Reality Check: How did you adopt Silverlight?

re: Reality Check: How did you adopt Silverlight?

Jon Watte — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:29:34 GMT

In that what made you adopt it in the first place?

One word: Netflix.

re: Reality Check: How did you adopt Silverlight?

eru — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:42:56 GMT

We didn't adopt it. We were building an Application with Silverlight 2 ... now upgraded to 3 and nothing works. Application shelved.

re: Reality Check: How did you adopt Silverlight?

Ken Smith — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:23:55 GMT

(1) We adopted Silverlight because our startup needed a RIA platform, and none of us knew Flash, but we all knew related MS technologies. So Silverlight was an obvious choice.

(2) We talked about the alternatives a great deal, then made the decision to do a POC with Silverlight 2. We eventually realized SL 2 wasn't ready for prime time, so we moved to the MIX SL3 preview, which was dramatically better, especially when it came to consuming web services.

(3a) Concerns:

- Still no webcam/microphone support.

- Not enough market penetration.

- Visual Studio support remains immature.

- Unit test framework is still immature. (Jeff Wilcox has done a great job: we just need to see ongoing improvement.)

- Asynchronous WCF programming model is a PITA. I understand why it needs to be asynchronous. But it's still a PITA.

- Troubleshooting databinding is an even biggger PITA. (See http://blog.wouldbetheologian.com/2009/07/why-wpf-databinding-is-awful-technology.html)

- Configuring WCF to support Silverlight (especially duplex) is an even bigger PITA.

- WSHttpDual duplex binding may not scale well. (Not sure about this yet, but we've heard stories, and have received almost no guidance from MS.)

- Troubleshooting XAML parse errors is an order of magnitude more difficult than it should be.

(3a) Wins:

- C# 3.0. 'Nuff said.

- Navigation framework with URL rewriting.

- Visual State Manager.

re: Reality Check: How did you adopt Silverlight?

silverexp — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:09:16 GMT

Hi. Interesting thread!

What made you adopt it in the first place?

I simply used it because I've been developing with .NET technologies for 9 years and moved to WPF when it came out so Silverlight was an obvious logical investment: little time needed to learn it, and great new opportunities.

What did you have to do in order to get it into your workplace / customer?

Several of my customers have been asking for it as early as Silverlight 2 moved to beta.

How is it going, positive/negative concerns?

It's globally a great tool, but due to the bugs and stripped-down framework of Silverlight, I found out that it takes me almost three times more time to develop the same application in Silverlight as compared with WPF. This number might go down with Silverlight 3.