Can Silverlight and AJAX play additional roles or replace another?

Question

AJAX is a big thing ... but it seems to me (which seems to me) that with Silverlight 4 Microsoft has offered a really reliable method of creating interface interfaces for the Internet. I wonder - what is the future of AJAX? Are AJAX and Silverlight complementary or is Silverlight replacing AJAX, etc.?

Answer 1

Silverlight and AJAX are different tools for different tasks. Before I go any further, let me just clarify what I mean by AJAX in this context. AJAX is a way to create a rich browser-based application using Javascript, HTML and CSS, without relying on other browser extensions.

Before the HTML5 functions began to flow in the main browsers, the gap in functionality was quite wide, but with the built-in browser and canvas rendering this is not entirely true.

• Silverlight is still a richer framework for work and offers various sandbox models to provide less limited access to a computer.
• Another advantage is that C # code is compiled and therefore has the potential to be faster. Again, this is no longer an issue when Javascript runtime gets faster and faster.
• Since the layout system will be the same in all browsers, you can give the best experience guarantee . You don’t have to spend hours debugging 10px alignment problems between different browsers.

However, when developing a web application, I will try to get away with AJAX as soon as possible. It is quite powerful, and you can achieve very rich functionality without requiring a plugin. If your application is a standard line of business applications, then I, as a user, will probably be angry with you if you forced me to install a plug-in to show me some grids, buttons, and shapes.

Choosing how to develop and deploy your web application is becoming increasingly difficult these days. With the advent of mobile platforms, you have to walk very carefully. Sticking to HTML5 seems like the best option so far, knowing that the iPhone and iPad will never support Silverlight. Similarly, I doubt that Android and ChromeOS will do this in the near future.

Answer 2

AJAX and Silverlight complement each other, just as AJAX and Flash complement each other. These are different technologies for similar (but still different) problems, both with advantages and disadvantages (Silverlight allows you to use richer user interfaces, but requires installation on the client side, to name the most obvious advantage and disadvantage).

Answer 3

Silverlight uses AJAX. AJAX is one part that supports one part of what Silverlight does.

It (AJAX) helps a lot in maintaining responsiveness (it allows Javascript in the browser to make a function call on the server, but continue to do other things until the server responds), but this alone is not much more.

Silverlight is a (fairly) complete framework for specifying and using the user interface, and (if necessary) it uses AJAX to support the user interface while waiting for data from the server.

Answer 4

As with most Internet technologies, the answer depends entirely on your audience.

If you create an application using AJAX, it will work for the widest audience, but there will be restrictions on the control that you have on the user interface (love Silverlight storyboards).

If you use Silverlight, the user must have a browser and a device that supports SL, and the plug-in must also be installed. This immediately eliminates the iPhone and iPad, but makes SL very attractive for an internal application for a large corporate user, where the SOE desktop is controlled.

Of course, you could mix AJAX and Silverlight and have the worst of both worlds. I tried it once in a non-trivial application, and it was like translating a book into alternating chapters of Hebrew and Spanish.