What does Silverlight offer?

Question

I work with C # and WPF, and I would like to learn something related to web programming. I already know HTML and CSS, and since I work with WPF, I wonder if it’s worth logging into Silverlight to start web development. Could this be a replacement for server-side programming languages ​​such as PHP or ASP.NET?
What do you suggest?
Many thanks

Answer 1

It allows you to write .net code in an extremely rich cross-platform environment.

Silverlight not only works and leaves the browser on PC and Mac, but is also the main tool for creating applications on the upcoming phone 7 (which, I believe, will be the choice for mobile devices). Soon you can even work against the xbox!

Many of the best guys in the industry seem to be saying that a huge chunk of business applications will be written in Silverlight in the coming years. This is a very interesting platform, and now that Silverlight 4 has been released, it is finally ready for prime time.

There is a learning curve. Xaml, data access (not only a complex asynchronous aspect, unlike PHP and ASP.NET, you need to use RIA or something like web services to get your data), a more complex event system and other new concepts are being negotiated to make it's a little trickier.

Answer 2

Silverlight is a Flash-like plugin. It does not replace ASP.NET, but of course complements it.

As for the logical step from WPF - YES! Silverlight is actually a subset of WPF, and most of what you learn from WPF will be passed directly to Silverlight. You just need to learn a little about how to position the page in order to insert a Silverlight application, which, if you use Visual Studio, will be just a simple ASP.NET page.

Answer 3

When I look at Silverlight use cases, I usually try to come up with a few things:

• Is the application I'm trying to develop requires easy cross-platform deployment through a web browser?
  • Silverlight is more affordable than WPF because it is available in multiple browsers on multiple platforms.
• Is the application that I need to develop sufficiently complex (or "rich enough") that I would benefit from a simplified development approach for the Silvelright client?
  • Writing web applications that look great across multiple browsers can be a real problem. In general, an html-based solution (as in ASP.NET, PHP, Ruby-on-rails, select your poison) will be the most accessible to the widest audience, but it may take longer to create due to the need to deploy to multiple browsers.
  • However, if the solution you are developing is a complex client application similar to what you find on your desktop, Silverlight should offer your end user a richer experience, and the developer a more optimized approach.

We have all seen both good and bad implementations of Silverlight applications.

The best Silverlight applications provide a rich user interface and can easily explain to the user why Silverlight is needed. For example, I believe that a great use case for Silverlight is a company writing a business-to-business application that their customers, sellers, and / or other business partners can use to interact with data in their domain. This is not an ideal solution to replace a public website, but to develop a business solution, Silverlight should be much cheaper than writing it in purely html-related technologies.

On the other hand, the worst Silverlight implementations are those that can be easily replaced with html using some javascript to support the user interface. I think of sites that are fully compiled in Silverlight without a style that just tries to present the content of the blog. What in this type of application tells the user that it costs them to download Silverlight to use their application?

Hope this helps answer your question.

Answer 4

Silverlight is not a good choice to start web development.

It will not and will never replace a server side web language such as ASP.NET. But it works well, offering a good RIA interface and attractive animation for the client side.

When it comes to exchanging data with a database, especially for large dynamic applications with a lot of stress, Silverlight becomes a weak choice compared to ASP.NET

So, you should definitely start your enterprise in the Web world with ASP.NET and, possibly, use Silverlight for certain purposes, mainly related to animation and high-quality client interfaces.

In fact, if something can replace in the future, it is both Flash and Silverlight nothing but HTML 5 .

Answer 5

You can also just start with WPF in XBAP - as many other answers say, it really depends on what you want to do. Partial XBAP trust combined with WCF for data really works for me.