Moving from Winforms to WPF - 4 Primary Reasons to Consider

For a long time now, developers have been using Winforms to develop graphical user interfaces that give out an excellent experience. Winforms are event driven i.e. they wait for the user to interact with the screen to send an output. However, Winforms has not received any major update in the recent times despite the technological advancement and the advanced user demands.

It is time developers adopted a new technology, which will give the users the much needed advancement, such as the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). WPF Application Development is a completely different API that is used to render user interfaces. It is based on the .Net framework and uses the XAML language.

Given the needs of the modern interfaces, it is time you converted your Winform based interface to WPF. The question is whether it is easy to convert or not. Here are a few steps that will help you convert Winforms to WPF. Let’s get started!

Work on the code

The code for Winforms is very different from that for WPF. It is important for you to work on the code from the scratch to make a difference. When you start working on coding the user interface built in Winform to WPF, you need to understand the basics of coding, and then migrate the code.

Convert to XAML

As we are already aware, WPF works on XAML language while Winform uses C#. It is important for you to convert the utilities developed using C#.Net to XAML for them to work on WPF. You can use the CodePlex project, as it handles basic code conversion, and also the conversion of the event handling code.

Host Winforms within WPF

This is the next step that you need to take when moving your interface from Winform to WPF. If you don’t want to convert the entire code, you can host a part of the code within WPF. You can read the guide to get a thorough understanding of how to host the code in WPF.

Test before finalizing

Once you have followed these steps, it is important to test your WPF. This is a major step, as it will ensure if your interface is working perfectly or not. Test for the different systems, before validating.

Conclusion

The new gen user interface uses WPF, which is why asp.net developers need to adopt this user friendly host. If you are still using Winform, it is time to move forward, and change your interface. There are a few things that you ought to consider when making this move. You can either code from the scratch or host part of the code in the new interface model.

If you want to learn more about moving from Winform to WPF, you can connect with us. We can help you with .Net migration as well as WPF development services.