Hi Alex

>Can someone comment about when a winform is superior to a web form and when it is the opposite, please?

In my work, and as far as I can ascertain, things are really changing now, more so than before. Maybe its down to greater speed/bandwidth as a result of the mass adoption of ADSL/Broadband but, I just see web based clients becoming more and more attractive. As you know, I have done rich client stuff with VFP for ages and also, this naturally biased me towards winform applications when I first started developing in .NET. However, nowadays, in an enterprise environment, I am finding it harder and harder to justify the use of winforms applications, particularly with the advent of the "Rich Internet Application" (RIA), delivered via AJAX and particularly ASP.NET/AJAX. Of course, this isn't the only show in town for RIA - right now, I am working with a bunch of Java developers using JSP/Servlets and they are creating some pretty amazing stuff too.

At one time, I thought that you just couldn't beat winforms for detailed or intricate type applications and to an extent this is correct. However, I find that more and more people are used to using browsers and take for granted the simplicity of clicking links and using the backwards and forwards button(s) to get where they want to be. My mother (who is 70yrs old) recently got a new laptop with Vista preloaded. She is always on the internet using a browser, along with her e-mail. She loves it, but, I can guarantee that she would get totally lost in anything that was "richer" than that.

So, I guess you sacrifice the richness of the winform but you develop a different approach to achieving the solution. There has been a thread on here recently being somewhat negative towards the web development model. However, you can create very elegant, modular, patterns-based code in a web application just as easily as a winforms application.

So, if you don't want deployment headaches and being tied to windows desktops, then think "web applications" :) If you want to be able to get your applications on other mobile devices, then think "web applications" :)

Some will jump in with "browser differences" and "what if they turn off cookies/javascript" and so forth. However, I personally haven't come across these issues. Also, you can get some pretty excellent controls and javascript/AJAX based frameworks that do a great job of handling the browser differences.

I am currently working for a global software giant that has delivered shrink-wrapped, rich windows forms desktop based applications for some twenty years or so. I can tell you that I am architecting the re-development of a significant windows forms product in its portfolio and it is looking like this will be a browser based AJAX/Silverlight type application. I was in a meeting the other day with the CTO of the UK operation and all of the discussion focused around Web 2, Google, Google APIs, GData and so on.

We are certainly in exciting times right now. Of course, for the standalone application that has no web server to talk to via a LAN or the Internet, its hard to argue against the winform and local data storage. But, even then, for a custom development, I think I would still explore the possibility/availability of a locally installed web server and write a locally hosted web based application. It can easily scale and if the application were eventually remotely hosted, users can access the application from anywhere.

I can only see advantages to this approach. As to winforms, whilst there are many applications developed in them, I personally think that in the .NET environment, they have gone about as far as they will go. MS, IMHO, will push WPF squarely into the space previously occupied by the "battleship grey" winforms applications. With ASP.NET, AJAX and Silverlight, they have their internet based offerings. So, as usual, it's "horses for courses" and doubtless will many will disagree. But, this is just my tuppence worth - HTH.

Best

-=Gary









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>Also, if anyone can point to demos or videos that demonstrate the responsiveness of each type I would appreciate it.
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>TIA,
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>Alex