Silverlight has been available since quite some time, and Silverlight 2 allows .Net programming on the front-end. I've been thinking about the apps that I can make using Silverlight, but I can't decide if I should go for development in Silverlight because i am still concerned about accessibility and acceptance.
What potential do you see in Silverlight judging from the current trends, and what do you think Silverlight will be used for in the coming years?
The potential in Silverlight is as I see it, to become very similar to Flash and its abilities in terms of delivering a better multimedia experience on the Microsoft stack. Someone will find a way to make an amazing Silverlight application that will be seen over and over again on sites like YouTube that will help it gain a better foothold.
There will be some more evolution with Silverlight and Microsoft will have more software to better harness what Silverlight will be able to do.
I'm a bit skeptical about it. Microsoft doesn't have a great reputation on alternative platforms, since their products on OS X (like Windows Messenger or Windows Media) have mostly been sub-par compared to the alternatives, and on Linux, well, Microsoft has always been the enemy. As more and more people move away from Windows, the chances of Silverlight becoming a defacto Flash replacement are going to keep decreasing.
It also seems to be a trend that more and more sites are eliminating the "unnecessary" use of Flash, in order to support new mobile devices like the iPhone. Instead, AJAX and more JavaScript programming are being used to provide a dynamic user experience, even in extremely interactive websites.
I wouldn't totally discount Silverlight, I see the potential for a "killer app" in websites like Netflix's streaming movies, although nothing that's really caught on yet. I would take a wait and see approach, although if you have a small project where you feel Silverlight would really help I wouldn't worry too much about it.
Silverlight is an alternative for people who hate flashscript, which is good - but the future is pure Javascript
I can totally see people who don't like JavaScript start using Silverlight just so that they can use managed code for DOM manipulation. Yeah, I know using Silverlight for only that is overkill, but I used to feel that way when I was totally into C#. But I don't feel that way anymore now that I've started playing with jQuery...
The biggest problem Silverlight has now is the plugin. It "barely" works on Mac and not at all on Linux.
Also the development tools (Blend and VS) are Windows only. Compare that too Flex (Flash), which runs on Windows, Mac and a Linux beta Eclipse plug-in. Or compare Silverlight to Curl, which runs nicely on all 3 platforms and has development tools on Windows and Linux.
Not to mention, MS is infamous for starting projects and hanging them out to die. So why would I invest any time in Silverlight? I'm a MSDN member. I have VS2008 and I have Blend (running on my desktop). So I'm far from a MS hater. But again, why should I invest the time?
To answer your question: If MS proves that it is really committed to SL and stabilizes the plug-in on all 3 platforms, then I see it as a competitor to Curl and Flash (maybe JavaFX, if Sun can get of it's butt). But until MS releases it's dev tools to other platforms it will remain just another .Net "thing".
It's very hard to rationalize investment in a platform with dynamic media generally. I mean, I'm OK with using Flash for video, but if I was to write a commercial web application, I'd still go with HTML, JavaScript, AJAX and the like - not with Flash/Silverlight/whatever.
In my career as a developer, I have never used sites that leveraged Flash in a way that made good sense. I have, on the other hand, seen good AJAX use (e.g., Google Mail). Animation is kind of relevant in some cases (e.g., Games), but building sensible UIs using Flash or Silverlight... well, it is possible, we know it is, but who needs them when you can have HTML do the same, in a more predictable fashion?
Silverlight isn't a flash killer, it's a tool that allows the vast number of existing Microsoft developers transition to web application development thereby keeping Microsoft in the development game of the future.
I don't see Silverlight becoming a Flash killer anytime soon. That said, Silverlight does provide a fantastic deployment model for WPF applications. I expect to see more line-of-business apps written for Silverlight than the amount of Silverlight content in publicly facing websites.
I would say that the potential of Silverlight is seen in the great interest among .Net developers to experiment and build on the platform. Microsoft has done the work to make the Silverlight 2 control framework accessible so if you build on the platform you have the potential to build a very accessible application. Since the release of Silverlight 2, I have seen great interest and activitiy in building Line-of-Business (LOB) applications with Silverlight.
The trend that I am seeing is that User Interaction Matters and companies are willing and interested in creating great user experience for both internally-facing and externally-facing applications. The iPhone and interest in Microsoft Surface have proven that out. I am now seeing user interaction designers working on Silverlight LOB applications. A year ago companies were having developers, not designers, craft interfaces for LOB applications.
Now, my opinion is biased because I love the technology and work for Microsoft, but try it and see for yourself. I have found that Silverlight has a very clean programming model that allows a great design/code separation.
Michael
I've been researching casual game development, and I see a good deal of potential for Silverlight in that space. Flash game development is obviously much more widespread, but as you can see in this question, the workflow for Flash game development involves multiple tools that don't necessarily play well together despite their both being made by Adobe. I've done some prototyping work in Silverlight, and I think the integration between Blend and VS2008 makes Silverlight a strong contender.
It will allow developers to waste an (even more) enormous amount of time editing XML files :)
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There have been some great comments on Silverlight's current competitiveness; however, any discussion should take into account that Silverlight is rapidly evolving and Microsoft will be announcing v3 at this year's MIX conference (3/16/09).
The single most exciting new feature IMHO is GPU support for 3D. Though this is only one of the new enhancements, it may shift the balance for game developers. I highly recommend this article: Scott Guthrie's glimpse of Silverlight 3
Flash may be mainstream (widely deployed), but for a developer, Silverlight beats Flash every day and twice on Sunday.
It was built from the ground up for developers, and can use a subset of the .NET Framework, and Visual Studio.
ActionScript for Flash is ok, but it is obvious that it was developed after flash, and can't hold a stick to the .NET Framework.
So the choice is between deployed units (Flash) and better (Silverlight). Footprint size of Silverlight is a minor, but valid, concern (Silverlight has a larger footprint than Flash).
Silverlight is to Flash as C# is to Java. It's the technology done right, it's going to secure a niche among the MS shops of the world, but it's too late to the game to topple the champ.
i surf all over the web and i ~never~ see anything done using or requiring Silverlight .. i see Flash stuff everywhere. A recent graphic i saw says flash is on 90% of all browsers on all platforms. Silverlight is round about 25%.. Here is a really good table comparing the capabilities of each
I've done real projects with both Flash and Silverlight. And I like both. I even did a big (300+ hours) project for CiCi's Pizza involving lots and lots of Flash. That was a fun project, actually.
I'd say that Flash has a better IDE for doing animations easily. That has always been its strong point, and it's still very good. But Silverlight has a far better language in the back-end -- .NET. From this perspective Silverlight should appeal more to the programmer types that already have a lot of experience with .NET. But Flash is still better suited to the artistic types who need to make interactive menus, animations, etc.
More to that effect, there are some powerful features Silverlight offers that Flash doesn't, and vice versa. But one thing Silverlight supports is multi-threading. You can even use the excellent BackgroundWorker class in a Silverlight app to do some very cool desktop-application-like stuff. This has always been something that Flash has been lacking.
An example of multi-threading in a Silverlight app can be seen in the Regex Hero benchmarking feature that I made. Just hit the start button under "benchmarking" and that will start a BackgroundWorker thread to benchmark the regular expression even while the rest of the UI is still responsive.
There are little features like this that we often take for granted that Flash simply can't do. And that's where Silverlight and it's .NET brilliance has its place. That's why I think it'll continue to gain popularity.
My greatest frustration with Silverlight has been that Microsoft seemed more concerned with putting on a sideshow than doing basic engineering. For example, for binding to a second datasource in support of foreign key lookups, the silverlight combobox was just plain broken. Through three major releases they did nothing about this while churning out ever more spectacular - yet fundamentally useless - multimedia goodies.
But now, the time is near... the tooling for Silverlight line-of-business UI design has appeared in the VS2010 beta. Lo and behold, at exactly the same time appears the beta of Silverlight4 - and a whole raft of basic engineering problems are either fixed or being redesigned.
In retrospect I shouldn't have been surprised. Microsoft knew it would take time to build a whole platform, and they knew that during gestation it was more important for releases to support glitzy demos than LOB apps, since the watching hordes of management dolts will point and go ooooh aaaaah and tell their friends if you show them a rotating cube with movies on its sides but will fall asleep if you show them bound comboboxes.
In the beta it's not quite ready for prime-time. But it's streets ahead of what went before. The key word here is beta. They're in full flight getting this ready for what is really the first serious use as a tool, and it's looking better by the day. This is so encouraging that for the first time in ten years I am actively participating in a beta program, rather than using it as a source of free software, because I see the bug reports making a difference.
But what is Silverlight and who cares anyway? Browser markup (HTML) plus script (javascript) plus web services is a great prototype of how to build UI agents for server based applications and a shitty way to build them for real. Silverlight is what HTML+JS only hints at. All the lessons have been retained: markup, stylesheeting, scriptability.
The major gaps have been plugged:
Personally I doubt that any arts major will ever master stylesheet design, but that's another matter.
The future is not pure Javascript. For LOB develeopment, which is where the money is and always has been, script is a disaster. It's a pig to develop, a pig to debug, a security disaster waiting to happen, a performance nightmare.
Arguments that Flash is everywhere and Silverlight isn't are irrelevant. That's like saying that COBOL is everywhere. It was, and in fact it still is, but that had absolutely no significance for the next generation of development. Besides, All Microsoft has to do to make Silverlight ubiquitous is push it out with Windows Update. I'll give you very good odds that it will be in a Windows 7 service pack not long after VS2010 goes RTM.
Unlike Flash, Silverlight is built on XAML for which there is direct support in Windows. From Vista onward, XAML benefits from hardware acceleration. Moreover, the intended use of Silverlight is LOB development. The game is changing because for the first time ever, LOB on the net is starting to look like a good idea from a technical perspective.
Silverlight is the next big thing. It's a very good idea backed by big money and experience, and now is the time to get actively involved in the beta program. If you do, there will be a lot less to bitch about in the release version.
Regarding other platforms, I don't think Microsoft much cares, and neither do I. Mac users do not represent a significant market force and never will. Unix users are more numerous but are religious in their anti-Microsoft practices and wouldn't use it, and Microsoft would rather sell you a copy of Server 2010 anyhow.
Silverlight4 being finally a viable runtime for applications development, I would seriously expect to start seeing it on compact devices like Smartphones.
This was the question:
What potential do you see in Silverlight judging from the current trends, and what do you think Silverlight will be used for in the coming years?
and I answered it, explaining at every turn why I think so. Naturally I get downvoted without a word of explanation, while responses that do not even answer the question get upvoted. I can only surmise that I have painted a picture of Silverlight web domination that offended some Flash or Apple fanboy who really should stick to writing rubbish games and playing with his iPhone.
Right now, Flash is where the action is and Silverlight is only for Microsoft developers who do what they're told. The real problem is that Microsoft is seriously losing (lost?) the browser war where Silverlight resides. With ChromeOS coming out next year, there will be a stronger pull toward the mobile web and non-Microsoft products, and with all the new HTML5 and CSS3 features, also a Microsoft weak spot, makes one consider whether it's worthwhile at all.
Silverlight is a weak entry in an exclusive market for where Microsoft is not considered a deal breaker or deal maker.
Silverlight is great. It has most of the good things carried over from Flash but uses standard .Net programming languages. The biggest benefit is a unified development model for desktop, server and web development. As far as new uses for Silverlight, check out our RedCritter Cloud Platform for Microsoft Outlook. It makes it easy to develop Silverlight Apps that run within Microsoft Outlook.