Sidebar Gadgets - Why HTML+JavaScript? Why not WPF?

Toms and a couple of others asked the same question - hence I thought I would raise this to its own post.

Back at PDC 2005 we demonstrated WPF gadgets. Reason - we love WPF as its extremely powerful for building UI - especially UI that needs to cleverly address the issue of small screen estate. But we also had to ship a stable, secure, ontime (...cough) of Vista. The decision was made to reduce features (and testing and...) from Sidebar to make this happen. In this initial version, we knew that we could bring the greatest number of gadgets to end users by exposing gadget development via one of the widest known technologies, HTML. The die was cast.

I haven't checked on progress - but I know at the time the intention was to bring support for WPF (and WPF/E) in future releases.

If you really have your heart set on WPF Gadget then there is an example out there with code.

As for the other bit of Tims comment. Its easy to fogret (and we often do!) that Microsoft doesn't have JavaScript - it has JScript. JScript is an implementation of ECMA Script. JavaScript is also an implementation of ECMA Script. We have two scripting languages - Jscript and VBScript. In general, for browser code you would use JScript and for "other stuff" such as admin scripts or perhaps server side ASP you would use VBScript. You can even license VBScript for your own applications and it is very approachable if you come from a VB background. BUT.... for Web Browsers only ECMA Script gives you the cross browser compatibility you need.

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 18, 2007
  Hi, Stanimir Stoyanov wrote a tool which adds the the support of WPF to the Sidebar. Check it out on his Blog: http://www.stoyanoff.info/ André ANSWER: Thanks Andre - that looks very interesting stuff.

• Anonymous
  February 20, 2007
  I previously posted about Sidebar Gadgets and WPF . Thanks to Andre I was pointed at Stanimir Stoyanov's