When tasked to develop a new business system one of the (many) choices to be made is the platform internal clients will run on. It is an important decision that will have impact for years to come.
The Desktop
Our first inclination was to create a Windows desktop app. All workstations are Windows machines, our team skillset is the .NET platform, and there were a number of local resources that need to be accessed (specialized printing, camera access, signature pad, and accounting software integration). So then I began to look at .NET desktop platforms: WinForms, WPF, and WinRT. WinForms was dismissed right away because of it's lack of extensibility and modern feature support (hardware acceleration, data binding, and flexible controls to name a few).
WPF
The harder decision was between WPF and WinRT. As near as I can tell from my research, WPF and WinRT apps are not all that different to develop (XAML/.NET, although WinRT has other options too). I even started a prototype app using MahApps.Metro and began digging into learning WPF. However, there is a cloud of doubt surrounding the future of WPF. There were some new WPF bits in .NET 4.5, but overall there has been very little activity or advancement in WPF for many years. Things that were tedious generations ago (that is, computer generations) are still tedious, with no official sign that it will improve. Considering it's age and stagnation, it's hard to pick this as the platform of the future for the new clients.
WinRT
I also did some research on WinRT. As far as I've found, you can make a .NET desktop app by starting with a Windows Store project template and manually modifying the project to enable desktop usage. You can also manually add references to WinRT libraries from other project types. My main issue with WinRT is that much of its design revolves around "metro" and the Windows Store, which is generally not being embraced by the industry. To me this makes WinRT's future speculative at best. Not to mention that WinRT will only run on Windows 8 right now, which the IT department is skipping. The impending Windows 10 release probably next year and a cooperative IT department willing to upgrade would ordinarily make this choice not so bad. But the larger question of whether the Windows Store underpinning will make it as a desktop app platform (which doesn't seem to be WinRT's primary consideration) gives me great pause. Microsoft has managed to leave an unstable vacuum in desktop development, which makes me concerned about significantly investing in that space.
Now what?
So where does that leave me? Well, my background is the web, and although I was looking forward to broadening my skill set to a desktop technology, it doesn't appear (from a platform perspective) that there is an good one to pick. I was also not very encouraged by my foray into WPF. It felt like almost a backwards step from HTML5 as a front-end technology. Don't get me wrong, HTML5 has a lot of room for improvement. I always like to say (with some embellishment) that Javascript is the worst possible tool for the job, but it is the only tool that can do its job. (This is sortof a twist on the Python creator's comments about PERL.) But I will say that XAML markup is quite verbose, especially since a lot of the changes I wanted to make required custom implementations of the entire control (even if mostly pasted from the default template). And the code required for data binding is crazy verbose compared to something like knockoutjs's ko.observable(). A lot of styling that is pretty straightforward in CSS feels weird in XAML... e.g. hover/active color changes. CSS3 animations are also amazingly simple. And considering that HTML5 is actually experiencing a LOT of improvement of late, and more in the future, it seems like a good client platform choice for moving data.
Web Issues
However, there are a couple of problems with this choice. Firstly, let's talk about browser compatibility. This is the main thing which holds back HTML5/CSS3 as a platform, but that mainly concerns web pages out in the wild. Consider that with a desktop app, IT would be required to install my app on machines. Now instead of that, IT will be required to install a different app on machines -- a modern/HTML5 browser. And there's more than one to choose from. What about cross-platform compatibility? You can install recent versions of Chrome of Firefox on a broad range of OSs and versions, probably on any workstation your enterprise runs.
Signatures
Then there is local resource access, the primary reason we wanted a desktop app. With some changes to our workflow, we are able to simplify the process for customers and also get rid of the need to interface with a signature pad -- its function will be integrated into a tablet which will be used for other parts of the process. Using a browser that supports getUserMedia, our app can also access the web cam. So the main difficulties left are the specialized printing and integration with accounting, which do require local resource access that browsers cannot provide.
Direct Printing
Normal printing is not really a problem from the browser, but we must print to specialized devices that may use their own printing languages (like zebra printers). Before the HTML5 discussions, we had already decided to make a Windows service for printing which would directly talk to the printer so prints can be automatically triggered based on system events. Since the service will already be directly talking to the printer, it can handle manually triggered printing from the web app as well. So that problem was already solved.
Accounting integration
I don't have a solution designed for the accounting software, because we don't even know what we will be using yet. (They are extremely unhappy with their current accounting software and want to change away from it regardless of my effort.) In any case, all the client will be able to do is make the request (e.g. to create invoices), and the server will take the process from there; running it directly if the accounting software supports it, or delegating it to a custom service on the accountant's machine in the worst case.
Chrome app?
I also looked at developing this as a Chrome app, which provides limited access to local resources. However, I really didn't like the idea of making proprietary modifications that make my HTML5 app not run elsewhere. It also seemed like for every local access I got, some normal web access was restricted due to sandboxing. That, and really the only benefit I would get is printing, which I had already resolved. The accounting software would probably still not be accessible from the Chrome app.
So anyway, that was my decision process. Going forward, we are looking at using Angular as our UI technology, and Bootstrap as a front-end (wanted to use Foundation, but Bootstrap was easier to integrate). On the server side, it's .NET Web API.
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