.NET's impressive, shame about Windows Forms
I’ve recently been playing around with .NET, I’ve had a few ideas for some software I could write, but the GUI requirements make java awkward or not an option. Firstly, I am blown away by the web services integration in .NET. I’m a web services true believer, and integration with the IDE is really big deal, with C# builder I simply ‘added a web reference’ to the WSDL and I was away, the proxy class was generated and my test application was up and running.
Does anyone know of an eclipse plugin that works with Axis to achieve this functionality? I’d pay good money for it.
However, as I said, my main reason for looking at .NET was that I wanted to write GUI software that fits in with the desktop of my users. Nothing that sticks out like a sore thumb. But windows.forms is almost unusable, sure it has all the nice GUI builder things like drag a button, drop it here, double click for an event handler. But it uses pixel based layout! Pixels!
So handling all the typical GUI problems of:
- multiple languages
- random crazy font settings
- outrageous resolutions (small and huge)
becomes impossible without special custom code. I’m still playing around, and I’ve ordered Chris Sells’ book to see if it helps any. But I’m thinking I may stick with java and play around with Look’n’feel’s.
Koz October 14th, 2003 @ 03:56 AM
There’s good money, then there’s huge money.
I use WSAD at work, and it’s pretty impressive. But at $10k NZD I could buy several new computers and an MSDN subscription. It’s a little outta my league right now…. :)
Carlos E. Perez October 14th, 2003 @ 01:57 PM
To see themindelectric glue and eclipse in action, head over here:
http://www.geocities.com/ceperez/EclipseMainRouter.html
Chris Sells October 15th, 2003 @ 12:48 PM
WinForms does provide support for handling all three of your problems w/o crazy custom code. If you have trouble finding out how when you read my book, let me know.