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07 August 2009

Reality Check: How did you adopt Silverlight?

As most would imagine, here at Microsoft we are constantly researching various ways folks adopt Silverlight and have quite a large amount of notes on the subject. I however love the old, “Why not just ask them?” approach, so I’d be curious to see how you all adopted Silverlight?

In that what made you adopt it in the first place? (what was the initial spark)

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

How is it going, positive/negative concerns?

Leave your answers below in the comments section or email me direct scbarnes _ microsoft.com if you want to keep that discussion confidential (will remove your nam

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# silverexp said:

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.

08 August 09 at 6:09 AM
# Ken Smith said:

(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.

12 August 09 at 4:23 AM
# eru said:

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

12 August 09 at 11:42 AM
# Jon Watte said:

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

One word: Netflix.

26 August 09 at 11:29 PM

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About scbarnes

Scott Barnes currently is a Rich Platform Product Manager (WPF & Silverlight). He has been working with Adobe/Macromedia technology for the past 10 years with a main focus specifically on Internet Applications (aka. RIA, Rich Client Technology etc).

Scott first started out as a graphic designer in the late 90’s and over the years developed a passion for programmatic art (Designer + Developer mind). He recently has branched out further into 3D modelling and animation making full use of both his designer + developer mindset.

"..The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man..." - George Bernard Shaw
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