I probably just need a recap as to what and where these technologies are best used...but my questions are....
Does a Silverlight approach for a web site remove the need (or lets say significantly reduce) the amount of Javascript one might typcially use in a web solution? And for that matter, the normal ASP.Net pages could now be mostly replaced with a Silverlight application - just a page to hold the silverlight application?
Does Silverlight make using something like JQuery mostly redundant too? I ask as we seem to be charging ahead with JQuery and sticking with AJAX at my client to give that flashy and interactive non-web UI experience. To me Silverlight jsut seems so much better (or promises to be so much better).
Silverlight looks very cool and seems to offer the potential for good old "Windows Forms" interactivity and feel while the posting back web action goes on behind the scenes.
It seems to me that with Silverlight I can write in my favourite .Net language, and using of course CSLA for Silverlight, the majority of my business objects run on the silverlight client and server with virtually no code differences (same classes pretty much).
This seems a real and powerful argument to go Silverlight in my world. Does this make ASP MVC a non-issue then or how how does Silverlight fit here.
The landscape and choice is bewildering as ever. Thanks in advance for any wise words or pointers.
Richard.
Well there are a couple of things you should consider.
1. Is your client prepared to release Silverlight on all the user machines (if this is not already done)? Or is this a public facing web product (in which case you are banking on the user to have Silverlight already installed). I would think this is the main issue.
2. It appears you have already an existing product on ASP.NET (unless I misunderstood your statement). Changing to Silverlight would only make sense if it would significally improve user experience (which I think it can) and decrease developent time (that depends since there is also the inevitable learning curve).
Silverlight is definately a great product and will get a lot of backing from MS - no doubt. I played a bit with Silverlight 2, Blend and of course CSLA Light. It is great and looks promising. But saying that there were some issues. At the time there was still the datagrid deletion bug which I am not sure has been fixed. Also, for some reason Blend keeps on crashing when I start complicating the design (might be my PC but everything else is working fine).
Irrespectively of what route you decide to take, MVC looks great and JQuery rocks.
So no definite answer from me. Just some thoughts you may find useful.
Yes JQuery and MVC look very good - I guess there are a number of different routes to developing web apps and Silverlight is an alternative - in my situation a very compelling one.
Depoying Silverlight onto the PC's isn't a problem, although I can see you might still need to provide a non-Silverlight version of your web site should people refuse to install it. Much like creating a non-Flash version of your web site.
Thanks.
I pretty much agree with all the posts so far.
I have a large Web app - and I hate javascript. I would like to move to Silverlight if only so I could write client side code in a .Net language.
I would not have 2 versions of a page though. If I implement Silverlight then I expect my client workstations to have it.
Retrofitting a large app with Silverlight would be a large effrot so I would only try it for the more complex screens. For new functionality, I would consider if the screen itself need to be Silverlight or just have the plug-in as 1 pixel so it is available to me for coding.
Also, the move to XAML and Blend will require a steep learning curve so there is that to consider. I plan to start small, figure some things out and implement over time.
Joe
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