Winforms or Silverlight
I have a small project that I will be working on in the near future that collects staff time and what project the person is working on. Pretty straight forward. I started working on this in WinForms, but since then I've become new, albeit perhaps using Silverlight for the application, as I will have a learning curve for each. Here are some business requirements that I need to include in my application.
-The system will use the Access database located on the computer of a specific person. -Ability to generate and print reports -Installed on the desktop emploees who will have access.
Will one technology be recommended over the other in terms of what I need to do. Here is a screen layout for one of the pages I will need to create.
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If you want to access the machine that the application will run on (for example, to access the database and to use printing), this largely excludes Silverlight without jumping through a lot of hoops (like a custom machine anyway).
You say that WinForms will require a learning curve for you - well, perhaps you can use WPF as well, since it's a similar technology in terms of UI as Silverlight. However, you can find many more resources online for WinForms, and you will most likely be more productive in WinForms given its strong support from the Visual Studio designer.
Deploying with WinForms or WPF should be pretty easy with ClickOnce.
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Winforms and WPF are easier than Silverlight when you need to access the database because you can do it directly. If your install base only uses .net 2.0 then use WinForms, if you know they can install .NET 3.5 try WPF. Just be careful, you have to learn more with WPF and XAML, but it's very useful, especially if you want to get creative.
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