been a new release of StrataFrame. Trent had posted something awhile back saying we should look for something in March/April 2011 but that didn’t happen. The lack of new releases makes me wonder about MicroFour’s commitment to the product.

-Larry

Hi,
I totally agree with Larry.  It is still too early to see how really will Windows 8 and Metro application would benefit LOB applications.

I am pretty happy with the stability and reliability of StrataFrame and at the same time very sad with the lack of support and commitment to this great product.

Edhy Rijo