Choosing a smart client technology..

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Help us out ..      Kevin Moore (wpf) , Scott Morrison (crossbow ) and I were guessing some of the criteria that you use to select a platform ..  we are making two assumptions:   1)  you want a windows smart client .. 2) and you are considering managed code ( so windows forms or wpf mostly)

Here is where we are landing ( and criteria range or explanation ) ...

  • Platform  ( supported OSes )
  • Richness ( battle ship gray to bling )
  • Tools  ( from notepad to  drag-drop-databinding-codegen-magic-wand )
  • Controls   ( from button  to datagrids, is datagrid the richest control that is fair )
  • Ecosystem  ( measure of existance for: books, community, control vendors?)
  • Frameworks  existence of app blocks to accelerate app dev ( like MDI, CAB, Spring)
  • Future investments for the platform ... (e.g. how much will it change and why?? )
  • Existing investments ( your skills, your code )

some that are not making the cut are:  deployment (seems the same), platform lifespan ( seems the same too.. both will ship in Orcas so both have 10+ years to go..)

Some of what I am wondering: 

  • What are we missing??
    • Localization ... is it that relevant...   At MS it is... but outside?  
    • Help system ..
    • Extensibility? Customization?
    • What else??
  • Are the scales above fair or too broad?  I am mosty concerned on richness... was thinking of splitting it to
    • Basic UI services (layout, controls, customization, )
    • app services ( databinding , performance, back-end integration ) .... 
    • Technolgies integrated ( e.g. support for text, 3d, etc.)
    • But when I partition like this seems too granular .. and wpf focused.. 

Thoughts?? I will  let you know where we land ... this is for a deck next wednesday ... and we are all too swamped (so none has a lot of think time), drop me an email with what we are missing ... else we might miss it for next week )..

Cheers..