>I just really like the IDE and especially the Properties tab. It has a color chooser and a font chooser. Keeps me from knowing all the code it takes to specifify a font. Also, I like the way the Properties tab uses the bold font to show which values are overrides of the default values. It could also keep me out of all that [DefaultValue], Get{}, Set{} stuff.
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>Visually seeing my UI component on a Designer surface, and it's properties on full display in the Properties tab just seems more comfortable to me.
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>Any way, after about one more month of all this WinForms stuff, I plan to jump into WPF controls and UI design, and take beating over there. I really plan to go WPF on my app's UI design, but remember I am a newbie to .NET from VFP, so I at least wanted to peek at the WinForms approach to see what I have missed over these last 6 years or so that .NET has been around.
Get yourself comfortable with C# first. WPF has a rather nasty learning curve to it, so I wouldn't jump into it until I was comfortable with C#.
And if you are worried about "all that [DefaultValue], Get{}, Set{} stuff." you may not like WPF. This is what a WPF get set looks like:
public static readonly DependencyProperty MyNameProperty =
DependencyProperty.Register("MyName", typeof(string), typeof(MyClass),
new UIPropertyMetadata(MyClass.MyNameValueChanged));
public string MyName{
get { return (string)GetValue(MyNameProperty); }
set { SetValue(MyNameProperty, value); }
private static void MyNameValueChanged(DependencyObject d,
DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
MyClass myClass = (MyClass)d;
myClass.someObject.Text = (string)e.NewValue;
}
Other than a number of decent "Hello World" type demos, the online resources for WPF are poor so if you do decide to try WPF I would also recommend getting a book, Apress 'WPF in C#2008' seems to be the best one.
I am having a lot of fun working with WPF, it is very powerful, but it is also very much in it's infancy as a technology.