>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>There was a nice demo on DNR TV showing a REAL business application put together with WPF:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>http://www.dnrtv.com/default.aspx?showNum=115
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>It gives you a better idea of what is possible. The one question to ask yourself (esp. if you have a vertical market app) - how hard of a time would I have selling my app if I was competing a vendor that had an app that looked like that vs my current app? Regardless of features people have a (positive) gut reaction to attractive UI's.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Thanks Paul
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>I watched the video. Certainly the app looked nice.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>From the implied size of the development team I would also guess its not cheap.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>He said three people, three months so far I believe.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>But I'm sure that this could be done by one person in half that time in VFP <bg>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Did I say that ?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>No I didn't but three people three months so far . How much would you reckon on that costing.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>90% of the functionality could be supplied very quickly (not necessarily in Fox). Spending a lot of time in how something looks may not be cost effective. For instance the yellow stickies.
>>>>>
>>>>>Did you see the code demo for those at the end of the video. It *doesn't* take a lot of time or effort. The amount of code is minimal. I've got a scrolling listbox built on the same principal. It took an hour or so - but of course you can spend more time playing with gradients etc. if you want to.
>>>>>
>>>>>At a guess the biggest challange they face will be defining the 'best-match' alogrithm between the employers requirements and employee skills/availability.
>>>>>Best,
>>>>>Viv
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>BTW reading some Elmore Leonard at the moment (Fire in the Hole) enjoying it.
>>>>
>>>>Well I think that Paul has a point that an application to be sold is going to market better when it has all the visuals but for a system developed for one client it would be a mistake to get too hung up on how it looks. The only benefit would be if you used that application as a selling point to other clients and that might not always happen. I noticed in the video the repetitive thanks to the client.
>>>>
>>>>A bit like getting cheap double glazing by having a big advert stuck on the side of your house.
>>>
>>>Leaving aside the issue of whether a 'showy' interface is beneficial (and I assume you agree that the UI was pretty user friendly) my point was that it does *not* take longer to develop in WPF compared to Winforms. Longer to learn -yes ; longer to develop - no.
>>>
>>>Another point made in the video, almost in passing, is that they intend to make this app available on the web using SilverLight. Although that implies some additional work most of the code base should be usable.
>>>
>>>FWIW I first saw this video a long time ago when just starting with WPF and remember thinking 'that looks complicated'. Now I know it is not.
>>
>>I may watch the video again. certainly my initial impression was that for the functionality offered over 9 man/woman months development time sounded like quite a lot.
>
>Only a couple of features were demonstrated. The whole backend infrastructure , user login, the process of deciding how the UI should look and probably a lot more was all glossed over. Maybe it should take less time - but there's nothing to indicate they would have achieved the same results more quickly using WinForms ?

No. I probably should try to be clearer. As I have no WPF experience it would be wrong of to say "see how long that took its because of WPF, they should have used Foxpro 4 DOS"
Its just as an application developed in anything it seemed a quite a long time to have spent on that. However, if as it seems they are trying to market it as a package then that certainly would add to the development time as it can't be remotely buggy. Whereas an in house application can be slightly more flexible about those sort of tolerances.