I’m experienced developing Windows client desktop apps with WPF, but I’ve never developed apps for a Windows XP embedded device. We have monitors located around the factory that run XP embedded and I would like to know if there are any issues developing a WPF application to run on the XP embedded monitor.
For instance, what are some of the challenges developing a WPF application to run on an XP embedded monitor compared to developing a WPF or Silverlight application to run on an XP desktop machine?
The biggest issues we encountered several years ago with developing a Kiosk style application, in WPF, and running it on XP Embedded were around performance of the CPU, and graphic card driver issues. The graphic card driver often failed to render the WPF application correctly, and produced rendering artificats. Given that WPF requires up-to-date DirectX drivers and the nature of XP embedded, it limited our opportunities to fix the problem. In the end, we went to using full workstations as we could better control the graphic card issues, and we could buy more affordable and powerful CPUs for the Kiosks.
More importantly, only .NET 3.0 (and lower) is supported on XP Embedded. There are hack workarounds, but I believe that the license prohibits installation of 3.5+, and since it’s not supported, you may not want it on a factory floor.
Silverlight apparently is not supported in any version on XP embedded according to the Silverlight download page.