Cross platform apps with WPF

Question

I'm thinking of developing a desktop app in C#. Although windows will be my main target, later I'll try and run the app in MacOS X and linux. Can I do this today, in a simple way? I'm aware of the mono project, but it is not clear to me if I can do this in a simple way.

Also, what is the relation between WPF and Silverlight? AFAIK Silverlight follows a plugin model much like Flash or Java. Can I develop my desktop app with Silverlight and deploy it on windows, linux and os x without much changes?

Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The Mono project does not support .Net 3 and WPF yet, and it will probably been some time before that happens.

Silverlight might be sufficient for your needs. As of Silverlight 3.0 you can run Silverlight outside the browser, even create a shortcut to it on the desktop.

Answer 2

Last I heard, the Mono project has no plans to implement WPF, however they are working on other .NET 3.5 features, especially LINQ and ASP.NET MVC. The problem with implementing WPF in Mono (beyond the size and complexity of the API) is that on Windows it uses DirectX for rendering, so an implementation for Mono would need to use OpenGL. Definitely not a trivial undertaking.