Web Application, which route to go!?

Question

Hi,

I'm going to develop a web application based on mathematics. It's going to provide stuff like canvas' showing graphs (quadratics etc.) and also provide an exercise area to test knowledge.

I am stuck as to which route to take. I haven't developed a Web Application before and I am most confident working in C# applications. I would prefer to use C# when creating this but I don't know if that is really appropriate.

I have the following routes that I could go down:

• Silverlight - I haven't used this before but it seems to be the most obvious solution to me. I was wondering how hard it will be to develop an understanding of silverlight (xaml etc.)

• Java, I haven't any idea about java, but I've heard it has a lot of similarities to C#.

• Tclets, my university tutor said he has worked with this before and it's easier to get on the web, and very handy for gui's.

I thought I'd ask this here to get everyones opinion on which path to take, and sum up all the positives and negatives of each route.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you are most comfortable with C# then I would advise developing it in ASP.NET. Heres a starting point: Creating ASP.NET Web Applications

Answer 2

If you decide to go the Silverlight route the Silverlight Toolkit has some good graphing samples : Silverlight Toolkit Control Samples - which is itself a Silverlight application.

Using Silverlight is probably the closest you can get to writing a desktop application for the web. The UI is specified in XAML with the application layer in C#. The whole application sits within the Silverlight control and you can generate the menus and other navigation items you need.

It complies to a XAP file which you deploy and then reference from either an HTML page or ASP page.

Answer 3

I really can't speak to Java or Tclets but Silverlight will offer you a familiar programming model if you are most comfortable in C#. XAML requires a bit of a learning curve if you don't have any experience with it. You don't have to go 100% Silverlight though - it could be a hybrid HTML (ASP.NET) and Silverlight solution - where Silverlight could primarily be used for the graphing/charting. You could use HTML or a more sophisticated ASP.NET site for the remainder of the content.