Matthew David provides a tour of the Windows Presentation Foundation, a feature of .NET 3.0 that simplifies adding 3D, video, data, and vector designs to your applications.
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Member since:2005-12-17
"The downside is that this doesn't help with downloadable apps (the .NET Runtime installer is ~20MB, iirc), and WPF on Windows XP doesn't support all the "bells and whistles" that it does on Vista."
If you have to ship a copy of .NET with your downloadable product, I would recommend .NET 3.0: it comes in the form of a web-based downloader, so the overhead is a measly ~3 megs for the initial download. The web installer will grab whatever files are needed to get .NET up and running on that machine in the background; its a pretty fast process.
I think this method would be more preferable, since the user is less likely to abandon the download in progress -- this is my personal opinion but I think the "novice" users are more willing to wait for an installation to finish than a download to finish.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2005-07-29
Yes, WPF requires .NET, but this isn't quite as bad as you make it out to be. Assuming your software is "shrinkwrap," you can bundle the .NET Runtime installation package with your installer and install it if it isn't already present.
Furthermore, a version of WPF runs on Windows XP, so you can include the .NET 3.0 Runtime installer with your program, which will install both the .NET Runtime and WPF, simplifying installation.
The downside is that this doesn't help with downloadable apps (the .NET Runtime installer is ~20MB, iirc), and WPF on Windows XP doesn't support all the "bells and whistles" that it does on Vista.