Adobe flex or WPF to write a visually rich desktop application

I'm interested in making a desktop application which I would want to use as a Desktop Manager. This kind-of goes to Desktop Enhancement C开发者_运维知识库ategory. My requirements are:

1. Application has to be visually rich, with panels sliding,fading,wiping,rotating and etc.
2. It should also support flash playback. (swf, flv)
3. Animations/Transitions should run smoothly.
4. Lower CPU Usage.

My question is which is a better option to build this application. Microsoft's "WPF" or Adobe Flex(running in Adobe Air to run on desktop). And also respond as why it is better.

Be suspicious of anyone who will give you an answer like "Definately use xyz" to this question. There are pros and cons to both sides.

First, I think you might be confusing what WPF and Air are... WPF is a presentation layer on top of the .Net framework, where Air is a framework by itself. Apples and Oranges. If you want an analog to what Air is for the .Net stack, you probably want to look at Silverlight Out-Of-Browser, which is a much closer comparison to Air.

What is the difference, then, between WPF and Sliverlight OOB? Again, WPF sits on top of a very large .Net framework where Sliverlight OOB is a very light framework (in comparison) like air. It is the difference between a 200 MB download/install and a 12 MB download/install.

So, that being said, I think you should also ask what platforms this needs to run on. Silverlight OOB runs on Mac and Windows where WPF only runs on Windows. Air runs on Mac, Windows and Linux.

The next thing that I see is that you need to do SWF and FLV playback. This will be easier to achieve with Air, since it is native. You CAN do this with Silverlight OOB but you will find yourself rigging something up where you host an HTML control and run the flash movie inside the HTML control. It is a bit more clunky, but it will work.

Other than that, Air and SLOOB are very similar in features. It then comes down to your team and the expertise, IMO. If they are already familiar with the WPF/Silverlight, then a SLOOB app is well suited with minimal ramp-up. If your designers are more familiar with the Adobe suite of tools, then it might be easier to build a shiny app using Air.

In all, the decision between Air and Silverlight/WPF really comes down to preference. That is, once you get past any particular techincal limitations like the flash playback or OS support.

Hope this helps, Brian