Deep Fried Bytes Interview

Ranting and raving about anything I feel like complaining about.

Deep Fried Bytes Interview - Part 2

Url: http://deepfriedbytes.com/podcast/episode-10-a-...

In this second part of my interview, Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff to talk about all things Silverlight. This episode gets deeper in to the good and bad of Silverlight 2 development today.

This work by Shawn Wildermuth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at wildermuth.com.

Comments

I listened to both parts of your interview and I'm a little disappointed in your comments about SL. I understand your thoughts, but it seems you were bashing the technology than praising it. I agree on the parts that you should not rewrite apps just to run SL if it is not necessary as it takes time to set web services, UI, etc. I am not an ASP.NET dev ( WinForms/WPF mainly ), but got the impression from blogs, sites, etc. that more apps would be designed with SL ( Not saying ASP.NET or other platforms would go away ). I hope that in SL2 Final or SL vNext will include fixes for the performance issues you discussed that will make SL the main choice. Thanks

shaggygi (Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008)

Shaggygi,

There are some Silverlight guys who are very excited about annointing Silverlight as the platform for Web 3.0 or something, but my perspective is not to bash Silverlight but to help people understand its real power and find the right use. Apps vs. Sites is the big story to me. Silverlight may be used for Internet Applications, but people re-writing their sites to be all Silverlight are doomed to failure, much like the full-page Flash guys were. Lets learn from that experience. Hype is interesting, but it doesn't further my cause.

Shawn Wildermuth (Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008)

So you are saying that creating an app completely in SL is bad??? Most apps I write use WinForms and WPF. What if I need to design a web app for various employees across company ( internal use only ) to display/process data. Should I not do this all in SL? Even if all controls and support are provided in SL2 SDK? If not, what is the best approach? Using a combination of ASP.NET and SL?

shaggygi (Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008)

Shaggygi,

No, Silverlight is fine...but developing it as an XBAP app is much easier. The security model is simplier in enterprise (e.g. Windows Auth) scenarios and direct access to resources (e.g. databases) means you don't have to develop whole infrastructure to deal with data. XBAP is browser based and click-once deployed so the deployment story is simple.

Shawn Wildermuth (Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008)

Hi there,

From listening to the shows, I think basically the point which is being made, is the good old; use the right tools for the job.

Silverlight is great if you're creating some sort of internet based highly interactive application, if you want to shown video or if you're doing some fancy data visualization. But if the majority of what you're doing, is to show text and static images, it just doesn't make sense. It will in most likelihood decrease usability and accessibility. It will also create issues with things like SEO etc.

Note I'm not saying don't use Silverlight at all, all I'm saying is, use it where it makes sense to use it.

Anyhow, that my 2 cents, keep up the great work Shawn :)

Ola Karlsson (Posted Monday, August 25, 2008)