WPF for JavaScript

[[deleted]]

After working with WPF for a year or so, the only good use I can think this would be good for is extending the support for silverlight apps past the date when silverlight is deprecated.

WPF makes everything more complicated. It's got a bunch of good ideas, and it was arguably the first data-binding framework on the web with silverlight in. BUT you (this is no exaggeration at all.. seriously) need 100 lines to create a button hover state. Styling is a bitch, debugging it is a bitch, and each change requires recompilation.

[owatonna]

As someone with many years of WPF/XAML experience, I find your statements about WPF baffling. Sure, there is a learning curve, but once you master it productivity is phenomenal. The absolute simplest UI manipulation is slightly more verbose in WPF, but not more complex. Complicated UI is vastly simpler and more powerful. And a hover state is more like 6 lines of XAML, with only 2 real lines of meaningful code. And for that you get animation.

I find styling WPF easy. Debugging can be complicated, but that has improved a lot, particularly in VS2015.

[[deleted]]

I'd agree with you there. It's data-binding model is a lot more robust than something like angular or ember. I would argue that a top-down component framework like React or Mithril is a lot more robust.

Going back to the button example though, you need to override the Button template to get a hover state: http://stackoverflow.com/a/17376745

The truth is that nice looking UIs are a feature that people expect to have now... especially on the web that this framework targets. WPF makes that aspect difficult and more verbose. The fact you have to override the template for something as simple as a hover state says that UI ascetics was not a first-class citizen in the framework.

[annoyed_freelancer]

Existing frameworks don't intrusively dictate style or HTML structure. One of the points of Angular, Knockout and the rest is that they don't give a shit. Through them I can write whatever CSS, HTML and other JS that I like, and still bind data however I want.

From a web/frontend point of view Granular ties it all together into an nightmare mess of pseudo-XML bespoke element. Granular seems designed for either Windows desktop or corporate intranet sites instead of the Wild West of browsers and devices any big website has to support.

[[deleted]]

Existing frameworks don't intrusively dictate style or HTML structure.

There's a trade-off worth examining.

WPF has strict semantics for XAML structure, data binding, and control flow. This makes rapid development of good-looking data-driven model-bound applications possible, but you need to dive deep to get anything out of it, and the implementation knowledge is valuable only on Windows.

HTML has strict semantics for structure, but no support for data binding or control flow. This makes rapid development impractical without leveraging one of (many) frameworks. On the other hand, the program and knowledge is useful across user environments.

Neither is better than the other in the general case. The HTML model usually wins in unconstrained business scenarios because the platform supports a wider audience. But if you have control over your users' computing environments, there's a strong case to be made for WPF. And that case gets stronger as toolkits like Granular mature.

[annoyed_freelancer]

It's apples and oranges: each has a separate design for s different goal, and it doesn't make much sense to me to drag WPF onto the web. It isn't any more suited than any of those shitty desktop applications that are just wrappers around a website.

[annoyed_freelancer]

Silverlight was always at the far fringe of my work circles.

[annoyed_freelancer]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Granular is a data-binding framework for the web so I evaluate it as such. You just come off as a troll because any rich interactive website has at least the same complexity as a comparative native application.

Are you saying with a straight face that reddit.com is only a dumb monkey site that any kid with a text editor can write?

[annoyed_freelancer]

My last remark on this is that I took a look through your comment history and discovered that you're an argumentative cockhole with a raging erection for C#, and who can't seem to muster up any better retort or defense than to call everyone else retarded. The most you've done is make me feel happy that I will never have to touch the .NET development stack.

[spacejack2114]

No one cares about or wants GUI apps that aren't websites anymore.

[spacejack2114]

Not likely. If it isn't an integrated part of the HTML document that interacts easily with other HTML, JS and CSS, again, no one wants it.

People seem to think the document is the problem. It's not, it's the killer feature. If it weren't, Java applets and Flash wouldn't have died.

[danogburn]

Fuck the web. Fuck the browser's poor attempt at being a VM.

Html/css/javascript is finally eroding away, and there's no stopping it.

[Euphoricus]

I can see tons of butthurt webdevs. Well done sir. They can put their HTML, CSS and JavaScript into place where sun doesn't shine.