MVVM FX - Windows Forms and Web

Things are moving fast. Two weeks ago I was looking for a WindowsForms MVVM framework. Today I published it at http://mvvmfx.codeplex.com/. This project used to be managed by Sam Bourton that kindly transferred project ownership to me.

Why the insistence on using the FX expression? Why not WF or WinForms? As the project title says MVVM FX - base framework for Windows Forms and Visual WebGUI, the project scope is not only WinForms but also Visual WebGUI. It's easy to port Windows Forms code to Visual WebGUI since Gizmox tryed very hard to mirror System.Windows.Forms namespace as Giszmox.WebGUI.Forms.

In case you don't know, VisualWebGUI it's an empty client technology for Web. The browser is a "dumb terminal" - a bit like the Sun Network Computer concept: the browser is used to display content and receive user input (mouse and keyboard). There is a Javascript kernel that handles display messages from the server and relays user input back to the server. Incidentally it also acts as a keep alive agent, to let the server know that the client is still there and informing the user in case the server doesn't reply. These messages are very small (nothing like the dreaded viewstate of ASPX) and the system is indeed very responsive.

All these features are wrapped as Windows Forms technology - the only desktop technology available when Gizmox started this product.

There are several consequences to using Visual WebGUI:

1. you write code in C# or VB.NET
2. you don't have to know Javascript unless you want to make your own low level control
3. it's not easy to do MVVM (just like WinForms)

Number 3 above is a downside that this framework will overcome.