One of the sad, unfortunate truths about Windows Forms development is that you don’t get to use it. That’s right: LINQ, WCF, WPF, maybe even generics, iterators, and the awesomest Winforms control ever, ToolStrip. All of it may be off limits to you, dear WinForms developer, because real people don’t know what the .NET framework is, and don’t care that your app depends on it; nor are they willing to sit through a 24 MB download, apparently. That last one seems really weird to me, a broadband user for 8 years, but, the numbers don’t lie: your users don’t have the framework on their computers. Now, there is hope with Vista — if Microsoft could just advertise it better so everyone’s perception of it isn’t that it sucks balls; it has .NET 3.0 installed by default, but .NET 3.5? Still a separate download. Read more »

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