Sunday, January 14, 2007

WPF - What's the difference between XBAPs and WPF/E Applications?

I was recently trying to determine what the differences are between XBAPs and WPF/E applications. At first glance, they are both browser based solutions, so I was wondering about what the potential catch was. If you (the reader) have/know of any more please let me know and I will gladly update this posting. At this point, this is a list of some of the core items I've found:

  • WPF/E Applications
    • Are cross-platform ready (Mac OS X and Windows)
    • Do not require the client to have the .NET 3.0 runtime. Instead, WPF/E applications run within a browser plugin.
    • Do not support code-behind
    • Rely on JavaScript

  • XBAPs
    • Require the client to have the .NET 3.0 runtime components installed.
    • Are not cross-platform enabled. They will only run on Windows machines.
    • Support code-behind
    • Must run within IE (or use the IETab plugin for Firefox)


In my personal opinion, In general, I intend to use the technologies in the following environments:
WPFXBAPsWPF/E
Desktop solutionsIntranet ApplicationsInternet Applications
Organization specific gadgetsGeneral purpose gadgets

In general, WPF/E provides a more portable solution while currently sacrificing some of the functionality that XBAPs provide. In addition, XBAPs provide a slightly better developer experience simply because debugging JavaScript code can be somewhat tedious in comparison to debugging some code-behind pages.

How do you intend to use these technologies? I look forward to your comments.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

good post. also, maybe WPF/e'll support code-behind (C#, VB.NET only) according to WPE/e architecure from "http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb190633.aspx#wpfe_architecture_for_msdn_topic3"

Unknown said...

A LOT has changed. WPF/E is now called Silverlight. Since version 1.1 it is no longer javascript. It is .net and supports code behind :)