# Wednesday, August 08, 2007
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Silverlight Development -- First Thoughts

I've been working on various aspects of Silverlight since sometime last year. The project has been going on much longer than that. It took a while for the managed API to come online and then even longer for good tools support, and all of this is before the product was announced. And all that time, you'd think that folks close to the product were generating a ton of samples and cool apps. Well, not really. There were some, but most folks (including me) were just cranking on getting the thing ready for Mix and then the refresh/RC that followed.

So, I'm now happily playing with the product. I'm in the middle of creating a photo gallery website for myself to replace the lame DHTML site that I wrote back in 2003 on ASP.NET v1.1.

I'm left with some random thoughts on the product and how it affects and empowers developers:

  • Compatibility between the server, the web-client (Silverlight) and the client (WPF/Winforms) is incredibly important
    • At the very least, developers benefit from knowledge transfer across the platform
    • Compatibility makes life easier for developers
    • More importantly, it opens up a ton of interesting scenarios between the different parts of the platform
  • A highly flexible and easy to target ActiveX control is liberating
    • I've written a bunch of javascript to improve user experience in the browser. I'd be happy to never do that again, given that the development experience is pretty bad.
    • You can create amazing visuals and immersize experiences that would never be possible with Javascript.
  • Silverlight also opens up a lot of questions for its use in the browser
    • Do you use Silverlight for your entire site, or only the parts that make sense?
    • What do you about navigation, particularly as it relates to forward and back buttons?
    • What do you do about folks that what a URL for a specific part of your site to send around, or return to later (bookmark)?
    • Flash has been around for a while, and has all of these same problems. Some sites use Flash for ads, others for widgets and still others that do the whole site thing. I've always disliked the whole site thing as a user.
  • Silverlight has an opportunity to hugely improve on the current Web experience
    • Most importantly, we've just let lose all those managed developers out on that ;)
    • This is the start of real internet applications, and of much more interesting web sites. Cannot wait to see what Amazon chooses to do.
    • This opens up a new x-browser (and OS) application platform to developers
    • Flash isn't always the best experience. It does crash and you sometimes get this dialog about 'waiting for a long-running script'.
  • Is this yet another Microsoft technology that developers have to learn?
    • Yes and no. If you know WPF already, then you'll be at home.
    • If you don't know the .NET Framework, then Silverlight is a great way to learn an impressive set of basics.
    • There are some differences to learn, but it's all minor
  • Is Microsoft serious about x-brower and x-OS?
    • Yes.
  • Are .NET Framework teams stoked about Silverlight?
    • Last time I checked ;)

As I work more on my photo gallery site, I'm pretty sure I'll develop more thoughts and hopefully some answers to some of the questions that I've raised.

Compatibility | Silverlight
Wednesday, August 08, 2007 5:46:30 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [3]  |  Related posts:
Sharing Silverlight Assemblies with .NET Apps
Silverlight User Controls and this.Children
(Annoying) Sealed Classes in Silverlight
Sharing Code Between Silverlight and Orcas
The Various Choices For Compatibility (or not)
The Impact of Compatibility on the Product
Tuesday, August 28, 2007 9:04:15 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Wow, I instantly disliked you after reading this, and here's why: In this one post, you're both pedantic and pathetic. A difficult combination, no doubt, but one you managed surprisingly well. Comments such as 'Flash isn't always the best experience. It does crash and you sometimes get this dialog about 'waiting for a long-running script' and this gem here 'Some sites use Flash for ads, others for widgets and still others that do the whole site thing. I've always disliked the whole site thing as a user' while at the same time spewing forth this beauty '(regarding Silverlight) This is the start of real internet applications, and of much more interesting web sites.' Are you serious? A little background about me, I started on VB and SQLServer, early .NET, but moved to Flash des/dev for the past several years. I've done just about everything there is to do in Flash, and am getting bored with it. Silverlight comes out, WAY underdeveloped and WAY, WAY too soon to be talking about the future of RIA (even a dynamic input text box would be nice, don't even start with Data Grids). But the roll your own, wild west vibe of Silverlight brings a couple of us professional DEVigners back to the nostalgia of the late 90's, when the rest of the New Media World was hitting this the FIRST time around with Flash and pre/post ActionScript 1.0. So I'm jumping on board the Silverlight train. FLEX and CS3 are no longer the rebel upstarts we fell in love with, they've sold out to Big Business RIA. That's how it goes. But Silverlight is young, new and stupid. A great undiscovered country of old tricks for us. I'm open to giving Silverlight a go, despite this nerd posturing, but if you really want to pitch to those of us magicians whose job it is to make the sizzle that SELLS the steak (which we all know you DESPERATELY want to do, or 1.0 wouldn't have been so eye candy rich, functionality poor), you have to stop these inept, pathetic Flash jabs that only reveal deep ignorance on your part of what the rest of the world has been doing in Rich Media without Microsoft et.al. for several years now). I'm excited about Silverlight DESPITE comments like this, but show a little humility here. A lot of this is porting the Rich Media wheel over to .NET, not inventing jack. Play nice, some of us who aren't blindly married to Flash are interested in Silverlight, and we promise, take care of us and we'll make you look good, just don't be such a bigmouth and write checks the limp 1.0 RC or 1.1 alpha can't cash yet. Don't crap on our house to get us to move. We're still living there and your cardboard box isn't ready yet. But we like the location, so we're keeping our eyes open. Just tone it down.
Richard Kenneth
Wednesday, August 29, 2007 4:17:16 AM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Glad to see interest in Silverlight from the Flash community ;) I'd be happy to talk more about it over a beer next time you're in Seattle.

I re-read the post. The 'flash jabs' are not all that severe. Sorry to touch a sensitive spot with the 'nerd posturing'.

I'll take your point that Silverlight is still a v1.0 (literally and figuratively). It's the promise that we all see.

Independent of Silverlight, I've never quite liked the Flash experience, and my comments (e.g. 'long running script') are not incorrect. That being said, a bunch of the issues like the 'whole site' thing are the same for both, which is what I stated, and I linked to a Silverlight site as an example.

Glad to see that you're excited about Silverlight, and that you'll give it a try.

Rich Lander
Wednesday, August 29, 2007 10:58:05 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Wow, I sounded like a jerk! I was having an instant dislike for everyone yesterday, not just you (having just come back from the dentist ;) But there Are two things that have been bothering me of late, being a Flash User Experience developer/instructor who is actively trying to rustle up interest in Silverlight for the past several months. 1) There is a lot of not so subtle Flash jabs from the Microsoft camp. You're absolutely right, yours weren't as bad as many I read, but almost everything written from the MS camp or MS loyalists tries to elevate Silverlight by pushing down Flash. One of the best things about early Flash (and one of the reasons I'm so unhappy with where they're taking it now with Flex) was the liquid integration between design and development. Not .NET, Microsoft, OOP development, but raw, ugly, artists realizing that a small investment in code could yield previously unheard of experiences. Most would do this poorly, but a few would do this very well and literally change the playing field of web experiences. For silverlight to reach a tipping point, it wont require the majority of desingers on one side, developers on the other, business as usual only use these new tools, it will required the visual hackers and alpha geek designers to make the thing gorgeous and interactive. We're currently working in Flash. Those of our camp that are blindly loyal to all things Adobe won't change for a long time. They'll still Silverlight bash no matter what it ends up being. But you need professionals who know how to do it right, learned it in Flash, who are willing to invest in Silverlight. What did MS learn from the XBOX v. Playstation, hunt for Creative Class experience? Go for the cream, the rest will follow. 2) My other biggest gripe, and this is shared among Flex as well, is that the cream LIKES code, they just like it to be easy and forgiving. If I'm an interactive developer, I don't want to become a full blown C# alpha nerd or care about obscure design patterns, but I do want to be able to design elements, put them on a canvas, and then CODE basic event handlers and interactive animations all in one place. the heavy codelifting can be handled by the business layer, but leave us some code to do our magic. 5GB Orcas download?Seriously? No thanks. Learning tag based animations, no thanks. If I wanted that, I would go to Flex. Ui controlled with markup tags on the front end, robust code behind is the way coders think, not rich Media. you're forcing a split, assuming designers would rather have mark up instead of code. You're asking the wrong designers. IMHO, designers who don't like code should get a new job or cowboy up. But the code needs to meet us half way. Flash had it. Flex doesn't. I'm afraid Silverlight is copying Flex's bad example. If you still want that beer, I'll be in your Redmond campus next week for a couple days. Drop me a line :)
Richard Kenneth
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