Winforms, VFP, pretty much any business-type application has UI based on GDI, which dates back to Win3.11 or earlier. It hasn't been really updated in all that time. Yes, we have GDI+ and DirectX, but GDI+ is used mostly for graphics and DirectX for games. In the meantime, hardware has advanced to the point that GDI couldn't really take advantage of it. Markus Egger wrote a blog post about the issues here.

Microsoft decided to do something about it, and that something is WPF. It scales to any resolution without getting fuzzy. That means it has resolution independence. It does this by being vector-based rather than raster-based. WPF is basically .Net wrappers around DirectX.

One more thing that I think is important in this conversation. Microsoft is dumping lots of effort into Silverlight. But running on the web takes people away from buying Windows. Think of WPF as the thick-client alternative to Silverlight. In fact, Silverlight and WPF are developed by the same team at Microsoft.

WPF is like many new technologies. It's complicated at first, but the tools are getting better and it will become easier to use as tools improve and you gain more experience with it.

>I am new at Visual Studio, or to some degree new, although I've had a few classes in C#. I am new in the sense of my commitment to learning Visual Studio.
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>So, in reading CODE Magazine early this morning, I read an article about the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and how Windows Foms will no longer be updated or enhanced by Microsoft in Visual Studio, which means the VS 2010 version coming out next year will have no new "stuff" for Windows Forms. Is WPF that good and fantastic that Microsoft will completely abandon any work on Windows Forms?
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>My question is really this:
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>What makes Windows Presentation Forms so great? I'd just like a layman's level of understanding on this subject.
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>Of course, the Microsoft God has spoken and so we go with WPF, but I am curious as to what the reasons are.
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>Cecil