I want to start developing desktop java applications and I would like to know what the java community uses.
I started with Swing but I found it very rudimentary.
I'm used to work with .net c# WPF with Visual Studio 2010 and I was looking for something with the same quality (or close) with java ( Swing + Window builder is not an option )
I would appreciate your inputs, even if you disagree with my Swing opinion
thanks all
The other option you want want to look into is SWT (The toolkit Eclipse uses). It renders using mostly native components so it feels more robust like a real desktop application.
I'm looking for a better looking and feel development..
Swing offers 4 PLAFs as standard. There are at least a dozen more 3rd party PLAFs, some with dozens of variants. Of that plethora of possibilities, end-users generally prefer the 'native' PLAF - which looks and feels mostly like 'every other native app.' on their machine.
You can see a small app. that changes PLAF. on the Nested Layout Example. Here is the Mac. native PLAF.
..why do you think it is not easy?
This was said in relation to a general comment that it is harder to build a GUI in Swing than (for example) Visual Studio.
The reason for that is that Swing is intended to work on multiple platforms, screen-resolutions/sizes, PLAFs (and other factors). As such, 'dragging and dropping' components into their final position is impractical, since that might change according to the factors listed above. Instead Java relies on the concept of layout managers, which calculate the size and position of components as they appear at run-time.
The layout managers use 'logical groupings' of components to achieve the desired general shape expected of a GUI. The image above is an example of how to combine layouts to achieve different effects in different parts of the GUI.
Although I don't use GUI builders for Java I do feel that they can increase productivity, it is just a matter of:
Already knowing what Java Layouts are available, and how to use them.
Using the standard layouts in combination in the GUI, to achieve the desired effect.
If you don't mind an external dependency, you could also take a look at SWT. It's the framework that eclipse is built with, though it's not the easiest thing in the world to use.
It does provide a GUI-builder called SWT designer (if I remember correctly). It's not as good as what you're used to in Visual Studio though. That's a pretty high bar for quality. In the brief experience I have with it, there was a fair amount of boiler plate code, and the API isn't quite as intuitive as I'd like personally.
However, it is fairly widely used. Eclipse is built on it, and by extension, so are many professional tools built from that same base (Such as IBM's Rational tools, and Adobe's ColdFusion Builder). That should give you an idea of the power of the tool, if nothing else.
How about Java under Mono,using IVKM and Gtk?
You would be able to program in java, but your application would actually be .NET code... Not sure if that works for you.
If you want to move away from .NET alltogether, then perhaps you could use the java Gtk bindings:
http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/
Check out JFormDesigner. JFormDesigner with Eclipse is a very powerful tool set. Also look for a good LaF. See The Alloy Look and Feel and JGoodies. You may find Look and feel in java useful.
Related
I’d like to develop an application with a complex GUI (combobox with animation, charts with spline, transparent layers, …). I have good experience with C# 2.0 and I’m studying WPF, but I read that, unfortunately, there is no plan to port WPF to Mono.
If I stick with C# and create custom GUI controls using OpenGL (via OpenTK), I feel it will be a hard work (integration with GTK#, debugging, hard to use to design forms).
I can use Java (with JOGL), but I’m not very skilled with it, and I don’t know about performance issues.
Last option is C++, but I have to do a big revision (years since last time I used it), and I find it hard to develop GUI and portable applications in C++. (Maybe I’m wrong! Still, I’m quite afraid to develop such complex application with this language.)
What is your advice? Had I better choose C# + OpenTK, Java + JOGL, or return to C++?
I would go with Qt. Take a look at http://qt.nokia.com/products/ . If you are afraid of C++ (but there is no reason to be afraid of it), you can try with Java Swing. I think that those are the best options to go with multi platform desktop GUI development.
I would suggest Mono and GTK#. Developing apps with .Net is far more effective than doing it in C++ vanilla. Sure, you have to stick with C# 3.0 and .Net 2.0 (some features from 3.5 is implemented, like LINQ). But it still gives you a lot more than C++ with, for instance QT, would give you.
Go C# for productivity. Nothing against C++ but it's a bit verbose.
As for the GUI library, I think WinForms used to work on Mono. Alternatively, GTK#.
I would not suggest using wpf for it is a platform dependant platform. Silverlight might be a better option.
But if you are developing a web application, jquery would be a nice option you also might consider adobe flex and adobe air; http://www.adobe.com/products/air/
Does multi-platform have to include iDevices? Can it be on the web? Those are 2 questions you have to answer first.
If you can live without iPad/iPhone suppport, then Flex/Flash/Air is good option for highly graphical things. It is multi-platform for sure and easily integrates to the web. Probably your best option for this case with the limited details given.
Qt could work for you as well, although I can't say for sure if it's graphic library will make it easy. I've personally never worked with it, so other would have to answer that. But since it is in C++, you could use other libraries as well.
Java Swing sounds rough to me for this complex of a GUI. Making some basic stuff isn't too bad, but if you are expecting an experience like with C# I think you will be frustrated. Just a personal opinion of course.
Lastly, if it can be a web app, why not stick with C# and Silverlight? A .NET solution may work well for you since you are already learning it.
Silverlight runs on Windows/Mac/Linux and some handhelds, and is being ported to more handhelds. I believe Silverlight will ultimately be ported to every popular device.
Silverlight is:
Much, much more powerful than Flex/Flash/Air.
Much, much more powerful than Qt.
Ridiculously more powerful than GTK+ or GTK#.
Ridiculously more powerful than JOGL.
Silverlight has all of the features you have requested.
Silverlight works very well with C#, which is a much more productive language to work in than C++.
Silverlight is basically a very large subset of WPF, so if you already know WPF, you already know Silverlight.
Unless you absolutely require iPhone/iPad support I think the decision is perfectly obvious.
See this comparison of WPF and Cocoa to get some feeling of how WPF/Silverlight compares with the likes of Qt, Flash/Flex/Air, and GTK#, all of which use a primitive WinForms-like object model similar to the one used by Cocoa.
At my day job (a well-known microprocessor company) we develop complex engineering apps with Java, Eclipse RCP, and Java OpenGL. Performance is good -- we can easily get many millions of polygons/second and up to 100 frames/second. The SWT widgets in Eclipse are fast enough where we haven't had to render any custom controls with JOGL.
I've got a set of tutorials that shows how to get started with this kind of programming. The series starts with http://wadeawalker.wordpress.com/2010/10/09/tutorial-a-cross-platform-workbench-program-using-java-opengl-and-eclipse/.
First, don’t use C# for anything that should be portable. Mono is a bad option for GUI for two reasons:
Mono goes always several steps behind .NET.
Mono does not support WPF, so the only way to develop GUI is using something like GTK#.
My personal opinion – use C++. It would give you very good portability and independence.
You have two options:
Qt4 – very good GUI toolkit, makes GUI development very easy, and highly portable.
GTKmm – also very good toolkit, but it feels less natural on Windows.
Also, Java has Swing toolkit that comes with JDK and is available on all Java platforms, even very strange ones like OpenVMS.
I have just finished my first real commercial application written in C++ / MFC.
The application consisted of agent installed on users workstations which in turn was controlled from a GUI Application on an administrators workstation. I choose C++ / MFC for these reasons.
Because I didn't know C#
Because I was not sure how long it would take for me to become as productive in a new lanuage
Because I did not want the hassle of installing the .NET runtime on workstations some of which might be W2K.
Now I am thinking of my second application which will again consist of an agent & a GUI Application. I am happy to continue on the same track with the agent for the reasons above but the GUI application will be much more complicated then the first. The first GUI app took a very long time to develop, was torturous and looked out of date even though it was freshly made.
Should I just bite the bullet with .net c# or look into something like QT.
TIA.
If you want really fast results, use .NET WinForms. Nothing beats the speed of putting together a GUI app and filling it with life, except maybe Delphi. The C# language and the .NET Base Class Library will also give you a huge productivity gain, even over the already great Qt framework. If you stick to the basic Windows Forms controls, it will even run on Mono.
WPF is even more productive once you're used to it, but getting used to it takes way more time than for Windows Forms.
.NET C# is a very good choice for GUI applications more generally. It's simple, to-the-point and there are vast resources on the internet.
The only thing against it I can think of, is platform compatibility, but if you're limiting yourself to C++/MFC, that shouldn't be a concern to you.
Even if you want to go platform-independent some time later, you can make a separate Gtk in .NET on Linux (Mono, the open-source .NET framework). Heck, there's even a Cocoa (Mac OS X) binding, I just don't know how mature it is. Furthermore Windows Forms is largely supported in Mono already... it really surprised me how mature it is when I was trying it out, although my primary experience with C# is on Windows.
For GUI application, you won't regret using C#. Even if you want to go cross-platform, and certainly not if you intend to only target Windows clients.
C# will almost definitely make you more productive!
Delphi. Produces stand-alone Windows executables which will work fine on Win2K (best OS Microsoft ever produced - this post is being written on it). Only disadvantage is Object Pascal, but if you know C++ it's very easy to pick up - and its was designed buy the guy who designed C#. The IDE is several orders of magnitude more productive than MFC with VS.
I've done them all - a monkey can use C#, it's all drag and drop interfacing and public accessors. I wouldn't wish using MFC upon my worst enemy, and QT just wasn't as intuitive as C# for me. It's also really easy to make C# look nice. Difficult things like changing colors and flashing controls are trivial in C#. It also has built in styles to use. I use it professionally daily. The only time I use C++ is if I'm programming a server where every microsecond counts.
The first question would be exactly what caused the difficulty in developing the GUI with MFC. Was it inherent to MFC, or what it because you were learning something new, and didn't really know what you were doing? To put it slightly differently, if you had to do it again today, how would the difficulty compare?
Make no mistake about it -- MFC is an old design with far more than its share of problems, shortcoming and design flaws. .NET is a lot newer, but has far more than its share of problems, shortcoming and design flaws as well.
Along with that, .NET is just plain huge. It's reasonably well organized, which helps, but it still takes quite a while to digest the sheer volume of information necessary to use it well. Likewise, while C# (for the most obvious example) is a perfectly decent language, learning to use it well isn't an overnight task either. This is probably a smaller issue though: C# doesn't really have many new concepts compared to C++. Just for example, a competent C++ programmer can easily read C# almost immediately, and while he may not use it optimally, can also write bits of C# immediately as well.
on which platform will your second app run on?
if it's XP and up i'll suggest C# / WinForms / GDI.
C# isn't that hard to adapt to, and there are literally a ton of examples online, and great books (the Head First one caught my eye as you can code a nethack clone and other fun projects). I've had to transition from C++ to C# myself, and it wasn't that rough at all (in fact it seemed like a pretty easy transition), and allowed me to rapidly prototype.
Good luck!
So I've been learning C# for like a year now (I'm 20 years old) and I'm getting pretty confident with it. I've also been meddling with C++ every now and again. For example just recently I've been following the Nehe OpenGL tutorials for C++ and I find it a fun way of learning.
I want to start looking at creating cross platform GUI software after I stumbled across this library called FLTK (fluid something rather). After finally and painfully getting it to work I found it refreshing to know that there are solutions for GUI creation in C++, however I think FLTK looked pretty old.
So I googled around for some newer GUI frameworks and decided to start playing with wxWidgets (decided against Qt because of licensing).
I downloaded it, compiled it, and looked to see if there were any IDE plug-ins for RAD development, as you can imagine going from drag and drop a component onto a form in C# I was hoping for something similar.
I learned that code::blocks has something of the sort so I tried that out. It was alright but the thing that turned me off was the horrible code completion; it would only show members and methods in the current object and nothing for the #included header files. I understand that code completion/IntelliSense isn't easy for C++ but Visual Studio 2008 handles it pretty good. I did find some other RAD tools like wxFormBuilder but it costs money, not something I want to do for simply learning.
So my TLDR question is if anyone has had experience with wxWidgets? Do you just develop in whatever IDE you're comfortable with and just code the GUI? Meaning no visual helpers? Perhaps you could give me a nudge in what direction I should be going :)
Thanks, this is also my first post on this site albeit I have read many threads before that have helped me solve copious problems. Cheers!
My suggestion is to learn how to do GUI layout with wxWidgets in code, then when you get good at it learn how to use the GUI tools.
Doing this kind of work manually for a while gives you the understanding about what you need ("Ok, I need a wxSizer, vertical, to put these two horizontal wxSizers into, where I put my a wxStaticText and a wxTextCtl for each line ...")... where as I think if you started out with the GUI tools you'd just tend to get annoyed because (last time I looked) none of them were Drag And Drop editors like you get with .NET.
Definitely give Code::Blocks another try. It is a WONDERFUL environment to work with wxWidgets in. It comes with a form designer and templates for wxWidgets projects, so I can't imagine working without it.
Also, for a good beginner's introduction to wxWidgets, try this page. It helped me alot when I started with it.
I use wxWidgets without using a drag and drop designer. There are obviously drawbacks to that approach but an advantage is that you don't have any horrible automatically generated code to deal with. In the past I've found having such code in the middle of my project has caused various types of grief - especially if you decide it needs some serious changes it is often necessary to start from scratch because form designers are so much better at "writing" as opposed to "editing".
For simple applications you can assemble a UI using a mixture of customized and standard widgets without too much difficulty. Check out the wxWidgets samples and demos, which use that approach. My chess app (see my website) uses this approach too.
A more elaborate UI could possibly be implemented by writing something special at a higher level of abstraction. The kind of thing I am thinking of would be a subsystem that accepts high level flexible requests to provide different types of user interface functionality, and then sorts out the details of the controls to create and the positioning etc. of those controls itself. That is kind of a technical fantasy of mine but I haven't ever really attempted to do it. Actually, a fairly primitive facility of this type is already available and used by the demos I mentioned; It is called a "Sizer" (class wxSizer) and is basically a control container.
Finally I would point out that problems with the Qt licence have basically gone away since Nokia bought Trolltech and made it "more" free (LGPL licence). Many people think Qt is the way to go these days. I am pretty happy with wxWidgets but will definitely evaluate Qyt seriously one day. Good luck with your projects.
I have developed a number of application GUIs using wxWidgets - you can see screenshots at http://ravenspoint.com/
IMHO, you should distinguish between designing a GUI and implementing it. Expecting to use the same program to design your GUI and to automatically emit all the code to implement the design is expecting too much.
A design program should be fast and simple. I recommend http://www.balsamiq.com/
Once you have settled on the design, then you can turn to the coding. Personally, I find that placing widgets on a panel using the wxPosition and wxSize parameters of the wxWidget constructors to be trivial - easier than trying to nudge widgets into their exact positions using the mouse.
The trouble with using some kind of form builder to emit all the code for a significant GUI is that you end up with a morass of automatically generated code that is hard to find your way around in. If the code has been handwritten, then you already know where everything is located.
wxFormBuilder but it costs money
wxFormBuilder is Free and Open source
Also Visual Studio is best for C++ coding in wxWidgets, but you will run into lots of issues on Linux due to the way Visual Studio handles a lot of things, like file names you have to take extra care for case sensitivity.
Also regarding the GUI, add the wxFormBuilder to the Visual Studio solution, add the file type handler to Visual Studio. Now just double click on it and add your dialogs, like you do it in C#.
Just add the generated code files to the Visual Studio project once and you are done.
It's very easy to use Visual Studio with GUI programming in wxWidgets.
Also don't forget to watch the CodeLite editor if you want to port on Linux. It is very much compatible with the Visual Studio projects and shortcut keys.
There is wxGlade and wxFormBuilder.
I don't know if there is another one, but the wxFormBuilder I know is free and open source.
You will find links to other tools on the homepage
of wxGlade (http:// wxglade.sourceforge.net/).
Most of these programs are able to output xrc files, which are are an XML representation of your GUI. It address the issue of complexity of the generated code but is not as powerful.
Yet personally I don't use any of these tools, except sometimes to see what it's going to look like before I do it but never to actually generate code.
I just finished doing a hello world program in both wx and fltk using the netbeans IDE. Microsoft Visual Studio WinForms or MFC was much easier than either. I needed cross platform capability so I could not use it for this application. I finished fltk in much less time than wx. The program was simpler, smaller, faster, and easier to write. Wx had pretty disjointed documentation and organization. Fltk was designed back in the "old days" when small fast and efficient was valued. That's probably why it seems "old" to you. I'm an old guy so it worked for me. YMMV
I wanted to learn to program and looked at both Java and C#. I decided to go with C# because it was so easy to just open a form and plop some buttons and text boxes on it. With just one download, C# Express got me going.
From what I saw with Java that couldn’t be done. At least not without downloading and configuring other software. All of which I found no easy instructions for. But I really wanted to learn Java.
I really don’t want to learn how to create UIs AND a new language. I’d rather just to concentrate on the code itself. Is there an easy way (like C# basically) to create Java apps?
Are you talking about a GUI builder?
There are many GUI builders out there. Some IDEs like Netbeans come with nice GUI builders for Java.
There are options in the Java community for 'one-stop downloads' like you mention. They are out there, they're just not as public as Visual Studio is. EasyEclipse is one of my favorites.
I've done a fair bit of work (> 4 years) on both platforms and the biggest difference I have found is not so much with the languages per se, but with the whole development environment. Specifically:
In .Net (be it ASP.Net, C# or VB.Net) the examples you find on MSDN or elsewhere tend to just work without a whole lot of tweaking, and the documentation is more reliable, whereas Java examples - especially the open source ones - often don't work out of the box and the documentation (yes, Apache Slide and Shindig - I'm looking at YOU!) is sometimes non-existent.
Having said that, the sheer amount of choice for plugins, libraries and the like for the Java platform is enormous, which is unsurprising considering its (largely) non-proprietary nature.
It seems to me the best and easier way to get what you want is to use Netbeans (JDK 6u14 with NetBeans IDE 6.5.1 Bundle).
It has both the JDK and the IDE in one download. And it has a easy and very good GUI builder.
Java is a very good platform and as you said it is easier to create cross platform applications, however, don't except this from the Desktop UI which, although still cross platform, not always gets right on all platforms with out modification.
You would have to add some code specific for each target desktop, but definitely that's a lot easier than write three different application ( One in Visual C#, other in GTK, and other in Cocoa )
I been learning to program in C# for a few months, but recently I signed up for a course which required Java. So I started playing around with java, first tried Netbeans then Eclipse.
I'm kinda a computer programming noobie (background mainly in web design) so take my perspective as a student. After messing around with Java for a bit i still prefer C#. While both are excellent the factors that tipped C# in my case are as follows
Easier documentation and a large variety of easy to view Video Tutorials, yes I know netbeans have a very large collection of video tutorials as well, they are encoded at such a terrible resolution and bitrate that they are largely unwatchable
Slightly easier to learn, maybe it's cause of the IDE or the syntax, but I found C# easier to pick up.
More functionality exposed right after using the IDE, you will find more controls in visual studio than compared to Netbeans. Eclipse was quite confusing for a noobie like me wading through it's massive plugins.
I think the only thing java has going for it, is that it's supported on more platforms. Though Mono is making up for the linux and Apple side so i guess it's not that bad. Either way they are both extremely productive environments, just in my humble noobie opninion C# is just slightly more intuitive to pick up.
The ability to learn to program in one language or another should most certainly not be based upon how to drag and drop GUI controls, especially since that measure is irrelevant to the language itself.
Side note: Java and C# are so similar that you'll pretty much be learning both as you go regardless.
I'd have to agree with dxmio, I switch back and forth between c# and java quite often. The two languages are quite similar.
The best way of learning programming .. is to write code!
If you know your way around Java, It's a mater of syntax to learn C#.
Programming is just as much a way of thinking in code, as knowing a language.
Personally, I didn't start with GUI. I started with BlueJ, a free "learning" compiler, for Java code.
No programmer in the world knows any language 100%. Their all sitting in their office, and playing with stackoverflow and google all day. Remember, Google is your best friend! (May be a bit of caffe too !)
Reminder: The best way to learn to write code, is to write code! If it's C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, Python or whatever you prefer, it's a matter of framework and syntax.
If you have Java in your browser, all you need is the latest Eclipse bundle.
I would suggest the Java EE edition for your platform from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
It appears that there are video tutorials starting from scratch at http://eclipsetutorial.sourceforge.net/totalbeginner.html
Using Netbeans, you can create Java based Swing GUIs pretty easily. Netbeans comes with a pretty nice GUI builder.
If you learn how to program in Java, I don't think it would really be that much of a stretch to create Java Swing applications from scratch. It's just a matter of learning the Swing libraries.
Not being from a .NET background, I can't comment on learning C# GUIs, but from my experience Swing was very easy to learn and it helps A LOT to understand the code underlying what the GUI builder in Netbeans generates.
I decided to go with C# because it was so easy to just open a form and plop some buttons and text boxes on it.
You can do this using builders in either language without writing any code.
With just one download, C# Express got me going.
Netbeans is the same deal for Java.
From what I saw with Java that couldn’t be done. At least not with out downloading and configuring other software.
True, you cannot develop Java with C# Express and you cannot develop in c~ using Netbeans. You do need to install two pieces of software.
All of which I found no easy instructions for.
I suggest you try http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=netbeans+gui+builder+tutorials 55,100 hits or http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=java+gui+tutorials 1,340,000 hits
But I really wanted to learn Java.
It doesn't appear you want to actually write any code or install more than one program at a time. You will find that learning to program in a language will be asking more from you than this.
Was I missing something?
Quite a bit I imagine.
I really don’t want to have to learn how to create UI’s AND a new language.
You can use a GUI builder to layout your windows, but if you want your program to do something useful, you will have to do some programing in a language.
I’d rather just want to concentrate on the code itself.
That appears to contradict everything you have just said. You can't concentrate on the code without learning the language.
Is there an easy way (like C# basically) to create Java apps?
To write apps that do something useful you are going to have to learn how to program and at least one language. I suggest you also learn how to debug and profile your program.
i found this for designing java winform application for you .
please check out
www.formdev.com
JFormDesigner™ is a professional GUI designer for Java™ Swing user interfaces. Its outstanding support for JGoodies FormLayout, GroupLayout (Free Design), TableLayout and GridBagLayout makes it easy to create professional looking forms.
My company has developed a long standing product using MFC in Visual C++ as the defacto standard for UI development. Our codebase contains ALOT of legacy/archaic code which must be kept operational. Some of this code is older than me (originally written in the late 70s) and some members of our team are still on Visual Studio 6.
However, a conclusion has thankfully been reached internally that our product is looking somewhat antiquated compared to our competitors', and that something needs to be done.
I am currently working on a new area of the UI which is quite separate from the rest of the product. I have therefore been given the chance to try out 'new' technology stacks as a sort of proving ground before the long process of moving over the rest of the UI begins.
I have been using C# with Windows Forms and the .net framework for a while in my spare time and enjoy it, but am somewhat worried about the headaches caused by interop. While this particular branch of the UI won't require much interop with the legacy C++ codebase, I can forsee this becoming an issue in the future.
The alternative is just to continue with MFC, but try and take advantage of the new feature pack that shipped with VS2008. This I guess is the easiest option, but I worry about longevity and not taking advantage of the goodness that is .net...
So, which do I pick? We're a small team so my recommendation will quite probably be accepted as a future direction for our development - I want to get it right.
Is MFC dead? Is C#/Winforms the way forward? Is there anything else I'm totally missing? Help greatly appreciated!
I'm a developer on an app that has a ton of legacy MFC code, and we have all of your same concerns. A big driver for our strategy was to eliminate as much risk and uncertainty as we could, which meant avoiding The Big Rewrite. As we all know, TBR fails most of the time. So we chose an incremental approach that allows us to preserve modules that won't be changing in the current release, writing new features managed, andporting features that are getting enhancements to managed.
You can do this several ways:
Host WPF content on your MFC views (see here)
For MFC MDI apps, create a new WinForms framework and host your MFC MDI views (see here)
Host WinForms user controls in MFC Dialogs and Views (see here)
The problem with adopting WPF (option 1) is that it will require you to rewrite all of your UI at once, otherwise it'll look pretty schizophrenic.
The second approach looks viable but very complicated.
The third approach is the one we selected and it's been working very well. It allows you to selectively refresh areas of your app while maintaining overall consistency and not touching things that aren't broken.
The Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack looks interesting, I haven't played with it though. Seems like it might help with your issue of outdated look. If the "ribbon" would be too jarring for your users you could look at third-party MFC and/or WinForms control vendors.
My overall recommendation is that interop + incremental change is definitely preferable to sweeping changes.
After reading your follow-up, I can definitely confirm that the productivity gains of the framework vastly outweigh the investment in learning it. Nobody on our team had used C# at the start of this effort and now we all prefer it.
Depending on the application and the willingness of your customers to install .NET (not all of them are), I would definitely move to WinForms or WPF. Interop with C++ code is hugely simplified by refactoring non-UI code into class libraries using C++/CLI (as you've noted in your selection of tags).
The only issue with WPF is that it may be hard to maintain the current look-and-feel. Moving to WinForms can be done while maintaining the current look of your GUI. WPF uses such a different model that to attempt to keep the current layout would probably be futile and would definitely not be in the spirit of WPF. WPF also apparently has poor performance on pre-Vista machines when more than one WPF process is running.
My suggestion is to find out what your clients are using. If most have moved to Vista and your team is prepared to put in a lot of GUI work, I would say skip WinForms and move to WPF. Otherwise, definitely look seriously at WinForms. In either case, a class library in C++/CLI is the answer to your interop concerns.
You don't give a lot of detail on what your legacy code does or how it's structured. If you have certain performance criteria you might want to maintain some of your codebase in C++. You'll have an easier time doing interop with your old code if it is exposed in the right way - can you call into the existing codebase from C# today? Might be worth thinking about a project to get this structure right.
On the point of WPF, you could argue that WinForms may be more appropriate. Moving to WinForms is a big step for you and your team. Perhaps they may be more comfortable with the move to WinForms? It's better documented, more experience in the market, and useful if you still need to support windows 2000 clients.
You might be interested in Extending MFC Applications with the .NET Framework
Something else to consider is C++/CLI, but I don't have experience with it.
Thank you all kindly for your responses, it's reassuring to see that generally the consensus follows my line of thinking. I am in the fortunate situation that our software also runs on our own custom hardware (for the broadcast industry) - so the choice of OS is really ours and is thrust upon our customers. Currently we're running XP/2000, but I can see a desire to move up to Vista soon.
However, we also need to maintain very fine control over GPU performance, which I guess automatically rules out WPF and hardware acceleration? I should have made that point in my original post - sorry. Perhaps it's possible to use two GPUs... but that's another question altogether...
The team doesn't have any significant C# experience and I'm no expert myself, but I think the overall long term benefits of a managed environment probably outweigh the time it'll take to get up to speed.
Looks like Winforms and C# have it for now.
Were you to look at moving to C# and therefore .NET, I would consider Windows Presentation Foundation rather than WinForms. WPF is the future of smart clients in .NET, and the skills you pick up you'll be able to reuse if you want to make browser-hosted Silverlight applications.
I concur with the WPF sentiment. Tag/XML based UI would seem to be a bit more portable than WinForms.
I guess too you have to consider your team, if there is not a lot of current C# skills, then that is a factor, but going forward the market for MFC developers is diminishing and C# is growing.
Maybe some kind of piecemeal approach would be possible? I have been involved with recoding legacy applications to C# quite a bit, and it always takes a lot longer than you would estimate, especially if you are keeping some legacy code, or your team isn't that conversant with C#.