Now is an excellent time to overhaul your user interfaces
With NET 3.5, Microsoft introduced WPF - Windows Presentation
Foundation. In Kuadriga, we have worked with this technology with
multiple products. Among its main advantages is the fact that it
separates the user interface logically and thus allows the same
software to be implemented in both web and windows
environments.
Making user
interfaces as effective has possible can have measurable benefits
to the people and organizations that rely on them. The primary goal
of WPF is to help developers provide these benefits, and so for
anybody who creates or uses Windows applications, WPF is big
news.
WPF provides a
unified platform for modern user interfaces, helps make
designers more active participants in creating those interfaces,
and can interoperate with earlier interface technologies. Some of
the technologies it supplants had a twenty-year run as the
foundation for Windows user interfaces. The intent of WPF is to lay
the foundation for the next twenty years.
Now is a good time to start considering
overhauling your software products to take advantage of these new
posibilities.
Overview
The options for building user interfaces to
applications are in short:
-
Interfaces for Windows Application: WPF and Windows
Forms
-
Standards-based Web interfaces
-
Rich Internet applications (RIAs) for an
application-like experience over Internet
Interfaces for Windows Applications: WPF and
Windows Forms
Applications that will run only in a Windows environment can
be based on WPF for a modern, smooth interface with lots of
functionality. Simpler, line of business applications should be
based on Windows Forms. Sometimes, Microsoft uses the term
"Connected Desktop Experiences" to describe the style of
applications with the capability to work in both off-line/on-line
modes.
Standards-Based Web Interfaces: ASP.NET and
ASP.NET AJAX
That basic
standard technology for web user interfaces is HTML with
JavaScript. More powerful approaches are Asynchronous JavaScript
and XML with AJAX for greater responsiveness. Microsoft provides
ASP.NET for creating Web interfaces and Internet Explorer for
displaying them. Microsoft also provides ASP.NET AJAX, pre-packaged
functionality that helps developers create ASP.NET applications
displaying AJAX-style interfaces in Internet Explorer and other Web
browsers.
http://maps.live.com/ is an
exciting example of a standards-based Web interface using AJAX. It
employs AJAX to give users a fast interface to a very large amount
of data. All from a standard browser.
Rich Internet Applications:
Silverlight
Rich
Internet Applications provide a mix of experiences of the standard
browser and the stand-alone application. RIAs can offer animation,
video, sound, etc. Microsofts main RIA platform is
Silverlight.
Through a
browser, Silverlight provides a subset of WPF functionality on
different platforms: 2D graphics, images, animation, video, sound,
and text. It is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and
Netscape running in Windows, Mac and Linux environments. Code is
written in JavaScript.
Because
Silverlight is based on WPF, it also uses the .NET Framework and
XAML. It may also be combined with AJAX.Therefore, developers and
designers use the same tools and knowledge to write stand alone
applications with WPF and web applications using Silverlight. It
may also be combined with AJAX.
Some exciting examples
WPF
applications
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTfM5pmUrnU&feature=related
Power of WPF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tKj_zscwNE&feature=related
Silverlight 2008 Win Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NPwjHJze9E&feature=related
Want to know more?
Please contact Jesper Lindholt, jlin@kuadriga.com,
if you would like to talk about how your product may be improved
with modern user interfaces.