Is silverlight a good choice for web applications which display large amounts of data and focus on user productivity?

Question

I've played some on-line demos of silverlight component packs, like Telerik, NetAdvantage and ComponentOne and although I was very impressed by what I saw, I had also the impression that the demo applications were heavy to load, even during the usage of some components.

I'm planning to try silverlight in a project that demands loading large amounts of data, using grids and charts.

What the guys who use silverlight can say about that?

Is silverlight a good choice for web applications which display large amounts of data and focus on user productivity?

Answer 1

The short answer is, "Yes, absolutely."

Answer 2

Silverlight isn't superspeedy at displaying large lists of rich data, but then well designed system would not attempt to display large lists of rich data only enough data that a user can make sense of at one time.

Hence silverlight makes an excellent platform for display and entry of data in an engaging manner but you need good design and backend code to really make that happen.

Answer 3

As a Silverlight developer and Internet user, I must say that I prefer HTML when dealing with information I have to scroll.

That's not to say it can't be done right in Silverlight, but I think Silverlight is not immediately equipped to handle "large amounts of data and user productivity"

Answer 4

Of course that depends on your audience. Even if you have a spectacular Silverlight package which perfectly displays the data (to you) you should avoid it if your audience will ever include (a) users without Silverlight or (b) tools that weren't designed to consume this such as, depending on your implementation, Google. Encapsulating data in Silverlight or Flash is a great way to make it less accessible.