>I don't know if you've seen the demo of the scientific software down in San Diego. It's using WPF to render molecules. I forget the guys name whose company it was. He used to work at MS.
>
>This software was extremely cool. But obviously a representation of a molecule is slightly different from the representation of an invoice or timecard.

Oh there's no doubt that there will be good uses for this technology. Certainly there are lots of opportunities to build slick graphical representations.

But how many of here have a need for this? Most of us are likely building Line of Business applications and there the need to have animated backgrounds and sliding windows is what - nil? <s>

I think it would be more reasonable if WPF at least provided the base line functionality that WinForms provides, which it doesn't. The set of controls is much smaller and doesn't provide you with the rudimentary stuff. You'd have to build your own treeview, masked input control date picker etc. all that stuff is not there...

Maybe 3rd parties will fill that particular need.

And the whole metaphor of auto-resizing forms doesn't work very well for business applications either. It's very counter intuitive in the business environment if you ask me.

+++ Rick ---

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>>>I agree. It has promise, but without good design tools, it's just a cool technology that isn't going very far.
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>>Exactly...
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>>I think this is Microsoft's own fault. They haven't really laid out a good roadmap for where WPF and WPF/E fits and how we get there from here.
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>>WPF has lots of potential but it's going to take some visionary people who can properly visualize the solutions and provide a pattern where this technology actually makes good sense.
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>>I've been arguing back and forth with Markus about this for some time and while I can see that some folk like Markus who have that left brain intuition down can actually build these ultra rich UIs, the rest of us are going to need much better and easier tools and some guidance on how to utilize it.
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>>+++ Rick ---
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>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Eh, sorry but that's a bunch of crap...
>>>>
>>>>Maybe in a few years yeah, but then in a few years who know what happens anyway - what are you going to do in the 'few' years in the meantime?
>>>>
>>>>WPF as shipped with .NET 3.0 is not even close to ready for Line of Business applications and Microsoft has made no effort to position it as such. The focus of WPF right now is for highly visual consumer and visualization type applications and while you can build 'normal' business applications, it's not trivial to do so and in most cases inappropriate.
>>>>
>>>>WPF has it's place but for typical business applications it's hardly the right choice at the momement.