I've heard the comment several times, once in one of Shawn Wildermuth's podcasts, that Silverlight is great, but might not be so good for 'entire' internet applications. This comment never get's amplified, but the implication seems to be that you would use Silverlight in conjunction with standard aspx web pages.
So far, the only downside I can see to an all Silverlight application is that the XAP file could get very large, meaning that when a web app is opened, there would be a very noticeable delay.
Most of the apps I do in .NET would be considered small. They are business / CRUD apps of maybe 25 aspx screens along with the supporting cast.
Does anyone have an expanation of the downside of a mostly Silverlight app?
Thanks
Mike Thomas
I'm aware of Shawn's comment, but I think it's a bit dated. If I remember correctly that comment was made before Silverlight could easily handle browser navigation, deep linking and SEO. Those issues are addressed now (largely thanks to RIA services) and Silverlight is a first class web citizen imo. I've done 2 Silverlight only business apps (i.e. the Silverlight content is full screened; there are no ASPX parts to the apps) and have been quite successful with them. A big plus about creating a Silverlight only site is that it's very easy to debug homogeneous content. Take a look at .NET RIA Services if you're seeing holes that need to be plugged when creating a SL business app.
EDIT: RIA Services is Silverlight framework that facilitates development of data oriented Silverlight applications - it's currently in a preview (i.e. not finished) release state but my experience has been that it's stable. WCF is a communications framework used by Silverlight to enable client to server connectivity; it's very similar to traditional web services. RIA Services uses WCF to perform client/server communication. Check out Brad Abram's post "What is RIA Services" for a quick overview here http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/03/19/what-is-net-ria-services.aspx then read his full 25 post series for all the details on RIA Services here http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/08/02/business-apps-example-for-silverlight-3-rtm-and-net-ria-services-july-update-summary.aspx
If you want to see a complete Silverlight application in action, check out http://www.mediacourtyard.com. They have implemented a complete CMS front-end in Silverlight. Check out the demo, it appears to be fairly stable and functional.
(I have nothing to do with them btw. I trawl the web for Silverlight apps a lot and that CMS is the coolest "full" app I've found so far.)
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.
I'm in the early planning stages of an internal application and I'm considering ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight 4 as my possible platforms.
The Environment
We're a Microsoft shop and we're in the process of migrating desktops to Win7 (from XP) and servers to W2k8, I'll be able to get Silverlight 4 installed as part of our baseline Win7 build
The Application
Provide a dashboard to monitor system status
Monitoring third party connections
Monitoring database tables for particular events
Monitoring SQL Server Log Shipping
...
Provide portal like access to system tasks to end users
Bulk updates to databse rows
Running SSRS Reports
Re-running automated tasks that have failed
...
The Team
We're a small team of 2 and neither of us have production exeprience in Silverlight or ASP.NET MVC so we'll be learning whichever we go for.
What would you pick and why?
The answer really depends on your experience. If you are an experienced web developer and have a lot of practice with ASP.NET then use that for sure. If your background is WPF and WinForms then use Silverlight.
My experience is that the ramp up time to use Silverlight for an ASP.NET developer is significantly longer than it is for a straight .NET application developer. The ASP.NET developer has to unlearn a great deal before they begin because the development paradigm for Silverlight is more akin to app development.
The other alternative is to use both. ASP.NET for the navigation, authentication, general layout and Silverlight for the data realisation (graphs etc).
I would pick ASP.NET MVC. I have experience in both Silverlight and ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight undoubtedly has a steeper learning curve. While it will definitely enable you to develop rich user interfaces (it enables amazing composition) it may be overkill for an internal application.
ASP.NET MVC on the other hand will enable you to do what you are aiming to achieve but I believe (due to the learning curve) you'll be able to do so MUCH more quickly. It is also much easier in my experience to enable dependency injection and write unit tests for ASP.NET MVC than it is for silverlight which may or may not be a consideration..
Silverlight. I think ASP.NET MVC more for public websites, whereas internal applications - Webforms or Silverlight in your case.
Silverlight - Desktop > Web for applications (not for simple data presentations though) whenever possible. The bad news is that desktop is not always possible. The good news is that it is possible for you. You can even use the out of browser features which is even cooler.
Use Silverlight with the MVVM pattern.
With the arrival of VS 2010 and Silverlight 4, I decided it's time to look into Silverlight and understand how to build a 3-Tier business application.
After several hours of searching for and reading documentation and tutorials, I'm thoroughly confused (and that doesn't happen easily).
Here are some specific points I don't understand. I welcome guidance on any of them, and also would appreciate any references to a really good tutorial.
Brad Abrahm's What is a .NET RIA services (written for Silverlight 3) seemed very promising, until I realized I don't have System.Web.Ria.dll on my system. Am I missing an optional download? Was this rolled into another DLL for Silverlight 4? Did this go away in favor of something else in Silverlight 4?
This recent blog says to start from a Silverlight Business Application, remove unwanted stuff, create a WCF RIA services Class Library project, and copy files and references from the Business Application to the WCF RIA services project, while manually updating resource references (perhaps bug in B2 compiler). Is this really the right road to go down? It seems... clumsy.
My requirements are to perform very simple CRUD on straightforward business objects.
I'm looking forward to suggestions on how to do that the Silverlight 4 way.
I would say that since the silverlight application will be built on top of ASP.NET, the back-end would be the same for the application whether it was Silverlight or Html (WebForms/MVC)
You could have a look at the CSLA Business Object Framework that includes support for silverlight: http://www.lhotka.net/cslanet/
Not sure 100% if its support Silverlight 4.0 yet, but if its doesnt I am sure it will soon.
To answer your first question, the System.Web.Ria assembly has been replaced by these two assemblies:
System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Server
System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Hosting
You can find a list of the breaking changes with the v1.0 release of WCF RIA Services right here.
Is Silverlight RIA worth learning or should I stick to normal Silverlight?
Background:
I have done a couple small applications in WPF
I have 12 years expereince with business apps in the VB6/WinForms model
I expect to continue building business applications
My applications will be used internally
While ClickOnce does work for us, we want to get away from locally installed software.
To start with I'm wondering if there might be some confusion going on here.
There's actually no such thing as "Silverlight RIA", so lets clarify some concepts, RIA is commonly defined Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight is one of a number of technologies that can be used to build such applications.
However there's also the Microsoft technology WCF RIA Services, which is what I'm guessing you're referring to. WCF RIA Services were until recently known as .Net RIA Services.
WCF RIA Services (currently in Beta 2) has so far largely been targeted at Silverlight and is even hosted under the silverlight.net domain, which is probably where a lot of the confusion comes from.
However in theory it's not tied to Silverlight at all and is just a technology on top WCF to provide easy data access for RIA type of applications, for a more technical overview have a look at this blogpost by Nikhil Kothari it was written back in March 2009 about .Net RIA Services, so it might be a little out of date but it will give you a good idea on what it's about.
After defining these terms, it's a bit tricky to answer your question "Is Silverlight RIA worth learning or should I stick to normal Silverlight?"
Silverlight is definitely worth learning, by the looks of things Microsoft is going to stick with it. The latest recommendation I heard from someone close to Microsoft, was to go with Silverlight if you can for new LOB (Line Of Business) Apps, if there's something Silverlight can't do, then look to WPF.
Coming from a VB6/Winforms background there will be a bit of a learning curve, but if you've already done a couple WPF apps then you're on good way already.
Silverlight for LOB? Silverlight 3 started bringing in more features related to development of LOB, like for example support for WCF RIA Services. It looks like this is set to continue in Silverlight 4 (due out first half of 2010), with things like support for printing and COM for working with MS Office applications. There's also coming more and more pre-made controls from various 3rd party vendors for many of the standard LOB type of functionality.
So what about WCF RIA Services? It's definitely worth having a look at, it seems to be the preferred way of data access by Microsoft. It provides things like easy access to authentication and data validation. However saying that it's still in beta and there has been some voices raised against it, around the internet so it's probably worth doing some research, before going all in.
Finally, you say that you're applications will be accessed internally but that you don't want the hassle of locally installed software, Silverlight fits that perfectly, just roll out the small Silverlight plugin to your users machines and you're good to go. Any changes needed, just recompile your project and deploy your .xap file to the webserver and it will automatically get pushed out to the users next time they use the app.
Sorry for the somewhat long and rambling answer, I hope it's helped answer your questions :)
Cheers,
Ola
If you are doing business apps then RIA is definitely worth learning. I would recommend you take out an hour and watch this video: .NET RIA Services Intro. In fact you should take 2 hours and work along side this video building the example as you go.
With the new Silverlight 3.0 feature that allows the components to be hosted outside of the browser, our company is looking for details on the differences between this new feature and WPF Windows applications (since Silverlight is partly a subset of WPF).
Is there a good resource that lists the differences between Silverlight 3 outside of the browser and WPF applications? Areas like permissions, functionality, etc.
If there is no web resources, what are some of the key differences?
Silverlight OOB applications have the exact same capabilities as an in-browser Silverlight application, except they lose their ability to communicate with the DOM (via the System.Windows.Browser API).
Here is a brief list of some common things that you don't have access to with Silverlight that you might be planning on using in a WPF application:
Client File System
Client Windows registry
Client Event Log
Client OLEDB
Client SQL Client
This may seem like a long list but it should look fairly familiar to the no-can-do list for any web application platform (a la ASP.NET, JSP, PHP)
Jaime Rodriguez has a very good post covering the key differences and features of both Silverlight and WPF: Here. It's very high level and meant to differentiate between features that a WPF and Silverlight Out-of-Browser application bring to the table.
markti is correct.
Scott Barnes - Rich Platforms Product Manager - Microsoft.