MacOS Catalina drops support for 32-bit applications, signaling the final death blow to Silverlight on Mac. Anyone out there know of a way to get a Silverlight codebase to run on Mac? I don't mind recompiling or running under a special host. I'm just looking for some way to get a little more time before the codebase is completely replaced.
You'll need to migrate to a different framework that runs in the browser. I can recommend C#/XAML for HTML5 as a relatively painless option, depending on how complex your Silverlight app is.
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I'm planning web application and considering silverlight as development platform. Will it help to solve browser compatibility issues? The app intended to be used on desktops only (no mobile).
Yes, it will solve browser compatibility issues, and could work on both Mac OS and Windows with the very same code.
The only drawback is that, the first time your user connect to your application, he will need to download the Silverlight plugin.
Awesome you would say? Well, unfortunately some people that probably never try to do something like image processing or advanced line of business application in a browser decide that plugins are not so cool and that you would be able to do the same thing with the magic power of HTML5.
We are still waiting to have the same possibility in HTML5 that we have in Silverlight or Flash, but plugins are already dead. At least as long as no big compay want to push them again.
So, my advice would be: don't start a project in Silverlight. You will have problems, even if you do not target mobile. For example it becomes harder and harder to find compatible good tools (like ReSharper, NCrunch, or even just a decent unit testing library). And in further release of Windows and Mac OS, it will probably not be supported at all (IE for Windows RT already does not support Silverlight).
Sorry man, Silverlight is dead, you arrive after the battle.
If your developing your application for an Intranet, I would say Silverlight is an excellent choice.
If you are developing for the Internet, use an HTML based language
How can I use it on WinRT (Windows 8) - I can't compile it. Can I use it also with "normal" Windows (WPF)?
There isn't currently an mvvmcross port specifically for wpf - a couple of people have suggested building one, but the majority of users have so far requested more work on mobile platforms instead. There is a current console (win32) port and extending that towards WPF should be quite straight-forward.
Future development is now based around the Portable Library branch - see some info on http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/mvvmcross-vnext-portable-class.html and the code on https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/tree/vnext
For WinRT, the TwitterSearch example within the vNext branch is a good place to start - it should compile and work across all of MonoTouch, MonoDroid, WP7, WinRT and Console:
If you find you can't compile then please log specific compiler error messages either here or to github issues.
MvvmCrossLibs\MvvmCrossLibs.sln consists of many projects, requiring different runtimes to be installed to open properly (Mono Touch, Mono Droid, WP7). If you only need the library in WinRT, your best bet is to open Cirrious\Cirrious.MvvmCross\Cirrious.MvvmCross.WinRT.csproj directly and add the missing Newtonsoft.JSON package with NuGet (you'll need to save the automatically created .sln file before that). It should compile just fine after that, at keast it did for me. Now just reference the assembly in your Windows Store app project and start using it.
I don't have any previous experience with MVVMCross, but it doesn't look like it currently supports despktop WPF apps. I don't know how difficult it would be to create/compile such a version, though.
Are there any pitfalls to be aware of in deploying Silverlight files (XAP files) in a Java EE web application archive (war file) on Weblogic?
It works fine but seems a little unusual to do. For some achitecture related reasons, we are exploring this option for a project.
Until now, I have not myselft tried such an option, but I plan to use Silverlight with PHP in the future. It is not very different from Flash. You should however keep in mind that it is a Windows-oriented technology. Implementation on the Mac is supposedly the same as on windows however I find it much slower and much more fragile (it crashes A LOT while the windows counterpart never does). Implementation on Linux is FAR behind the Windows version.
Silverlight runs in the browser, so theoretically is as client-side as a JQuery script is. You can deploy it to any web server (apache eg: http://www.geoghana.com/blog/?p=53). You will be missing WCF and the integration between Silverlight and ASP.net, but this can be easily replaced with other technologies.
The thing that I am unsure about is the dev and debugging environment. This is probably the part you should investigate and test before committing. I am not sure whether you can debug your Silverlight app if it is integrated into a different web server (I doubt). You should especially find out how does Visual Studio development fit into your workflow and your tools... For example it may be that you need to develop it in IIS and only then deploy it to your webserver.
Our company has a handful of Mac users. I recently built a Winform application and now my main user is using a Mac. Is it possible to run this application on a Mac? What would have to be done to convert it? If it is too much, I may just rebuild it is asp.net as a web application.
Thanks in advance!
JCC
Maybe. Many .Net programs can be compiled with mono as well, winforms usually is not a problem, but some libraries (e. g. MS Office libraries for editing Excel files). I am not sure about VB, as mono coders mostly use C#, but you can analyse your code with the Mono Migration Analyzer for portability to mono.
Depending a bit on features and controls used, it may run on Mono. Since you can run Mono on Windows as well it's rather easy to download and test it.
Your basic options are (from least intrusive to most intrusive, from the point of view of a Mac user):
Convert it to a web app.
Run it on a Terminal Server and have them use Remote Desktop.
Run the application in a virtual machine (VMWare or Parallels) that is running Windows.
Try to get it running under Mono.
If there isn’t a strong reason for it to be a desktop application, you really should be thinking in terms of web apps for new applications—at least, that’s an unwritten rule where I work.
When developing with Mono for an app to be run on Windows and Mac OSX (and maybe Linux) which would you suggest, WinForms or GtkSharp for the GUI and why?
Specific examples and success/horror stories would be much appreciated.
Cross platform development is a nice idea, but to be completely honest I have never seen an application that looks really good outside of its native environment. That is why I think, that if you really want to offer good user experience you should use native toolkits on all platforms that you want to support.
Of course, if you just want a proof of concept, then WinForms on a Mac (or Linux) are alright but if you want an application that competes against other native solution then you really should consider writing a separate native frontend for each supported platform.
A good example how that was done is MindManager from Mindjet. Their Mac version is a full, from scratch rewrite of the interface. The result is an application that gives Mac users the experience that they learned to expect on their platform.
So, back to Mono. There are Cocoa bindings in Mono. Personally, I have never tried using them, but if you want to target Macs with your application, they are certainly worth a look. It would be really great if they could be regarded as a valid choice for UI development on a Mac.
When deciding whether or not to use a cross-platform architecture, gague your requirements of having a tight UI against agility toward change and development time. Using a platform-specific UI framework is (almost) always going to give you better looking and better performing results than you'll get from a cross-platform one.
GtkSharp requires X11 on Mac OS X. Mac users will find that off-putting. I haven't tried Winforms on OS X, but mono's Linux winforms support was pretty immature (buggy) and slow. I don't think there is a mature .net GUI toolkit for OS X at this point, at least nothing at the level of Swing or SWT.
What platform will most of the users of your app have? If most of the users will be Windows users, use Winforms, but if most of the users will be Linux users, use Gtk#. I wouldn't know which one works best on OSX.
Read this article also: http://www.mono-project.com/Gui_Toolkits