How much does Vista itself use WPF/Avalon (managed and unmanaged)?

How much does Vista itself use WPF/Avalon (managed and unmanaged)?

• Bob Everland

  Hi Leonardo,

  Thanks for your direct and detailed answer.

  So I guess Vista will be more of a WPF/WCF enabler rather than a WPF/WCF showcase.  Vista is apparently almost completely decoupled from .NET and WPF/WCF.  But it sounds like this is mostly because designing, writing and validating something this big, this new is way-hard, not because of some serious technical flaws in .NET that are being "hushed up".

  Apparently Mary Jo's infamous article "The Dirty Little Secret About Longhorn" was largely on target: http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1820607,00.asp

  So MS's marketing problem is: How do you talk up the benefits of WPF to outsiders, deliver tanalizing bits of it in the 2003 Longhorn shell (I'm basing this on  Richard Grimes' article: http://www.grimes.demon.co.uk/dotnet/vistaAndDotnet.htm), then reluctantly "snatch the cookies away" and deliver a 2006 Vista without some of the significant UI  functionality that has been talked up since before 2003 :)   I guess the best approach is to be transparent and level with people (as you've done in your answer).

  Ironically, a lot of the UI in the current Vista is an advertisement for why we still need a fully WPF/Avalon-ized UI.  Every time I find a dialog (like for Display Properties) that doesn't offer complete scalability and automatic reformating (like all the justifiably impressive WPF demos) I become very frustrated :).

  My bottom line: I'm definately sold on the promise of WPF functionality, and trying to remain a believer.

  Alan Cobb
  

  
  
  

• gphillipk

  The problem with these two articles is that they take some facts and make extraordinary leaps in claiming that they prove their conclusions. I won't dispute that Windows Vista isn't "primarily" built on managed code, nor that we had more dependencies in managed code in the '03 PDC than we do now, but I will most certainly dispute the idea that this proves we've lost faith in managed code. This is a classic logical fallacy: it's reasonable to assume that if we lost faith in managed code then we would not use it in or remove usages from the OS, but the opposite simply doesn't follow.
  
  At the same time, we have other examples of applications that could be written in native code but are being developed entirely on top of WinFX APIs due to the benefits extended by the new platform. The best public examples right now are Sparkle and Max. They could have been written in native code (and, in the case of Sparkle, used XAML as just a serialization format), but instead they are WinFX code. This should tell you something more meaningful about our commitment to the platform.
  
  So, please, continue to believe -- we certainly do.

  
  
  

• mindblower

  Lots of good questions here! I'll take them one by one, though I'll focus primarily on WPF, since it's my area of expertise.
  

  Alan Cobb wrote:

  Will there be any actual examples of WPF/Avalon being used in Vista (even an WPF/Avalon-ized Notepad would be something :)   Is it correct that managed WPF/WCF will be "present" with the shipping Vista, but not actually used by any of it

  
  That's correct, there aren't any examples of WPF applications included in Windows Vista at this time. Though predicting the future is always a risky business, I believe there won't be any preinstalled with the OS at ship time either. However, WPF itself comes with the OS, so that Windows Vista users will have a ready platform for WPF applications.
  

  Alan Cobb wrote:

  Apparently Vista does use some of the unmanaged DLLs underneath WPF/Avalon, rather than going through the managed interfaces presented by WPF   If yes, how widespread is that usage

  
  This is true; a small set of internal components use the underlying graphics technology. The keyword here is "small" -- we needed to use WPF graphics to enable some of the features of the OS, most visibly the Desktop Window Manager, but we needed to keep the number of dependencies small to keep the project manageable. Which neatly segways to:
  

  Alan Cobb wrote:

  Assuming there is no managed WPF usage in Vista (and presumably no managed WCF usage either), what if anything does this imply about the current "OS-grade" viability of managed WPF code

  
  Nothing. The lack of uses of WPF by the OS itself has nothing to do with the viability of managed code, and a lot to do with engineering efficiency. Since this is the very first version of WPF, we expected (and observed) a large amount of ongoing refinement to the functionality and APIs of this new platform. If you've been downloading CTPs, you are familiar with this . If we had users of the API built into the OS itself then it would be a lot more difficult to make those refinements, as we'd have to also synchronously update all affected applications, possibly on a daily basis, and that would take away from time we could use to make the best possible platform. In contrast, other WPF applications not built into the OS can be updated on whatever schedule is convenient to the teams building those applications.
  

  Alan Cobb wrote:

  How is this expected to change in the future   In other words, when if ever will we see managed WPF/WCF code playing a significant role in actual OS bits shipped by MS

  
  Here we are in the risky future prediction business again, but historical trends may point the way. Other platform technologies also often started off with no applications directly built into the OS, such as DirectX, MFC, Windows Forms and the .NET Framework itself. However, all of the above now have something shipping in Windows that makes use of it. Perhaps WPF will follow a similar path. At the moment, however, we are focused on finishing this version of the OS.
  
  
  

• ohanlonp

  Leonardo,

  So to summarize:  My original question was in two parts:

  #1 Is Vista really as minimal in its actual
     use of .NET and WPF/Avalon as it appears

  #2 Does this mean anything about the technical
     viability and future of .NET and managed WPF

  Apparently the answers are: #1 Yes.  #2 No.

  To be fair to Mary Jo's article, I don't think she ever drew any conclusions about #2, but rather was just reporting #1.

  If #2 was true, it would be a very big deal indeed.  I'm glad to hear your reassurance it is not.  The fact #1 is true is mostly just disappointing, but still IMO newsworthy.  I can't help believing that this question will occur again and again as more people try the Vista betas.

  I suppose one positive spin to the limited use of WPF in Vista is that it creates opportunities for 3rd parties to write Avalon-ized versions of important components.  For example, a nice extensible Avalon-ized Explorer for Vista (maybe with no support for legacy in-process COM-based extensions).

  Another positive spin (which Mary Jo mentions in her article) is that the Windows eco-system is probably best served by MS's decision to focus on getting the features of the underlying Vista OS solid.  (Which is basically what you said too).

  Alan Cobb
  

  
  
  

• Encoder99

  I do want to know the MS's answer,and hope the answer is clear
  
  
  
• How much does Vista itself use WPF/Avalon (managed and unmanaged)?