Entire website in Silverlight 4. Practical or not?

Question

Similar question: Using Silverlight for an entire website?

That question is over 2 years old. Silverlight has gone a long way from Silverlight 1.0 Beta 1 to Silverlight 4.0 Final. Would it be practical to create a full Silverlight web application these days? I plan to deploy the website sometime around Q1 2011.

I have thought about going ASP.NET + AJAX way, but it just won't give me the same rich features as Silverlight.

A lot of people when they hear ASP.NET or Silverlight instantly think about business or enterprise applications. But all I want to create is a fansite, with rich user interface and a great "WOW" factor.

Answer 1

Absolutely you can. And if your target users all have SL4 it might look very stylish. however many people who don't have SL will be put off, and many many picky technical people will be dismayed or refuse to go there.

If you had a site for skateboarders or graphic designers, then it would be something you could probably get away with... you do see sites like this for media-focused companies e.g sites for films or video games.

edit: reading the linked thread, I'd say most of the top-ranked answers still apply - they just apply a bit less these days. Corporate sites may block SL, grannies may not understand it, some people have slow web. But if you are aiming at young hip people it's feasible and the stylistic bonus could outweigh the problems for a minority of users. Weigh your target demographic carefully...

Answer 2

As with anything it depends on your goal.

In your case since it is going to be a fansite there is nothing wrong with writing using Silverlight controls.

Answer 3

We've just deployed some Silverlight version sniffing code into a public-facing website. Now, admittedly, the majority of our users are within large companies, but I was still surprised that 71% of them have no Silverlight plugin installed at all. The majority of them, being in a large company environment, also don't have admin rights on their PCs to install the plugin. You say yours is a fan site, so this may not be a concern for you - but there are a lot of users out there who don't have, and can't install, the plugin.

If this doesn't concern you, which may quite legitimately be the case, then no reason not to.

Answer 4

In your case it may be worth doing, since we're not talking about a LOB application. The thing with Silverlight is that it makes some of the graphical work so easy, but the mundane data entry work is way more effort than going with a simple ASP.Net web app.

Answer 5

As you've described it as a fan site (my emphasis) I'd be reluctant to do the whole thing in Silverlight. By all means have some Silverlight controls, but with a site users will be expecting links, the back button, right click to save images (yes it happens!) etc. which are a whole lot harder to do in Silverlight.

If it was a web application then I'd be more enthusiastic about doing the whole thing in Silverlight as you've got a different paradigm and users wouldn't necessarily expect the same web experience.