Future of desktop applications on Windows 8

Question

There are a lot of threads discussing existence of WPF/Silverlight/HTML5 on Windows 8, I just need to clarify the picture about desktop applications only, I have following queries to the experts

1. What are the technologies available for developing desktop applications on Windows 8?

2. What are the technologies I can use for creating rich multimedia applications. Currently I have an application with DirectX 9 and WPF. If I am to develop something like that for Windows 8 then what options are available to me, and what are the pros and cons of these.

3. Is it a good idea to continue with the same DirectX 9 code on Windows 8 as well? What is the best option equivalent to DirectX, Is it XNA or is it DirectX 11 or something else?

Performance an extensibility are critical points to me. All suggestions are welcome.

Thanks in Advance.

Answer 1

DirectX continues to be supported in Windows 8. Many of the desktop technologies (if not all) that you could create desktop applications with on Windows 7 you can still do in Windows 8. It doesn't matter if it's DirectX, MFC, XNA, WPF, Windows Forms, etc. So yes, you can continue to use DirectX 9.

Using DirectX 11 will of course get you the benefits of new features that 11 has over DirectX 9.

Desktop applications will continue to exist for quite a while. Not every app is well suited to be a Windows Store app (think the new Start screen). Applications like IDEs, the Photoshops of the world, the Pro Tools of the world (digital audio workstations), etc. will likely continue to be desktop apps for the foreseeable future. So really, the desktop application story hasn't changed much in Windows 8 as compared to Windows 7.

The one exception of course is Windows RT (ARM-based) where deployment/install of 3rd party desktop applications is not supported.

Answer 2

Angular JS, Infragistics Knowckout JS framework employ MVVM from C#/XAML into equiavalent HTML5 / JQuery technology pair.

They are worth checking.

Answer 3

1. What are the technologies available for developing desktop applications on Windows 8?

The exact same technologies available for Windows 7 are available for Windows 8 desktop, with the exception of ARM. Your x86 and x64 targets will be the same, whether it is Silverlight, WPF, or anything else.

2. What are the technologies I can use for creating rich multimedia applications. Currently I have an application with DirectX 9 and WPF. If I am to develop something like that for Windows 8 then what options are available to me, and what are the pros and cons of these.

You can use the same technologies in Windows 8 desktop and the pros and cons are no different.

3. Is it a good idea to continue with the same DirectX 9 code on Windows 8 as well? What is the best option equivalent to DirectX, Is it XNA or is it DirectX 11 or something else?

That's a loaded question. What do you mean by "good idea"? Are you concerned with backwards compatibility or support? Obviously staying with the latest release ensures the longest relevance for your application. XNA I would not believe is a target for Windows 8, that is more involved with Xbox and Windows Phone development and I suspect it may go away as the target platforms align more closely.