WPF versus HTML relevance
At work, we have an app that needs to be updated. It's a fat client that's pretty much written in Windows Forms, with newer parts of it being in WPF. The main section of this app is the form designer, which is implemented with a web browser control using HTML.
We need to redesign most of the application and generally improve the user experience. There is a good chance that I will be working on this project and I am very familiar with WPF and feel that it will be a very suitable technology to use. I was planning to remove the old parts of Windows Forms and rewrite the application pretty much.
However, there has been some discussion of porting this app to a web app in a future release. A colleague of mine threw up the idea of trying to redesign dialogs and the application with HTML while still being a bold client.
Does this sound like a sane idea? Is there any design like this that would support a similar hybrid app? Can we really create the same UI using the HTML5 / JS that WPF will offer?
The idea of creating portable code is tempting, but I have serious concerns about the possibility of this proposal. I know Windows 8 apps support many design options, but this app is for xp / windows 7.
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It really depends on the audience of the application, but I'd say go off the web if it's simple enough, and it should be, since you're starting from scratch.
I ran into the same question 3 years ago and I still regret sticking to WPF because the app could be deployed to tablets if it was a web app.
If your application contains rich business logic make sure you separate it well, business logic in JS doesn't work well - debugging crap that's hard to manage over the life of the application. Generally expect more complex development when comparing WPF, but with a much larger potential audience.
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