At my job we are developing a GIS application which will be developed using Silverlight + .NET
But, I heard that Silverlight will not be supported by Microsoft as also they are stopping Silverlight, is it true ?
Is it suggestable to use Silverlight if so with which version of silverlight we can use. ?
Thanks.,
Use Silverlight 5. Current version have 10 year support, and it better than Flash, java or damn it html.
In the future you can migrate to another .NET-based framework by easily porting code.
About silver light support, you can find these answers from Microsoft Silverlight Support Lifecycle Policy.
Keeping in mind that MS would support these browsers till 2021, I would recommend using Silverlight5 if you really have to use Silverlight.
However for new developments I would recommend you to evaluate Html5 as well.
YES! Silverlight is still the best technology to use for web based Line of Business applications. Silverlight will be supported for another 10 years and it will be available within Windows 8 desktop. Silverlight +[Arc]GIS are a great combination. It is so easy to create full functioning application and with little effort. Silverlight is not dead. It is still a great technology to use that is available on (almost) every platform.
Ultimately it comes down to:
1) What do you know: Are you an HTML/JavaScript ninja? Then use that, do you know Flex better then your own children? Or are you a skilled .Net assassin?
2) How much time do you have? Do you want to learn something new and have gobs of time? Then go for that new shiny object (HTML5) and get yourself some street cred.
This probably belongs on programmers.stackexchange.com. However:
Silverlight will continue to be supported for some time, but all signs point to it no longer being actively developed.
If you want a technology that's actively developed, I'd recommend HTML 5 for web based applications and WinRT for Windows 8+ native applications.
Ultimately, though, you should go with what works best for your situation. After all, WinForms is still used on many successful greenfield projects.
Silverlight is based on the NPAPI architecture that is no longer supported on Google Chrome (from browser version 42 upward) though you can still run it on IE and Firefox. HTML5 is supported on all browsers.
From a career standpoint, using Silverlight (which uses XAML) gets you an easier entry into developing apps for Metro/Windows Store/Universal Windows Apps (these can be developed using HTML5/JS too but you'll find a larger developer base using C#/XAML).
Finally if you're already a WPF developer, it's fastest if you develop for Silverlight. See Silverlight vs Flash vs HTML5.
Related
We need to create an application that can be used via the browser but that can also be used while offline.
The browser Version will be used by our customer to do calculations. Each customer needs to log into the application with a username and Password.
The offline version will be used by our own employees. They need to be able to use this Version while not connected to a Network.
The data that is needed for the application will be stored in XML files.
We are mainly programming with C# and the .NET-Framework. We thought about using WPF for the client version.
I have read that you can use Silverlight or XBAP to create a browser Version of the WPF application. AFAIK Silverlight is a dying Technology. How about XBAP? Would you still invest into this Technology?
The other solution would be to create two front end applications: The WPF application as an offline application and a web application (e.g. ASP.NET MVC) as a web application. Thought, this would mean that we would have to create two frontends (more work).
Is there another alternative?
Would it be better to create an HTML/JavaScript application (e.g. with AngularJ or something similar)?
As a former Silverlight Developer I can only recommend not to use Silverlight for new application development. Microsoft has suspended the further development of Silverlight and you will not get any new features (only security fixes). I really liked the technology and the similarity to WPF but for me it is deprecated.
Even some Browsers (like Chrome) do not support Silverlight anymore and you need a workaround to get it running (See also Chrome doesn't support silverlight anymore? How to solve this?)
Develop a Backendsystem that provides a REST-API (using ASP.NET WebApi as an example) for your clients and develop a Browser client application using modern HTML/CSS/JavaScript Frameworks. If needed/required a desktop application using WPF that consumes the REST-API.
Silverlight may be dying, but that does not mean you should avoid using it. Silverlight is still a viable technology that you can use, however browser trends seem to be phasing out Silverlight support. As far as I know, Microsoft Edge browser is no longer supporting Silverlight, so you will need to use Internet Explorer. This isn't the end of the world, but it's something to think about.
As for WPF, this too is being replaced by Windows Universal Apps, albeit slowly. However this isn't too much of an issue as the skills you have learnt in WPF are easily transferrable. WPF itself is not receiving as many new features as it used to, you could say it's finished.
It isn't always easy to keep up with the latest trends, and there will always be something cool and hip just around the corner, however one thing is for sure, the .NET Platform, including the new refactored Universal App APIs are here to stay, and won't die any time soon.
The current trend sees Web Technologies, such as ASP.NET playing a much bigger role than traditional desktop/tablet/phone applications. I would say that developing for a web browser is certainly a popular choice.
That being said, Windows Universal Apps is also a good choice, in fact, any technology that makes use of the .NET Framework is ideal.
As for my recommendation, I would suggest looking into an ASP.NET web application or Web API to which a desktop application, such as WPF (still a viable technology for enterprise applications) or Universal Windows App can hook into. An ideal scenario would be that both applications share the same back-end code, which is certainly possible as they both use the .NET Framework.
For your requirements, it may even be possible to avoid having to create a desktop application altogether, a web application can be hosted on a machine on the local network and clients can still use the web app. This is assuming that these clients don't have internet access of course.
TL;DR: .NET is legit, use ASP.NET.
My org is currently in Winforms and we are renegineering our complete system which has following parts
- It is a heavy businesslogic desktop application
- Should support part on web/multiple devices (handheld)
- Part of it to be exposed as enterprise solution.
To define the target system, platform and language for such a system (timeline are to create by mid of 2016)
1. Can I replace heavy Desktop application with MS Application?
2. Should I create such DS Application with .net 4.0 WPF? (I am currently on Winforms so to me moving from Winforms to WPF or HTML5 is same)
3. I would prefer to move to HTML5 for the reason that my web, devices and desktop applocations are taken care - but do not have a path for DSA + HTML5 with WinRT
Please advice. Any other solution/suggestion also is welcome.
It really depends on what direction your company wants to go.
If you want to go down the desktop only route, then yes, WPF should suit your requirements. I would suggest using the MVVM Design Pattern, with the Repository/Unit Of Work Pattern.
If you want to go towards the Desktop/Tablet/Mobile route, then you have the option of developing an Windows App, or a Website Application.
For a Windows App, you're looking at developing Microsoft Store Apps (I'd suggest a Universal App). If you want to do this, you might as well wait for Windows 10 to be released, as universal apps have grown up since 8.1.
That leaves Web Applications. There are a myriad of options to choose from here, most common of those would probably be ASP.NET, and things like AngularJS. Please note that I'm not saying that these technologies are the best, but they are just a couple of options. It's really up to you to research the frameworks and libraries that suit your requirements.
But like I said, it really depends on what your company wants their application to do, and what devices will be compatible.
When I create new Windows Phone project I have an option to create a "Windows Phone" or "Windows Phone Silverlight" app. I know that they have different runtimes and different APIs.
I was under the impression that Microsoft wants to unify Windows and Windows Phone platforms so why is there even a Silverlight version? What benefits does it bring?
Also, if I want to create an app just for Windows Phone and never have plans to bring it to Windows, what should I choose, Silverlight or Windows Phone?
I'd suggest you go with "Windows Phone" (non-Silverlight). It's the new API, which works for both Windows and Windows Phone. At some point you may want to port the app or create a new one for Windows and you'll already know the API (and porting will be way easier). Also, the new API will most likely get more updates and features added, and at some point you may even be forced to update to it (either because the old one is no longer supported, or because it does not have some features that you need).
As it was said in the other answers - the Silverlight option is there only for backward compatibility and is likely to be phased out in time. That is - it's good if you already know the API and have many libraries (yours or others) for WP Silverlight, but if you're just starting - you'd better go for the new technology.
Edit
There is one other thing to consider before choosing between the two types of apps. Some features are only available in a Silverlight app, and others (smaller amount) - only in a Xaml app. Here's an article with some info on the differences: Migrating your Windows Phone 8 app to a Windows Runtime XAML app
Windows RT Xaml is quite new and People have to generate some knowledge first.
Silverlight for phone has been around for years and there's a load of tools available: Phone Toolkit, diverse Controls, etc.
Just killing it off would have hurt many developers who built up intellectual property over a long time forcing them to start over.
When starting a project with Silverlight you will have more things around that help you get stuff done.
When starting with WinRT Xaml, you will have better performance, but will have to figure a lot out by yourself.
So the Silverlight option is there to not throw of Silverlight developers.
I recently started a new project on WinRT Xaml and my experience was that I had to recreate a lot of common tools like Caches, etc. But also a lot of things that were in Toolkits previously are now part of the platform itself. Also, when moving over to Windows 8, you get to share a lot of code which is nice.
Unifying the environment(s) would be ideal. In my opinion, it hasn't been very successful. At one point in time, you could only develop under Silverlight, so what you are seeing is just a newer version of the same thing to keep backwards compatibility as well as to keep Silverlight's developers happy. In the future, it will probably be phased out. Plus if you want to support older Phones, Silverlight is basically your only choice (you'll be surprise, how many WP users haven't updated their 8.0 to 8.1)
There really isn't any other real benefit of Silverlight other than maybe the Windows Phone Toolkit which has been tremendously useful (you can see how many SO's answers rely on this simple addon). Once the universal runtime gets fleshed out to the point where the documentation reflects what's actually available -- then I think it would be the default project for developing in Windows going forward.
If you're just starting, I would use Silverlight the knowledge based is much greater. After you get use to the WP environment then switch to runtime.
I have been using WPF for a while, and I keep on realizing again and again that Microsoft invests its efforst in Silverlight, not in WPF (RIA Services, default theme, controls and more).
I thought it might be a good idea to migrate to Silverlight (i.e. creating standalone desktop apps with Silverlight 4.0), the question is whether this is possible or not.
BTW, I think LightSwitch applications are generated with Silverlight as standalone desktop apps.
From MSDN:
Silverlight 3 applications are no longer restricted to running in a browser. They can be run in a browser or it they can be detached from the browser and run from the desktop. These out-of-browser applications allow you to bring the richness of Silverlight 3 applications directly to the desktop without the restriction of running within a browser.
Link: Building An Out-of-Browser Client With Silverlight 3
It is possible to create standalone desktop apps(Out of browser apps) with silverlight version 3.0 or higher and it works great. Now it is also possible to install the out of browser app even without opening a browser as shown at this blog post .Silverlight is awesome and silverlight apps even run on MACs and Linux(limited support)
However, it is not true that Microsoft is only investing in silverlight. Microsoft is investing in WPF too. Though it is possible to create out of browser applications with silverlight, they have lot of limitations when compared to a full blown WPF applications.Dont forget that silverlight is just a subset of WPF, for example, silverlight doesnt have ADO.NET, Hardware device access etc. So if your application is merely a business application and you dont have to access hardware devices or database directly then silverlight might be an option, however if your application accessing client machines hardware resources directly then you are better off with WPF.
My suggestion is, If you know before hand that it is going to be a desktop application then go with WPF(or may be even XBAP). In my experience, useful applications grow with time, new features are always requested time to time. If in future,a feature is requested that cannot be accomplished with silverlight and can only be accomplished with WPF, then you will be in a big trouble because you need to rewrite your app in WPF and it will be hard for you to convince your CFO to allocate more fund just to implement one feature. Silverlight is not designed to develop desktop applications, its main goal is multi-platform support.
Silverlight 3 supports Out-of-Browser functionality.
Quote from Wikipedia silverlight page :
Silverlight 3 supports Out-of-Browser experiences, i.e., Silverlight applications can be installed to the system for offline access (provided the application manifest is designed to allow local installation) where they run outside the browser.
Also here is a quick howto
Out of browser applications have the same security restrictions as in browser applications.
With Silverlight 4 you can create full trust applications which have full access to the computer.
More on Network Security Access Restrictions in Silverlight
If you mean Out of Browser apps, certainly. The Seesmic Desktop 2 app is an excellent example of one of these apps, with it's own updating mechanism. Seems a no brainer to use the XAP/MEF plug-in Model and Silverlight in this manner.
Seesmic Desktop 2
We're developing an OOB app along the same lines, one internet download and you're done. You're not going to get exactly the same APIs as you get in WPF, though.
As others have pointed out, Silverlight apps can be installed to run 'out-of-browser', but even with elevated trust they still have significant restrictions on what they can do and certainly don't have "full access to the computer".
Creating an app from scratch, you may want to consider parallel Silverlight & WPF builds. The code can more-or-less be shared by adding the .cs files from one project (e.g. WPF) to the other (Silverlight) using "Add As Link". The XAML files cannot be linked this way and need to be duplicated, but that may not involve much more than copying & pasting, depending on your structure. There're good examples of this on the web.
Developing both types in parallel would likely involve a lot less effort than having to abruptly switch types at some point and discovering incompatibilities/limitations too late.
Silverlight 3.0 beta has just been announced at Microsofts Mix Conference in Las Vegas.
Two features of the new beta are 3D-graphics and the ability to run applications outside of the browser, which to me seemed to be two of the major features that WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) previously offered over silverlight.
I am currently evaluating WPF and Silverlight for possible use in our companies future development activity, and this announcement has left me confused as to the intended direction of these two UI technologies and why I would choose one over the other.
Has anyone implemented a new application using WPF recently, and if so, what drove you to that decision? Given the announced changes to silverlight, Would your decision have changed had you made it now, and if not, why?
Any advice would be appreciated.
The biggest difference I find is the asynchronous model you have to adopt
in your Silverlight application.
It does seems like an advantage (and it can be), but it does make
life very difficult sometimes.
There are also some limitations that can be a real challenge like the absence
of print support.
I would recommend Silverlight over WPF when:
- There is no need for best possible performance (graphics included)
- Can get around the absence of print support (it will come, we just don't know when)
- Camera/Microphone support is not needed
- Can tolerate the assync app/development model
- Can tolerate limitations on WCF (no support for WS-Security at this point)
- There is no need to store huge amount of data on the client.
- There is no need to direct integration with client side applications like Office.
- Has a server to host your application
I would say the main difference is that WPF requires the client to have the .Net 3.0+ framework. Silverlight only requires the runtime. Now that being said, WPF is geared more for controlled environments such as an intranet. Silverlight is meant for the public web. Another difference is that Silverlight is cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux in the future & Cross browser). WPF is meant for Windows only.
The .Net framework can be a huge download for some users. Silverlight is only 4-5MBs. This is a big difference to run your app on the web, but not a big issue if its an internal application at your company.
Silverlight is Sandboxed which is meant for web use. So if your app requires more permissions you will need WPF.
There are also some differences between Silverlight code and WPF. But from what I've heard, the ultimate goal is to get a Silverlight to run inside of WPF with minimal code changes. But they aren't there just yet.
I have just worked on a WPF project that in hindsight we feel we might have chosen SilverLight for. It is probably more important to know the differences and select the one that is most appropriate for what you're doing.
Here's my starter for ten on some of the important differences - there were originally some differences in the available controls, but that has largely been smoothed out now.
Silverlight
Runs entirely on the client with AJAX
calls to the server for data
Can run on any server, including Windows and Linux / Apache
Uses COMPACT .NET framework
WPF
Runs on the client... usually calls services for data
Runs on Windows XP / Vista with .NET 3.5
Utilises the entire .NET framework
Silverlight is basically a stripped down version of WPF in order to make the runtime libary download as small as possible.
As a result, WPF simply has a lot more functionality available in it and tasks that are simple in WPF often become not so simple in Silverlight.
If running as a web app is not a requirement then the decision is a no-brainer - WPF all the way.
Has anyone implemented a new application using WPF recently, and if so, what drove you to that decision: Well since WPF was desktop only (or browser based using XBAPS - but that was more a deployment system than a real system) that was a good reason to it.
"Would your decision have changed had you made it now, and if not, why?" - No Silverlight, even on the desktop in v3, is still highly sandboxed and so certain functions are going to be hard/impossible to do due to the sandbox. Also the ability to use DirectX parts in WPF will still give another optimisation area which Silverlight and it's 3d won't be able to use.
It's worth noting that Silverlight's 3D is not the full 3D support of WPF, but only projection of 2D into 3D - i.e. take the 2D plane and allow rotation in X, Y & Z directions. WPF has full 3D modelling with materials, view ports, lighting and camera positional support etc.
I'm well along in the development of our first WPF app for release. Silverlight 3 looks great, but for this application I would still have chosen WPF. The application centers around presenting and manipulating very large sets of images hosted on a central server on our clients' networks. Additionally, the software update/change rate will be minimal. Mass import of new images from a local drive, no Internet connectivity requirements, performance concerns, etc. make this a project well suited for WPF.
One of our upcoming projects, however, will require many remote users to access a single data store on our network. The data they work with requires significant validation and error handling, so running that code locally is ideal. They will need the ability to work both on and offline and remain in synch (probably with SQL Data Services). SLOOB (Silverlight Out Of the Browser) will most likely be our choice for that one so they can have all the Silverlight advantages but use it like a regularly installed application, even without an Internet connection.
Both formats have their place: the trick will be to avoid using Silverlight for everything - we have more tools than just 1 hammer. :-)
Another difference is that with SL you only have one 'window', you can't have dialogs (they can be simulated but their size is limited to the main window) and you can't add multi monitor support.
If you have to interact with existing business applications (e.g. open a document in the archive viewer) you need to use WPF.
I recently have built several internal tool using wpf, and I chose it simply because It was easier for me coming from win32 work. I don't really think that the differences are major, and really... everything i have seen/heard indicates that porting between wpf and silverlight is quite easy.
Storage: You only have 25MB of isolated storage out-of-browser. If I remember correctly from some mix09 video, this limit is lower if your app is in-browser.
http://bliny.net/blog/post/Out-of-Browser-with-Silverlight-3.aspx
No FlowDocument: So there are limitations there too.