ASP.NET vs. Silverlight

Question

I'm starting a new web project and I am considering two presentation frameworks. I am thinking either about ASP.NET MVC or Silverlight. I would tend toward Silverlight since I'm quite experienced .NET developer while I have just a basic knowledge of ASP.NET controls.

Answer 1

It's hard to recommend one over the other without knowing what your application is. Whatever you do decide, make sure you keep your target audience in mind; not everyone is going to have Silverlight installed on their computers.

Personally, unless I was designing an incredibly interactive and beautiful web app, I would go with ASP.NET (with or without the MVC framework) if only for the fact that there is a ton of reference material for it while Silverlight is still relatively new territory.

Answer 2

What's your goal? Who's your audience? What browser is your intended audience using (beware when mixing Firefox and Silverlight)?

Answer 3

It is mainly going to be an iternal product so browsers are not an issue. It's more about the price of development. Is it easier to learn Silverlight model or ASP.NET model? I expect that Silverlight is based on WebServices and so it might clearly divide my application code into a business logic (service) and presentation (silverlight application).

Answer 4

Don't forget Silverlight is going to require a plug-in to use, and to my knowledge it has not been "natively" added to IE, let alone the rest of the browsers. So there could be tons of maintenance/support issues with that alone. PDF files are considered "ubiquitous" by now, but you still run into a user or two that doesn't have Adobe Reader on their computer and it often occurs at a bad time and then you're scurrying around to get an installer.

At a fundamental level, this is what has kept me from doing Silverlight for my web apps. I think the technology behind it is good, but considering nowadays you could get equal visibility/functionality with a nice Webforms/MVC/AJAX/jQuery combination (mix and match to your liking), I'd say stick with ASP.NET.

Answer 5

Both personally and professionally, I write C# daily for Windows forms apps and Windows services. Even after years of this, I find it FAR faster to whip out a web app with PHP or Python than to do it with .NET. Maybe things have changed with Silverlight, but to me the learning curve on ASP.NET is ridiculous compared to the payback.

Edit: The above was written a year or so before I tried ASP.NET MVC. I find ASP.NET MVC wonderfully intuitive and clean.

Answer 6

Given your background in .NET but limited Asp .net experience... I assume you are more of a service/client guy. Which will mean your javascript is probably just as limited... If this is the case, I'd go with Silverlight. It will ease you into WPF, which you may be likely to use in the future.

But more importantly working with Silverlight 2.0 feels more like building a sandboxed desktop application. More than a web application. You will be more at home with Silverlight if your prior experience is with client apps.

If you want to break into building web sites/applications go with ASP .NET MVC.

Either way knowledge of the typical ASP .NET controls will not go far, since they are for WebForms.

Answer 7

It is mainly going to be an iternal product so browsers are not an issue.

You still have not written a proper description about the nature of your application. It is difficult to assess which technology is a good fit without first knowing well enough the domain the application is being applied to, and the problems it is designed to solve.

In general, Microsoft is positioning these array of presentation technologies on the "Reach vs Rich" continuum. You have "plain old" HTML and Javascript on one end, acceptable by the most number of client machines out there, and the ultimate full-blown WPF on the other side where limited number of machines can handle. You did mention this to be an internal app, so WPF via XBAP or ClickOnce are also possible.

So the scale would align this way: (reach) ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight, WPF (rich).

So the question is just how rich you want/need it to be for the users until it hurts the deployment base? Frankly if all you fetch are forms and tabular data and statistics then regular ASP.NET web forms are just fine. If you want on-the-fly resizable graphs and client-side interactive with back-end WCF web services Silverlight can do that. If you want even more powerful graphical rendering than WPF via the remote deployment options is your bet.

Answer 8

IMO you may be better off with ASP.Net. While you would have a slight learning curve, you'd be developing on a proven, reliable, scalable model rather than something thats in beta and will likely change before RTM.

Also, with AJAX these days its possible to get a pretty slick user experience out of ASP.Net.

Answer 9

Silverlight 3 with RIA seems to be very powerful. I hadn't programmed for 6 years after working on VB6. I about a months time, here I am developing a web applicaton that uses SL3, WCF and entity framework and I feel very comfortable.

The silverlight forum and stackoverflow ofcourse are very active and for some of the problems that i've had had, I have been able to get a solution easily.

The one thing I'm not sure of yet is performance.

Answer 10

I would say - unless you need flash-like animation and interaction capabilities - go for ASP.NET. It's simpler to program against and doesn't require extra downloads for the users.

Answer 11

I would recommend ASP.NET, no additional download is needed.

I used Silverlight but a lot of companies are not allowing users to install anything also home users are not happy to install browser plugins, Silverlight is not so known as Flash player.

For beginners and advanced programmers you can find video tutorials at.

http://www.asp.net/mvc