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Mono's WinForms 2.0 Implementation Completed

Posted by kdawson on from the do-not-confuse-with-wind-farms dept.

adrian.henke writes "After four years of development, 115K lines of source code, and 6,434 commits, Jonathan Pobst announces that Mono's WinForms 2.0 implementation is now complete. This announcement has been long awaited by any .NET WinForms developer who has ever tried to get an applications to work on Linux using Mono."

3 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. But can I actually use it for anything? by beoba · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ..and still nothing on whether WinForms is legally safe to use.

    --
    I am not a number - I am a free man!
  2. Re:too little, too late? by nguy · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is interesting that now that Mono is getting to a more complete (and possibly usable state), most developers have moved beyond the .NET hype and onto more elegant development platforms...

    Please stop conflating Mono and .NET. Mono supports .NET, but that's not its primary API.

    In fact, the primary API is the same API lots of open source software uses: Gnome, Gtk+, and many standard open source libraries. All Gnome apps using Mono use the Gtk+ APIs.

    I wish there were better alternatives, but C# + Gtk# + MonoDevelop is probably the most elegant development platform right now. Nothing else really comes close. Python is a more elegant language but doesn't have a comparable IDE. Objective-C and Cocoa are messily intertwined with C and C APIs. And Java is a bloated pig.

  3. Re:Would be awesome... by batkiwi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Info for you: .NET 3.0 is 4 additional dlls, otherwise it IS .NET 2.0. Same runtime/etc. It adds:

    -WCF: GREAT new tech. You write a module, and then expose it remotely via config. So if you want to change from Remoting to Compliant Web Services you simply change a config setting. Or you can expose simple services via REST. It abstracts "transport" from "functionality".
    -Cardspace: dud. Single sign on/identity mgmt which is being replaced by openID it seems. Cool idea though.
    -WPF: Cool new xml based description language to fully abstract process from gui much in the way ASP.NET does. It also lets UI designers "skin" apps seperately from the app code itself. VERY nice tech, especially the bindings.
    -WF: Nice tech, not quite mature but neat to use. It allows for program logic to be described in an xml format (XAML) and shown in a gui designer. I really like workflow tech NOT because it lets business users program (it DOESN'T) but because it gives you an artifact that users can understand AND CONFIRM. .NET 3.5 is enhancements and bugfixes of 3.0 PLUS LINQ. LINQ is either the best thing ever, or the worst thing ever, depending on who you ask. I think "both." LINQ allows you to apply "sql-esque" syntax to any IEnumerable provider. So if you have an in memory collection of animals you can do:

    var monkeys = from animal in myAnimalsCollection
                                  where animal.Type == monkey
                                  select new {animal.ID, animal.Name, animal.BirthDay};

    foreach(var monkey in monkeys) .... do stuff