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Google AngularJS Framework - Worth the risk?

I have been asked to build a small web application for one of our clients and think it might be a good opportunity to try out a different framework for building web applications. Most of the applications we build are based on asp.net web forms and we have no yet done anything in an MVC architecture but I am eager to start building web applications in a more structured manner with the right tools.
I have been researching things like asp.net MVC and the likes which look quite good but I am wondering is there anything to be said for using something like the Google AngularJS Framework.
If possible I would still like to be able to write my server side code using c# and I have not researched AngularJS enough to know if this is even possible, although I assume I could use web services.
Has anyone had any experience with developing an app using AngularJS and if so, how was it and can you point me in the right direction for some tutorials?

We have been developing a port of a Swing fat-client application in AngularJS for the last couple of months and I think it is worth recommending. As far as learning resources go, check out the official project site (and be sure to read the tutorial) and the mailing list (the authors are very helpful).
The good stuff:
great testability
the two-way data binding is a very powerful feature, and it can be extremely helpful once you "get it"
IMO the AngularJS templates are much less brittle than using data- attributes or "special" CSS classes to mark elements that do something
it greatly reduces the need for using jquery plugins, because implementing that functionality in AngularJS is very easy (stuff like trees, tabs, accordions, etc.)
The bad stuff:
the learning curve seems pretty steep (I didn't have much of a problem, but I've seen some people struggle with it)
validations in AngularJS suck for the time being (a new implementation is on the way)
not all libraries/jquery plugins play nicely with Angular and usually you have to wrap them
the API is still being polished, so expect breaking changes (not a big problem with frequent releases and very good changelog, though)
performance is OK up until several thousand bindings on a page - most of the time this is not a limitation, but there are cases when this could be a problem.
Some pointers (if you ever decide to learn AngularJS):
some people really overuse widgets. In my experience, it's much better to use HTML "partials" + services, and only use widgets sporadically.
read source code of the library - it's the best place to learn stuff about angular
no DOM manipulation in services/controllers
if you use css classes to bind to events, you are doing it wrong

+1 #psycho's answer
AngularJS is client-side framework, so you can use any language on the server. It's designed to work well together with jQuery, with big emphasis on testing...
Here are some resources you might find useful:
TUTORIAL: http://docs.angularjs.org/#!/tutorial
API DOCS: http://docs.angularjs.org/#!/api
Developer Guide: http://docs.angularjs.org/#!/guide
Some example apps:
http://cburgdorf.github.com/angular-todo-app
http://www.fluid.ie/angular/calculate/
http://hookercookerman.github.com/angularjs-todos/
http://paul-hammant.github.com/StoryNavigator/navigator.html
Adapter for SenchaTouch: https://github.com/tigbro/sencha-touch-angular-adapter
Adapter for jQ Mobile: https://github.com/tigbro/jquery-mobile-angular-adapter
Feel free to ask any question on mailing list !
We are still in beta, but there are already several internal apps at Google, powered by AngularJS.
UPDATE (26th July 2012):
AngularJS v1.0 has been released.
For some public AngularJS-powered apps, check out http://builtwith.angularjs.org

IMHO developing something for a client which they may have difficulty supporting is unprofessional. You have to bear in mind that it will be difficult for your client to hire experienced Angular professionals, or train their own people to climb that "steep learning curve". Also, so far the documentation is not that great. Can you easily, in a few moments, answer the question, "How can I connect my shiny Angular app to my client's database?" Can your client sometime in the future easily grab some existing code and adapt it to their potential future needs? Be honest.
Compare plain old reliable LAMP development to Angular. For a "small web application" I really believe that a professional should give his client something maintainable and simple.
It's not to say that Angular isn't cool and sexy etc etc. But you have your client's future maintainability to think about in addition to the latest framework fad. Tread lightly would be my recommendation. Build your own website with Angular first and see what you think before you bestow your fabulous new skills on some trusting client.

I remember reading this SO thread couple of months back with same question in my mind, and we decided to go ahead with AngularJS, and the best decision we made on this project yet.
We are using AngularJS + ASP.NET MVC4 REST WebAPI.
Most probalbly after such a nice client side Javascript MVC framework, you would only need REST API layer interacting with Business Logic Layer at server side, and no MVC at server Side (ASP.NET MVC/Spring/Structs would feel like old memories).
You will find Angular-UI good add-on (esp ng-grid)
Soon after our project finishes, we might put some of our directive we wrote for open source world.

I have been researching the merits of AngularJS for many months to utilize as a core framework for product I am creating.
There are many aspects of AJS that make it worth while to learn. Yes there is a bit of a learning curve but its well worth it, especially if you wish to have more control on client side capability.
JQuery manipulates the DOM at run time, whereas AJS situates itself within the JS rendering lifecycle. This allows you to teach the DOM new tricks by creating your HTML Elements and Attributes. This is very, very powerful. As what you are able to do is introduce new Element behaviors for whatever your purpose and need. In AJS these custom HTML Attributes/Elements are called Directives. With the ability to craft your own Directives, you are able to build functionality that the current HTML doesn't have, pushing out capabilities that will run on all modern browsers now and into the future. Of the many approaches to inducing new behavior, AJS appears to be the safest direction one could take due to how they have chosen to implement it.
There is a huge performance gain over JQuery in AJS.
I love the simplicity of the two-way data binding, and the separation of concerns in their client side MVC pattern, which as pointed out above provide great testability. There scope object is the glue between the View (HTML), the Model (your Data) and your custom Controllers. The scope provides access to parent attributes and can be isolated at the sibling level, which is important for some reusable templates.
Templates can created and reused across your application which can contain 0 or more custom directives.
I have been using frameworks such as PRISM and MEF but I am finding that AJS has most of the same features that exist in these .NET frameworks but in a 29K footprint. There is rumors that they are working on lazy-loading which if provided will provide for some very interesting LOB type capabilities.
There are a number of UI frameworks that are being built for AJS but you can wrap any 3rd party control lib as needed, given a bit of effort. The trick is to ensure that when these 3rd party controls have changes induced, that you ensure AJS is properly notified using their apply method.
If you combine AJS with MS TypeScript within VS 2012, it provides the ability to manage and build some very impressive projects which will work well for those who are more comfortable with projects within VS.
There are a ton of other reasons to look at AJS, but if you are considering frameworks such as KnockOut I'd highly recommend AJS instead, regardless of it's perceived learning curve. Knockout is a library, AJS is a framework.

So far i think Google's Angular is great. Particular like the databinding and dependency injection.
For other js framework, there are knockout.js , backbone.js etc.
here are some posts:
angular.js example in backbone.js and/or knockout.js

I realise this post is old and you haven't gone with Angular, but I have a similar background to you, and I'm at the same point as you when asking the question.
So for the benefit of future visitors, some of the "risks" and links to resources I've found useful...
As many have already mentioned, Angular can have a very steep learning curve "Not only me, but co-workers that I consider highly smart developers, have struggled with some of the basic concepts" AngularJS is amazing... and hard as hell (link also has some good tutorial links which you asked for), and the version 2 stuff is looking more like java, which wouldn't have been a problem with your C# background, in my opinion Directives are hard enough to understand without verbose annotations and so on.
Angular performance can be poor in some cases, especially when using ng-repeat on a large number of elements Considering Speed and Slowness in AngularJS and Scaylr's experience. Other's have mentioned that performance really degrades over ~2000 bound elements, but that's usually met with arguments about how any app with more than that many elements probably isn't a good app. Keep it in mind though if you have legitimate use cases which call for many bound objects.
Angular is popular in terms of contributors, but ranks way way behind, say, jQuery in terms of production usage. Finding Angular developers might be tough, and jQuery or other developers converting have that "steep learning curve" to deal with.
Because Angular is young, you have no guarantee that it'll gain enough traction for your new Angular skills to be employable, and your new application not to quickly become legacy code
In v1.2 Angular doesn't support IE7 and below and v1.3 will drop IE8. For >=IE9, you need to follow some special coding practices.
The many javascript widgets, plugins and libraries which you might be used to using can't be used properly with Angular without heavy modification and people often suggest to re-write your component in Angular anyway.
UPDATE March 2014: after 2 months attempting to build a non-trivial densely functional one page app: There are many versions of Angular, and it's hard to say which is the best or most stable. It will depend on what you're coding with it. I'm finding some bugs Angular that are fixed by upgrading to a later version and others fixed by regressing to an earlier one. I've never had to go version shopping like this with jQuery.
UPDATE May 2014: Young, broken tools. Batarang is great until it doesn't work. I can't trust it until they fix this one.
And finally, the three best resources I've found for learning this stuff
Todd Motto's ultimate guide, and
UPDATE April 2014: this eBook chapter is quite amazing. I didn't buy the rest of the book yet, but the concept is fantastic
A full non-trivial app written in Angular (the accompanying book is OK, but doesn't really talk about the non-trivial app enough, as they appear to be saying advertised on their site)

I would say yes to this and check out John Papa's hottowel implementation as a way to do it.

My first .net web app - should I go straight to MVC framework (c.f. ASP.net)

I'm done some WinForms work in C# but now moving to have to develop a web application front end in .NET (C#). I have experience developing web apps in Ruby on Rails (& a little with Java with JSP pages & struts mvc).
Should I jump straight to MVC framework? (as opposed to going ASP.net) That is from the point of view of future direction for Microsoft & as well ease in ramping up from myself.
Or if you like, given my experience to date, what would the pros/cons for me re MVC versus ASP.net?
thanks

Have look here it will help you Choosing the Right Programming Model

If you need to work really close to the wire then MVC is a great choice. By this I mean, if you need to have very tight controls over markup then; while acheivable with WebForms; it is much easier with MVC. This would be common for applications that are targeting a public (e.g. internet) audience which might have a richer graphical experience. In contrast, if you're developing an internal (e.g. intranet) business application where graphical presentation is not as critical, then WebForms has a lot of really nice enabling capabilities that will allow you to move more quickly.
Don't get me wrong, you can make WebForm applications look really really nice, but you give up some control over the markup.
Very often ViewState comes into this kind of discussion. MVC will not have any ViewState so the on-the-wire footprint will be much smaller which translates to speed and bandwidth cost savings at some point. On the downside, making stateful applications with MVC can be more painful. In contrast, WebForms will carry ViewState by default and are inherently more stateful. This is typically fine for internal applications. Keep in mind that ViewState does not have to be sent over the wire... there are extensions that allow you to offload that to a local cache. I'm not favoring one over the other, but you should be aware of what each can do in this regard.
If unit testing is important to you then MVC is also a much better choice, as this is easier as well. This is totally acheivable in WebForms but requires you pattern your code behind correctly.
Security is not a major factor since much of setting up the IPrinciple and IIdentity occure in the HTTP pipeline via HttpModules, so either will do in that regard.
Another major factor in making your choice relates to your skills relative to the time you have to deliver... If you're not used to working in a stateless manner or coding standard web technologies (e.g. html, css, jquery, etc...) MVC will take you longer to do very basic things. With that said, once in place it will likely be cleaner, smaller, more testable, and faster. If you need to move very quickly there is a lot you can do faster in WebForms. WebForms also does a lot of heavy lifting with respect to markup so there are a number of details you can leave to ASP.NET.
I actually use both for a variety of reasons, and MS has stated they plan to continue support and development for both.

MVC is part of ASP.NET. You must mean MVC vs Webform to which the answer would be: coming from a Winform background, you will find webform easier to use. For the future, go MVC.

I used to work on desktop applications too, and never really got into web stuff. I didnt even (gasp!) knew HTML (yeah, that was my programmers shame). In my new job we were going to start a new application using ASP.NET MVC and I gotta tell you, I love it. HOWEVER I think you should only go with MVC if you are or you count with someone with good html/css design skills.
Html is easy I know (I've learned it know!) but I think its kind of hard to make nice designs with html and css, specially if you suck at designing and you could probably do prettier stuff using webforms, which is a little bit easier/similar to winforms.
Also, if you go the MVC way make sure you have enough time to learn it, since you are going to go a little bit more low level, gonna have to learn more of the little details, like the actual difference between post/get and all that stuff that is pretty much completely hidden in webforms. I would really recommend getting a book, I used this one Pro Asp.net MVC and really liked it.
Finally, if your page is gonna have interactive bits, or ajax-y things, if you go the MVC way you are more likely gonna have to learn javascript/jQuery too. If you go the webforms you can use the included drag'n drop ajax controls.

Coming from Ruby on Rails or other MVC based frameworks ASP.NET MVC is almost the best choice. (ASP.NET MVC is actually only the "VC" part, so you have to add an ORM of your choice. EF and Linq to Sql is the Microsoft way, NHibernate or other ORM's are the other way. One good quick start project is S#arp Architecture which uses NHibernate as the "M" part, or you can check out WHCM, which is a project built on S#arp Architecture and other good frameworks (it is considered an ASP.NET MVC best-practices demo project) ). ASP.NET MVC uses almost nothing from the WebForms package (the only exception I found is the AntiForgeryToken), so you'll loose nothing if you're unfamiliar with ASP.NET WebForms.
But as you said you have also made console applications, which ASP.NET WebForms resemble more.
If your project is new, I advise you to use ASP.NET MVC. If your project clearly separates the M-V-C part (like in S#arp Architecture, where they reside in different assemblies), creating a console application that uses the same business logic shouldn't be too hard. If your current project is to port a WinForms application to the web, then it might be easier to use WebForms.

I should get familiar with the language before using "fancy" stuff like MVC, because it's just way easier to learn when you could almost think in the language (but it's not necessary).

Horses for courses. If you're slapping together a quick app for someone, web forms is probably quicker and easier.
If you're building a long running enterprise app MVC gives you better testability a SoC.

Architecture for new ASP.NET web application

I'm maintaining an application which currently is just a web service (built with WCF) and a database backend. The web service is built in layers with a linq-to-sql data access part with core functionality in an own assembly and on top of that the web service assembly which contains the WCF code. The core assembly also handles all business logic rules (very few actually).
The customer now wants a Web interface for the application instead of just accessing it through other applications which are consuming the web service. I'm quite lost on modern web application design, so I would like some advice on what architecture and frameworks to use for the web application. The web application will be using the same core assembly with business rules and the linq-to-sql data access layer as the web service.
Some concepts I've thought about are:
ASP.NET MVC (or MVC-2)
Webforms
AJAX controls - possibly leting the AJAX controls access the existing web service through JSON.
Are there any more concepts I should look into? Which one is the best for a fresh project?
The development tools are Visual Studio 2008 Team Edition for Developers targeting .NET 3.5. An upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 Premium (or maybe even Ultimate) is possible if it gives any benefits.

Definitely dig into ASP.NET MVC2.
All of our projects are now being developed using ASP.NET MVC2. It's not just highly scalable. It's highly testable as well. Which leads to way better maintainable apps in the long term.
WebForms vs. MVC2 points - (speaking out of experience):
Scalability:
In our company we had a lot of applications using WebForms which then were updated and changed by us as needed by our customers.
I think your customer will be requesting more changes on the application in near future. Making calls to other services, and maybe you'll have to rework parts of the final product to match their wishes.
And with the upcoming Cloud Computing and the Windows Azure platform you'll probably need to keep up with your code.
ASP.NET MVC absolutely supports the concept of being able to scale up your application any time you want.
I remember one of our customers walking up on me asking me for an extension for their app (they have a member management system) and the feature would contain something like a link to export the current view as a csv file so they could do office stuff with it (mostly serial letters).
It wasn't really a big problem setting that feature up. (took around 2 hours including writing tests) - let's go to tests:
Testability:
Using WebForms we didn't really have much interest writing tests because it was a pure pain to do so.
I remember writing some tests to have at least some proofs but let's drop that topic.. (:p)
We had tests for our custom classes but we couldn't really test all the EventHandlers within the WebForms.
Our CodeBase is way cleaner and saver to use thanks to this testable environment. I just check out some of the code, modify it, run all the tests and: Oh, it broke on strange behavior! - Let's fix that again. Earlier, I remember sitting with my co-worker debugging and trying to find those bugs for hours.
With ASP.NET MVC2 we are now lacking tests!
We ask all kinds of people (even the non-Web ones) to provide test-cases we could feed into our TestSuite.
And yeah, there are some AJAX-Controls too:
AJAXability:
You asked about AJAX Controls and in conjunction with ASP.NET MVC I highly recommend you to check out Telerik ASP.NET MVC UI Controls.
If that isn't something for you, we also make extensive use of jQuery and jQuery UI
With ASP.NET MVC and the HTML Views, those libraries aren't just a pleasure to use, they just look amazingly beautiful.
There is no random-html-tag-id-value autogeneration anymore!
But what I like most is: You can finally really re-use your code again.
There is so much more to those frameworks than just that, there is the T4 templating system. Auto-Scaffolding for your ViewModels / DomainModels with the Html.EditorFor() method and of course there is a great and easy way to use the IoC and DI paradigms.
Assuming that you have asked the question with mostly .NET Framework related tags, you'll probably stick with it.
Just to keep the post complete, there are also other frameworks that are just as good (or even better):
Ruby on Rails
Django
CakePHP
And many many more!

There's also DynamicData which may be appropriate if you need simple CRUD access to your data.

The Web Service Software Factory (WSSF) might come in handy in your situation.
This will allow you to define your contracts (XML entity returned (if XML you choose), etc.) while designing the server/client communication using WCF (or standard Web Service communication protocol).
WSSF favors either ASP.NET MVC or ASP.NET MVP. A simple example of the MVP architecture is shown here, plus this article.
As for me, I often come with a hybrid-like architecture using a bit of both MVC and MVP, as both have different strong points which combined together fill each other's improvement points.

I'd also recommend looking into Silverlight.
http://www.silverlight.net/learn/

Just my opinion to use MVC on Client sites and WebForms inside administration pages(site)

Asp.Net MVC vs Castle MonoRail

I've some experiences on build application with Asp.Net, but now MVC frameworks become more popular. I would like to try building new multilingual web application using with Asp.Net MVC or Castle MonoRail but I don't know which one is good for me. I don't like the web form view engine, but I like routing feature in Asp.Net MVC.
Could anyone tells about pros and cons between those?
Which ViewEngine is the better as well for overriding the master template?

Speaking as an advocate of monorail, I've got to say you should probably go for ASP.NET MVC. To be honest, the simple fact that ASP.NET MVC is going to become the default architecture within three years should probably swing it. This equation was different a year ago, simply because the default architecture had serious productivity problems compared to MonoRail.
If you want to talk technical advantages and disadvantages:
ASP.NET AJAX is a mess (avoid it), but they've now got jQuery. In fact, the jQuery support is better than any other environment. Of course, you only fully get that with IDE integration with the standard view engine.
There are some aesthetic improvements (for instance, the way model information is passed around is much cleaner and more obvious than Monorail).
Also, don't dismiss the standard view engine out of hand. You don't have to throw controls at it like you did with ASP.NET, you can code it in a pretty similar manner to Brail, only using C# instead of Boo.
There are things that are just plain ugly
* the number of methods that take object for a parameter. Good luck finding the documentation on what exactly they expect.
* Microsoft's fondness for abstract classes over interfaces. They have their reasons, but I still dislike it.
Also, in many ways, MonoRail remains the more complete platform. There's no abstraction for validation or paging in ASP.NET, for instance. Also, there's not really any help for binding to a model. The helpers have very little functionality compared to their Monorail equivalents.
Overall, though, I think ASP.NET MVC is a winner.

MonoRail and ASP.NET MVC are fundamentally very similar, you should be well off using either one of them. MonoRail has existed much longer and has therefore more higher level features.
The main strength of ASP.NET MVC is it's routeing engine, to be fair MonoRail has pretty much an equivalent routing engine, and with some modification you can use the ASP.NET MVC routing engine with MonoRail as the routing engine is not really in ASP.NET MVC but in System.Web.Routing (Released in .NET 3.5 SP1). ASP.NET MVC and integration with Visual studio is also a plus, and will probably get better as we approach RTM of v1.
The MvcContrib project contains some great view engines, like Spark, NHaml and Brail. No one could be considered "Best", A personal favourite is Spark. For more on spark: http://dev.dejardin.org/documentation/syntax
The WebForms engine has intellisense which is a great advantage that to my knowledge all alternative view engines lack.

Apart from perceived popularity and support from Microsoft, ASP.NET MVC still lacks some core features that Monorail has had for a long time like controller organization (Areas), native ViewComponents and Filters that can use IoC to name the most important ones.
I have some big applications that use all of these features and I've had a hard time porting them to ASP.NET MVC.
I have worked with Monorail for some years now and while MVC looks promising and it's flexibility is awesome, I still find it akward that for every other thing I try to do, turns out it isn't there and I have to either plug a little piece of MvcContrib, another piece of SharpArchitecture, build it myself, you get the picture. Monorail is so much easier to work with (right now, that is).
I expect things will get better in the next few of months as some proposed solutions will begin to rise against others and become more mainstream. Hey, diversity of options is good but trust me, you don't want to be in Java-land 3 years ago where there were so many web frameworks that you could build your site using one for every different page!
In the meantime I will keep slowly porting my MR apps to MVC, just in case.

I think MVC wins hands down. Its feature set is very similar, but is going to be the more "popular" of the two (and thus typically more widely supported, documented and extended throughout the development community). In addition, the new ViewEngine (Razor).. and IDE improvements factor in for me, and boost the value of choosing MVC over monorail, in my opinion.
I've used pretty much all the common ViewEngines, but wound up rolling my own (created an OpenSource Project for it) utilizing the awesome StringTemplate template engine. ST is a true separation of concerns, IMO. I find myself writing better apps as a result, with MUCH less tag soup. I also threw out a quick intro and reference guide if you choose to kick the tires on the engine. I've had awesome luck on projects I've deployed thus far using it. That being said, Razor (MVC 3) looks pretty impressive.

How would you architect a desktop application in C# 3.0

I've created a simple desktop application in C# 3.0 to learn some C#, wpf and .Net 3.5.
My application essentially reads data from a csv file and stores it in a SQL server CE database. I use sqlmetal to generate the ORM code for the database.
My first iteration of this app is ugly as hell and I'm in the process of refactoring it.
Which brings me to my question. How would you architect a desktop database app in C#?
What are the best practices?
Do you create a Database Abstraction Layer (DAL) which uses the sqlmetal generated code? Or is the generated code enough of an abstraction?
If you use DAL pattern, do you make it a singleton or a static member?
Do you use the View-Model-ModelView pattern with the DAL pattern?
Apologies if this seems like a long open ended question, but I have been giving this a lot of thought recently.
I see a lot of examples on how to architect an enterprise n-tier app in C# but not that many on architecting standalone desktop apps.

I would start with the Composite Application Guidance for WPF (cough PRISM cough) from Microsoft's P&P team. With the download comes a great reference application that is the starting point for most of my WPF development today.
The DotNetRocks crew just interviewed Glenn Block and Brian Noyes about this if you're interested in hearing more from them.
Even better, Prism is not nearly as heavy as the CAB was, if you're familiar at all with that from the WinForms days.

The answer is "it depends" as always.
A few things to think about:
You may want to make this fat client app a web app (for example) at some point. If so, you should be sure to keep separation between the business layer (and below) and the presentation. The simplest way to do this is to be sure all calls to the business logic go through an interface of some kind. A more complex way is to implement a full MVC setup.
Another thing you may consider is making the data access layer independent of the business logic and user interface. By this I mean that all calls from business logic into the DAL should be generic "get me this data" rather than "get me this data from SQL" or even worse "run this SQL statement". In this way, you can replace your DAL with one that accesses a different database, XML files, or even something icky like flat files.
In short, separation of concerns. This allows you to grow in the future by adding a different UI, segmenting all three areas into their own tier, or changing the relevant technology.

Before architecting anything you should define requirements for your app.
It's a common error of beginner developers - starting writing code ahead of thinking about how it would perform. My advice will be to try to describe some feature of you application. It will help you to feel how it should be implemented.
As for useful learning resources I would highly recommend you to take a look at CompositeWPF it's a project designed specifically to teach developers best practices of desktop app development.

I'd start with Jeremy Miller's Build Your Own Cab series.
I was an early CAB adopter. I learned a lot from digging into that technology and reading all the .NET blogs about application architecture.
But recently I had a chance to start a new project, and instead of using CAB I went with StructureMap & NHibernate and borrowed some of the patterns that Jeremy uses (in particular, his way of handling event aggregation). The result was a really simplified, hand-tooled framework that does everything I need and I love working with it.
As to the specifics of your question: I use a Repository for data access. I initially wrote some ADO.NET code and used data readers and mapped my objects. But that got old real fast, so I grabbed NHibernate and was really pleased. The repositories use NHibernate for data access, and my data access needs are pretty simple in this particular app.
I have a service layer (exposed via WCF, Duplex channels) that utilizes the repositories. My app is basically client-server with real time updating (and I know your question was just about clients, but I would use the same technologies and patterns). O
n the client side I utilize MVP with StructureMap for IoC and some very simple event aggregation strategies for cross-class communications. I code to interfaces for just about everything. The only other thing I did was borrow from the CAB the idea of a flexible "Workspace" for dynamically displaying views. I wrote my own Workspace interface though and implemented my own DeckWorkspace and TableWorkspace for use in my app (these were really simple things to write).
A lot of my decisions in this most recent application were the result of experience and pain I felt using other frameworks and tools. I made different decisions this time around. Maybe the only way to really understand how to architect an application is to feel the pain of doing it wrong beforehand.

I would say yes, it could easily be structured towards smaller applications. There is a learning curve towards getting started, but honestly, it helped me understand WPF better than attempting to start from scratch. After starting a project with CompositeWPF and then starting another project without it, I found myself attempting to duplicate features of CompositeWPF on my own because I missed those features! :)