C# Compare Windows Forms vs WPF vs UWP

WinForms - good for applications that doesn't need a good-looking UI
WPF - good for applications that needs a good-loooking UI and more stable
UWP - good for applications if you want your UI to look like Windows 10 or 11 (sinceadapts the modern fluent design UI)

personally, i don't recommend using WinForms. It is very hard to design your UI there. i prefer UWP then WPF

I'd go winforms for small apps that doesn't need complex UI designing, its just that efficient and gets the job done. in the end users does not give a fuck about what stack you used but how you resolve their problems

What's funny is, coming from Java background back in my RIT days, when we approached UI, we learned the java method of creating a flow of grids, panels, etc. and adding elements to initialize the window in our constructor which would add elements in sequence and "build" the scalable page. This was back in 2006-2008ish. We were coding for Sun Solaris machines or Linux machines. The approach is basically how WPF/UWP kinda sorta work. lol. Back before Vista and WPF were even a thing.
In the "newer" XML layout, you can both construct your XAML file, or you can add elements to each stackpanel, grid, etc. in code with Children.Add, etc. which is actually quite familiar to how I'd build a gui in Java back in the day. lol
Also, while I'm new to Windows development and happened to peek in here, while "WinForms" may have only existed since 2002/XP, the concept of a "Form" with drag and drop UI elements dates back to Visual Basic 3 for Windows 3.1 or perhaps even earlier. lol. It's almost the same concept.

Each framework listed sucks for different reasons. Wpf is easier to make layouts in and in a lot of ways, easier to get an app off the ground. WinForms does not have anything like XAML. Layout containers are not as full featured as WPF. WinForms will compile and run a bit faster however, in my experience. Ultimately you even if you use WPF, you will still need to make calls to WinForms librarys for some things. Both options suck. .NET sucks. Make better C++ frameworks and people won't need this nonsense.

If you get used to WPF then designing MAUI apps will be much easier. Anyway, for beginners WPF is too complex, but if you want elegant designs and modern material looking app, go for WPF. Been there myself and I'm lovin' it.

Very nice explaination, thanks

This is all very misleading. I've been working with desktop applications in windows since about 2002 and have used winforms, wpf, metro/uwp/winui 3. I wouldn't advise people to go with windows forms. Whilst it's still supported and I still work on windows forms projects. WPF is much better. If you like the drag drop functionality of winforms you can still do all that with WPF. But you can also build a form from code if you're more used to building apps with html and css. But the GUI with wpf is much more performant as it uses DirectX to render. So when it comes to wanting to go beyond the basic existing tools you have more options. It also supports animations if you want to make your interface a little slicker. WPF is also easier to quickly design forms that will work on multiple screen resolutions/scales in my experience. There's also more support for touch screens.

UWP has more similarities with WPF than winforms as they both use XAML as the design language, but the major difference is that UWP was designed to run on the windows store platform.

does uwp app is the same as windows 8's metro app?

Nice content

WFA - Good, but very limited, when designing UI it is pain, you can't moving form, every adding/renaming/replacing/moving is very slow and stuttering.
WPF - vector graphics, fast, smooth, but harder to learn/understand, ifyou are new and never do at least WFA App. And you need to know something little about XML (but actually you do not have, believe me)

My recommendation is WPF not only for smooth newer designing, but also it is overall better.

Thanks

Yikes, this video was fine until it hit WPF and UWP after which it started to get a bit misinformative.
UWP is certainly NOT just a tablet framework, it was a framework that was developed to allow programmers to create a single UWP program that could then run on any Microsoft platform (Windows Desktop, Tablet, Phone, XBox, Windows IOT that runs on embedded devices like a raspberry pi).
Microsoft's success with WPF and UWP depends on who you ask, but they are generally considered to be less successful than good ol winforms.

why don't we drag and drop the controls from the toolbox onto the wpf window to quickly create the UI as we do in winforms? please can you help me with this ? because it seems it takes alot of time to craete the UI for wpf.

Thank you that is a very useful course 👍 1000.

WinForms is a waste of time, outdated, and soon will be dead, please do yourself a favor and skip it.

very straightforward video thank you very much

I thought it's XAML not XML? Or is it the same thing?

Wait, so is winforms outdated or not and should I use it in 2021? I am getting confused by the comment section.

I am not sure why all the programmers out there dump on WinForms and WPF. Programming itself is difficult to learn.....let alone with the starting to throw all these different frameworks and apis and then for the net, Linux and apple. (In the early/mid 90's it was just windows and maybe hooking up the jet database in visual basic). So programming itself has become very complex for the beginner.....and why you are seeing less and less people venturing into computer programming. And now you want to take away the very simple and extremely useful drag and drop user interface and force them to spend an hour building a window that you can build in winforms or WPF in about 1 minute.
It's like you are saying, we programmers are an elite bunch and we won't welcome you into our club unless every single thing you do is in code. I just don't get it. It would be like in the 1980's if cobol and assembly language programmers shut out all the programmers learning basic and pascal. Get a grip people......and get a grip Microsoft.....let us get a learning knowledge of the programming language and produce function windows programs before you throw use into the fire and take away our drag and drop GUI interface and force us to code everything and learn all the frameworks out there.

Console app.....1950's???? Nah.....more like early 1990's. While Win 1 came out in 85" it wasn't until about 1995 when Win 95 first came out that people started migrating to the windows environment. Before that it was good ole MS DOS and using Edlin to make a menu batch file :)

UWP is for windows 10 applications you can develop an app that can be in Microsoft store

UWP is for Win8? No. UWP is a Windows 10 technology. UWP is for tablets? No. UWP was designed to support touch interfaces but its a full fledged desktop technology. UWP isn't universal? Across Windows current Windows platforms it is. Running on Windows 10 (Intel and ARM), Windows IoT, Xbox One and HoloLens.

If you are a beginner and watching this c# is not a good language, to begin with

thank you <3

i am 12 yrs old but i started at WinForms Like You Said But Now WPF(Windows Presention Foundation)

Skip WinForms altogether and use WPF. WPF is not an enhanced version of WinForms. If you're telling your students to skip WPF and learn Winforms you're wasting their time , in 2020.

hi,thanks for Video.
Xaml is language of View Of Wpf , man!!!!
not XML!!!

you were so wrong about UWP

Windows Forms viverá ainda por muitos anos, podem acredita. Embora WPF seja flexível quando se trata de [INTERFACE RESPONSIVE], mas com Windows Forms, trabalhando com componentes por exemplo da DevExpress, é possível realizar muitos feitos. Me acostumo fácil com HTML e CSS, mas com essas TAG's XAML parece que não vai..eu ainda gosto do System.Windows.Forms, os [EVENTS]...e etc.., trabalhar com DataGridView, ListView, TreeView enfim, muito mais produtivo que trabalhar com interfaces WPF e UWP...

At last someone who shows what you are going to dive into

'1950s' - that would have been quite advanced by then :-)

Hi. :) UWP now works on Xbox, tablets, PCs, HoloLens also. And was working on Windows Phone too. The UWP apps are no longer full screen. They are just like any other app in a window.

Thank you sir, that was a very informative video.

UWP is by far better than all Win32 WPF, WCF or Winform
not only it allow you to write in a any type of language, but create stunning UI with WinUI + the best way to go cross-devices inside Windows echo system.
Old WPF please, that old Silverlight is the worst way to build UI these day

WPF has many more advantages: you can use vector graphics, build an application compliant to automated tests, etc.
Anyways it's too complex for beginners.

thank you very much, I'm coming from web development (mongodb,expressjs,angular,nodejs)
And i can relate windows forms pretty much as a frontend framework to build the user interfaces (like bootstrap) but with a drag and drop builder aproach...
based on this, what would be the equivalent for ExpressJS in this windows enviroment? i would like to build a REST API pointing out to my Mongo or SQL database...

Great video.
Can you pls make a video on how to make LAN voting app.
In which there will be a server app which will update the data of candidates and the user will vote and the results will be shown in server app; using windows form app.