3.13 Web Forms or Windows Forms?

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The first choice is whether you need to go the rich client/Windows Forms route or the browser-based Web Forms solution. Naturally any solution designed for a Web site will need to be based on Web Forms; also, a solution that is transaction intense and that must make full use of the Windows API will need to be written using Windows Forms. In the early days of Microsoft Internet development tools, the choice was more straightforward since the capability of the Web-based environment was very limited. Now both options offer a good range of capabilities, and sometimes the decision is less clear-cut.

Windows Forms are ideal if you are writing an application that includes intensive graphics, data access, or games-type solutions. All of these will rely on the client PC to deliver computing power and resources. Often local PC settings will be needed in such places as the registry and local file system. All of the graphics classes in the Windows GDI+ are available to Windows Forms, making them better positioned for the more intensive applications.

Web Forms are platform independent and therefore better designed for broad-reaching applications that need to be run on different browsers or devices. Deploying a Web Forms application is much easier than a Windows Forms application since there is no client-side code needed-they only need a browser to run. Access to local resources, such as the registry or file system, is not possible since the application will run in the browser context, which automatically prevents direct system access and possible security breaches (see Figure 3.8).

Figure 3.8: When building a Web form, Visual Studio automatically builds a corresponding Web site infrastructure.

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