C
Christian Kuendig
Hi there,
I've been developing several applications for win32 during the past years.
I've done a lot (too much) of UI programming because so often the GUI was
quite critical in most of the projects. First with plain C, later with MFC
and now with Windows Forms.
During this time, I've often used 3rd party libraries to try to improve
productivity. I don't even want to start to list a summary of problems, bugs
and difficulties people struggled over by trying to somehow make use of this
libraries.
Recently I had the chance to take a closer look at the source of one of the
well-known libraries for .net. What I found was basically the same old story
as with MFC. Tons of work-around code, windows-message code that produced
strange behavior, controls that behaved strange or let's say wrong (not as
expected), no proper designs (internally), lots of redundant code (for
example for popup controls and drop down containers and the like), millions
of lines of code and sometimes critical performance due to the JITing of all
that code to show a complex GUI containing many different managed controls
(not really the main issue).
Of course, one can always find a more or less satisfactory way out of the
misery, but usually this means an immense amount of work for professional
user interface programming, and the unprofessional touch of UI programming
due to a try-and-error kind of developing.
For my understanding, these are problems that shouldn't exist. I would be
interested in feedbacks and experiences of people working extensively with
Winforms and 3rd party libraries to build complex user interfaces.
Which libraries are considered to be well designed and programmed? Which are
not, which controls of which libraries are good and where is someone
stepping into frequent problems? What could be improved and would there be a
demand for an other GUI-Library (Framework) based on professional case
studies and proper internal and external designs? Would there be enough
people to start a project under GPL? Is there some research going on that
would uncover the reasons for most of the problems? Actually, are there
others around, sharing my experiences? What could be done to improve the
situation, making windows forms development more attractive?
Regards
Christian Kuendig
..NET Competence Centre, HSR University, Switzerland
I've been developing several applications for win32 during the past years.
I've done a lot (too much) of UI programming because so often the GUI was
quite critical in most of the projects. First with plain C, later with MFC
and now with Windows Forms.
During this time, I've often used 3rd party libraries to try to improve
productivity. I don't even want to start to list a summary of problems, bugs
and difficulties people struggled over by trying to somehow make use of this
libraries.
Recently I had the chance to take a closer look at the source of one of the
well-known libraries for .net. What I found was basically the same old story
as with MFC. Tons of work-around code, windows-message code that produced
strange behavior, controls that behaved strange or let's say wrong (not as
expected), no proper designs (internally), lots of redundant code (for
example for popup controls and drop down containers and the like), millions
of lines of code and sometimes critical performance due to the JITing of all
that code to show a complex GUI containing many different managed controls
(not really the main issue).
Of course, one can always find a more or less satisfactory way out of the
misery, but usually this means an immense amount of work for professional
user interface programming, and the unprofessional touch of UI programming
due to a try-and-error kind of developing.
For my understanding, these are problems that shouldn't exist. I would be
interested in feedbacks and experiences of people working extensively with
Winforms and 3rd party libraries to build complex user interfaces.
Which libraries are considered to be well designed and programmed? Which are
not, which controls of which libraries are good and where is someone
stepping into frequent problems? What could be improved and would there be a
demand for an other GUI-Library (Framework) based on professional case
studies and proper internal and external designs? Would there be enough
people to start a project under GPL? Is there some research going on that
would uncover the reasons for most of the problems? Actually, are there
others around, sharing my experiences? What could be done to improve the
situation, making windows forms development more attractive?
Regards
Christian Kuendig
..NET Competence Centre, HSR University, Switzerland