Feedback please: WPF for LOB applications (Data entry/Data Viz/etc…)
- Are you using or considering WPF for Line-of-Business applications?
- What has you excited about WPF for LOB?
- We are missing several things that would help LOB…are you waiting or doing without?
- What is your advice for Microsoft here?
- What would you prioritize?
[some comments are here, some are in my corresponding post in the WPF forum.]
Rob Relyea 
Rob,
What do you see as the main omissions from WPF that are important for LOB apps?
Tim
* We are using WPF for a LOB app (just finishing up the planning phase)
* The client is very excited because they hope that we can create an application that isn\’t ugly. We are excited about WPF because it is fun to use, flexible, and intuitive (once you \’get it\’).
* We haven\’t discovered those missing things yet, so I guess we\’re doing without 🙂
* I think it would be helpful for MS to provide some UI (er UX) design guidance around what works, what doesn\’t
I tried posting a longer comment but was denied. So I made a web page out of it and posted it here.
http://www.tempworks.com/Rob%20Relyea-Feedback%20please.htm
Paul Czywczynski, Chief Technology OfficerTempWorks Software, Inc.paul@tempworks.com
Hi Rob,
WPF is utterly fabulous. The main thing I\’m missing for data entry is a DataGridView; as if you didn\’t know :). I\’ve spent the last week trying to turn an ItemsControl into a grid with AddNewRow template on the botom. Kevin Moore released a DatePicker as a sample and it would be realy helpful if you could do something similar for a DataGrid. Nearly every LOB app needs these and samples we could use prior to WPF v2 would help a lot of people.
–Michael
Tim-
We have some lists of things we think we are missing…but I think the comments that are coming now are telling us that list. That is the list that I care most about.
Thanks, Rob
I have to agree with most others that WPF needs more controls "out of the box" such as a gridview type control. With all the fantastic power of WPF I would think that the the idea of the old gridview control could take on a whole new meaning providing extremely powerful methods of visualization.
Standard controls, especially the DateTimePicker are hugely important for a LOB application. At the most basic level a Label, Textbox, DateTimePicker, NumericTextBox, ListView, Tab and GroupBox; plus a gridview. These need to be fully supported and part of the platform for full consideration. Look at the .NET CF where they failed to provide a DateTimePicker in the first iteration, it caused all sorts of issues that were simply addressed by adding in .NET CF 2.0. Why is Microsoft going to make the same mistake again.
quite sometime having been off wpf, going to get back on to WPF soon.http://blogs.explorewindows.com
CAB for WPF. I saw last night that you\’ve come across Jared Bienz\’s "Crescendo" (crescendo.solersoft.com), which is an OSS for WPF CAB. Perhaps you could team up with he and P&P for this before Vista launches.
We believe exactly as Bryant and expect our customers to oogle at WPF and that the wayward will jay-walk to get it.
I am considering WPF for my software change management solution, we use this for keeping track of which features, requirements and use-cases got planned for which version and when a version was released with which features, requirements and use-cases.
The system works great and it is really easy for me to separate controller and model functionality from the user interface design.
More important LOB feedback:
http://www.wiredprairie.us/journal/2006/10/wpf_lob_feedback.html
People mention the DataGridView a lot as missing. I\’m actually glad it\’s not in there yet.
WPF controls take on a new meaning compared to Winforms. It\’s now about data and not about functionality and looks. We *do* need a basic Grid control, but the internal structure of that control is more important that its function. This is why I think it\’s important to get some good feedback about this first and make it a second iteration feature. Some things I think a Grid control needs:
Enhanced styling over and above the ListView.
Custom editing, associate styles or templates that get invoked when editing a field.
Enhance the CollectionView class so that it\’s possible to override the sort algorithm, make it easier to bind to the parent group levels separately.
Also, I\’ve found that an application based on databinding ends up using a lot of ValueConverter classes. It would be great to be able to specify the name of a function for these converters instead of a resource that points to a class. Even better, use some dynamic code gen and embed the code in the XAML – great for quick math expressions (like the good old BASIC \’Val\’ function).
Let me add my vote for a DataGridView – it will be really hard for me to convince anyone here that we should use WPF if we don\’t have a DataGridView with WPF 1.0.
Filters above the columns like Excel has would be very useful in this new DataGridView.
Also, if Office 12 has the new ribbon, drop the support for menus in WPF and add support for easy ribbons.
re: DataGridView , take a look at the View property in ListView and how to use GridView within that
It doesn\’t do everything out of the box that say componentone grid does, but has great flexibility
Yes please, another vote on a DataGridView.