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Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

... as awesome as this is, I'm gonna be That Guy:

No WPF?

WPF is more or less owned by the Windows team. This is all stuff under Scott Guthrie's control

Pedantic: From the job posting that a sibling comment linked, the display tech appears to be under OSG. That means it's actually under Terry Myerson, not Scott Guthrie.

WPF just got some love a few minutes ago - they've got plans for a new release of it by the sound of things.

I have a few WPF 4 bugs that were marked "fix in next version" 3-4 years ago, and then it was announced that there is no next version - i'm in the process of moving off WPF and this newfound love is not going to change anything.

Yes. Good luck to Microsoft trying to be relevant in HTML5 space.

Similar problem with IE for me. I raised a case with gold partner support when IE9 came out as it broke ClickOnce download prompting. Been bouncing back and forth between framework and IE teams ever since.

Result: we now have to ship a .reg file to our clients before we can launch our shit via ClickOnce. That's only 2000 people we now have to hand hold through this.....

Yeah, ClickOnce should go down as one of the bigger dead-end embarrassments, since they torpedo'd installer projects in VS2012.

Why did they get rid of Installer Projects? We are still on VS2010 and although it isn't a massive issue to use a different installer system, it seems a very odd decision. I mean, you are writing apps for their OS using their tools. Why wouldn't you want to create an installer? Daft!

It's because the installer packages stink. WiX is a far better platform.

I've been out of the Windows deployment ecosystem for ages. What's the benefit of using WiX over nsis?

You get Windows Installer packages, so you can deploy applications via group policies, you get other niceties, like pretending an application is installed until it's actually used (and install then), you get proper transaction support during the installation (something I've seen very many NSIS installers get wrong – maybe that has changed, but not cleaning up after yourself if a step during the installation failed is not how to write an installer).

We know they stink, but it's what a lot of people have spent time working with.

There is no straightforward migration path from vdproj to WiX, either. It's a case of re-writing all of your deployment code (which has already been tested/tweaked/hacked on for years) for no upfront benefit.

It's pretty simple. We used this and it took about an hour on top to adjust our build system to label the packages properly:

http://www.add-in-express.com/vdproj-wix-converter/index.php

WiX is missing all the ease-of-use features it needs to be a non-agonizing process. Deprecating installer packages in favour of WiX would make sense if they provided a migration path and better tooling for WiX.

WPF is alive and kicking. I'll just leave this here... https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?jid=137020&pp=...

Although I sort of understand why, it's a shame - WPF cross-platform would be very awesome, and mono still has no plans to implement any of it, last I heard. Windows forms is just too ancient.

I thought WPF was killed during the whole mess of killing Silverlight, etc. a few years back?

No WPF is still there. XAML is still the basis for windows store apps, and windows phone apps.

One of two basis for Windows Store.

WinJS is the other.

XAML != WPF. XAML is a language for object instantiation, thats it. Similar to XIBs in the Apple world.

There are no less than 3 similar but different and incompatible UI libraries that can be instantiated by XAML: WPF, Silverlight (WPF/e), and Windows store/phone (WinRT). WPF is dead like WinForms but the only solution for normal windows apps unless somethings changed with WinRT to make non full screen apps with.

If you have ever tried to develop across more than one of these with a shared code base you will know how frustratingly similar yet how incompatible and different they are. They are not supersets or subsets they are forks.

Windows 8.1.1 allows non-fullscreen WinRT apps.

So yeah, when I said WPF, I meant XAML/WinRT. My main desktop use is supporting WinForms legacy apps so I don't keep up with the new GUI frameworks.

If you want to write a dev tool, WinRT doesn't cut it due to window store restriction and we are stuck with WPF. WPF also contains many features missing in WinRT, which is probably why it's still more popular than.

I'm looking to move to direct2d eventually. I work at a low enough level that this wouldn't be too bad for me.

Why would they do this? The cycle of new frameworks only to be killed again afterwards is frustrating.

Is everything just wrapped around Win32 like MFC was etc.?

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