Unhandled Exceptions

Since I don’t live under a proverbial rock when it comes to windows development, I had heard about the .NET 3.0 (formerly WinFX) framework components coming down the pike. However, since the companies I worked with in the past really didn’t focus on that technology, I was relegated to personal research on the subject.

Our new presentation layer plans to utilize WPF to develop a user-customizable form for the application which can then be run on a Windows client or the web (via an XBAP application). Given this, I have obviously been thrown into this technology to start mocking up some of our screens for clients.

My first impressions: It’s an interesting concept. Design, particularly on the Windows side of things, has always been designer making mock-ups in Photoshop and then developers implementing those mock-ups to the best of their ability. The problem with this: developers are not designers, and designers are not developers. What a designer creates isn’t always feasible for a developer, and the changes a developer makes are not always the best design from a visual standpoint. WPF provides an interesting middle ground where designers can design through building the actual framework, and then pass it along to the developers for implementation.

I like the interoperability of Windows and Web, although it negates most of my HTML/CSS skills, since you design XBAP like you would a Windows application. But I’m sure my HTML skills will not go to waste… Sometimes you just need a web page.