WinForms versus WPF and future roadmap

Hi Carl,

Thank you for your interesting question.

The two platforms are completely different in both architecture and implementation. I can summarize the top benefits of each platform as I see them but it is up to you to evaluate and estimate which one will suite your needs completely.

Winforms:
- Being a wrapper around the native Win32 Window Handle semantic, its major benefit is performance and memory consumption.
- Small learning curve - one can get familiar with Winforms best practices in a relatively small amount of time.
- Tons of existing applications, blogs, books, communities, etc.

WPF:
- Extremely well designed object model and class hierarchies, highly flexible and extensible. This however comes at the cost of a larger learning curve.
- Pixel-perfect rendering, based on Direct 3D; hardware accelerated, when possible.
- Very high level of data binding support.

In our Winforms suite we have created a framework, named TPF (Telerik Presentation Framework), inspired by WPF, which enables all the controls with features similar to the ones found WPF.
Such features are:
- Element Tree - each control is described by a tree of logical units that define its visual appearance
- Native support for themes (styles) and animations
- Advanced layout, executed asynchronously on the UI thread, allowing for unmatched performance

So, put simply, Telerik Winforms package is kind of hybrid between classic Windows Forms controls, and powerful abstract logical layer (TPF), inspired by WPF. More information can be found on this page.

Again, I cannot tell which would be the right choice for your application. You can consider things such as what end-user platform will be targeted? Will the application run on Desktop machines only or it should be available for the web also? Is performance top prerequisite or you can sacrifice some for the sake of pixel perfectness and native 3D support?

I hope you will find this information useful.

Regards,
Georgi
the Telerik team

Georgi,

Thanks for your helpful remarks and summary.

But my original question was also posed in the context of asking about Telerik's future roadmap?  Are you able to offer any comments on the future roadmap, and any plans either to differentiate WinForms controls from WPF controls, or the opposite, to align the WinForms controls with the WPF controls?

And what about migration from one to the other? Will there be any future support for migrating a project from WinForms to WPF, or vice versa, from WPF to WinForms?

Thanks!

Hello Carl,

As Georgi pointed out, the two platforms are completely different in both architecture and implementation, so it would be very hard to provide an easy migration path from one platform to the other. Telerik has no plans in this regard, as we are not seeing such migration patterns currently.

We do not have any specific plans on differentiating our WinForms controls from our WPF controls either, and I am not sure that we need to do anything in this regard - quite the opposite, actually. WPF is a superior platform and offers more benefits in regards to visualization and rendering. Windows Forms will always try to catch up in this regard. The same holds true for data binding. What we are trying to do is bring WinForms as close to WPF as possible in terms of visual appeal and data-binding capabilities, but with the lesser learning curve that comes with Windows Forms.

 
All the best,
Vassil
the Telerik team

Thanks for discussion of WinForms and WPF roadmap.

Hello Georgi,

My group and I are replacing our existing GUI using telerik/winform library, but we noticed that there is a big appearance difference between WPF and Winform, for example in the grouping option for the grid columns, even filtering window looks so much better in WPF.
I am wondering if there is any way to get the similar style for those features in Winform.
Thanks!

Hello Niloofar,

Thank you for writing.

Each of the platforms strive to have its own design and we do not seek after identical look of the controls in the respective suites. All controls from the Telerik UI for WinForms have access to common services provided by Telerik Presentation Framework (TPF) such as theming. All themes that come with Telerik WinForms controls since version Q2 2008 are available as standalone components, apart from the control's assemblies.You can refer to our Demo application >> GridView >> Grouping and GridView >> Filtering sections where you can change the theme from the right collapsible menu. Additionally, you can use the ThemeViewer which is a tool that gives you the ability to preview a custom or a predefined theme for all themable controls of the suite. Our Office2007Silver theme is similar to the look provided by WPF grid. You can refer to the attached screenshot.

If there is any specific style that you are trying to achieve feel free to customize the already available themes with Visual Style Builder.

You can read more details about using the Visual Style Builder here:
1.     Loading predefined themes
2.     Working with Repository Items
3.     Saving and Loading Theme Files
4.     Loading Themes from an External File
5.     Loading Themes from a Resource
6.     Applying Theme to a Control
7.     http://tv.telerik.com/watch/winforms/visualstylebuilder/whats-new-visual-style-builder-q1-2010

I hope this information helps. Should you have further questions, I would be glad to help.
 
Regards
Dess
the Telerik team