WPF VS Silverlight

Question

I had a few questions on WPF & silverlight?

• When to use WPF? Some examples on real time projects where WPF is used
• When to use silverlight? some examples of real time projects where silverlight is used
• What is the difference between them?
• Can WPF and Silverlight be used together?
• How do WPF and silverlight differ from traditional asp.net applications (form based & MVC)???
  • Does Silverlight use WCF to do it's code behind stuff..like it provides an interface and uses web service to get the code behind?

Answer 1

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/944608/wpf-vs-silverlight will tell you what you want to hear...

WPF is a thick Windows client platform that has access to the full .Net Framework. Silverlight is a browser-based technology that has access to a subset of the .Net Framework

In short I would generally use WPF for form/window applications and use Silverlight for online things. Though these both can be used for either, that is how/when I would use it.

WPF and Silverlight both use XAML, so if you can code in one, you can pick up the other just as easy.

Answer 2

WPF and Silverlight are conceptualy completly different things. They use same technology, but their purpouse is completly different.

WPF is thick client framework, that is supposed to replace WinForms in (I hope) nearest future. It has acces to full .NET framework.

Silverlight is Flash-like technology for rich internet applications and thin clients. It is complementary to standard ASP.NET technology. If you want to increase amount of eye-candy or give user much richer interaction options for your web, this is way to go.

They both use same visual-description technology (XAML) and same principles (DataBinding, Templating, Separation of visuals and code, etc..). But their intended usage is different.

Answer 3

WPF is a client based platform while Silverlight is web based. WPF has the full .NET framework available while Silverlight has a streamlined "smaller" version of the framework.

The nice part is both use the same markup (XAML). Both also can work with the MVVM pattern for easy conversion from client to web app and vice versa.

I would read up a little on the web as these arethe basics of these 2 technologies.