Migration from Winforms to WPF

Question

We are using Winforms using the Infragistic framework. We are considering the move to WPF. The problem is that we have already several forms, dialogs etc in Winforms. We need common look and feel thus we need to migrate all to WPF.

Is there a migration tool to take Winforms and migrate to WPF? I know it is not possible to do it completely but is there something that will do some of the work?

Thanks

Answer 1

In my opnion, and depending on your architecture, a one on one translation is not really the right approach to go here: consider why you want to move to wpf, and evaluate whether you really want to commit to it. It's a powerful framework, but there's quite a steep learning curve and to be really worth it you need to take the time to look at the user experience and see how wpf can help. If you want to have the winforms look and feel, and just move to wpf because it's the next new thing, you're in for an unpleasant suprise.

Anayway, what we've done while migrating our winforms stuff is to make new screens in wpf, and keep hosting the old winforms screen using ElementHost and WindowsFormsHost. These work really well by the way - we haven't had any problems with them so far. We then migrated screen by screen to wpf. Looked like a Frankenstein in the mean time, but at least we had regular feedback and everything was functional.