10 Things You Should Know About Silverlight
Computerworld has an article entitled “10 Things you Should Know About Microsoft’s Silverlight“. I just wanted to add a few notes comparing things to Flex, since the author doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of Flex.
1. Silverlight Avoids Cross-Browser/OS Issues
As long as you don’t count Linux as an OS. Flex spans Windows, Mac, AND Linux.
2. Silverlight 1.1 Is the Real Story
This is because that’s where you start to get the real .NET language support. In my experience, though, I’ve found that the CLR’s language support isn’t really the feature it’s cracked up to be.
Yeah it lets you choose between a huge pile of languages – but as soon as you step outside the VB or C# world, you’re pretty much on your own. One of the things that has made Java as strong as it is is that “Java” is the whole stack, including the runtime and the language. If you know “Java” you know “Java” and you can work on any “Java” project. Meanwhile, on .NET C++/CLI developers aren’t going to have a clue how to work with a VB.NET project.
When I started using .NET it was pretty clear C# was the “language of choice”, so that’s the one I learned and I’ve never seen a compelling reason to learn any other. With Flex, that language is ActionScript. Does supporting more languages really make a runtime better?
3. Silverlight Uses Technologies Your Developers Already Know
So does Flex (ActionScript is ECMA-262, aka JavaScript).
4. Silverlight UI Is just Markup — Like HTML
5. Silverlight and AJAX Technologies Are Complementary
6. Silverlight Allows Developers and Designers to Work Together
This is an area where Flex needs some better tooling. Microsoft did get this part right.
7. Silverlight Deliverables Are Not Atomic
You can choose with Flex whether to bundle things together into a single SWF or to fetch assets on demand. There are some good reasons to package assets together, like latency, but you still have the flexibility to fetch code modules, images and other data on demand if you choose to.
8. Silverlight Is New
Flex isn’t new – it’s based on a mature runtime - the Flash player – with excellent native code generation and a lot of other rich features. But maybe this isn’t a point in Silverlight’s favour.
9. Silverlight XAML versus WPF XAML
XAML vs Flex? They’re pretty similar.
10. Silverlight Is a Great Way to Learn XAML
Flex is a crummy way to learn XAML. But it’s a great way to learn MXML!
August 12th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Here is the whole list of Silverlight that you should also know ;)
http://www.plentyofcode.com/2007/07/what-is-microsoft-silverlight.html
August 13th, 2007 at 5:49 am
IMO multiple language support is a plus point for .NET. This has nothing to do with the runtime or the framework, which are language agnostic. Arguing that Java is good because you can’t program against the libraries with any other language seems bizarre. With .NET I can reference a library from another vendor (or another team within my organisation) which may have been written in another .NET compatible language and use it in my C# project, my VB.NET project or whatever. I may not be able to maintain their source if I don’t understand the language, but I shouldn’t have to if it’s correctly encapsulated and I’m programming against their interface. There has also been a big push recently for dynamic language support in .NET, from Ruby to Javascript and Python, all of which are able to access the framework.
I’d agree that supporting more languages doesn’t make a _runtime_ better, but it does make development for that runtime more flexible, which can only be a good thing.
August 30th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
[...] 10 Things You Should Know About Silverlight [...]