When to Use Which Microsoft Presentation Technology
Yesterday I was visiting an IT department of a media company that was developing internal applications for their internal network users. They asked a great question about when to use which presentation technologies, now that Microsoft has WPF, WPF XBAP, Silverlight, and ASP.Net+AJAX. Here is my comparison matrix:
| WPF | WPF XBAP | Silverlight | ASP.Net + AJAX |
| Client | Windows XP SP2 (With .Net 3.0) & Vista | Internet Explorer + Windows XP SP2 (with .Net 3.0) & Vista | FireFox, Mac Safari, Internet Explorer | Any Web Browser |
| Deployment | Downloadable Installer or ClickOnce | Runs in Internet Explorer secure sandbox | One-time install of Silverlight plug-in | Web Page |
| When to use | Programs that need access to Windows desktop files. | Intranet applications for Windows-oriented companies. | Rich Internet Applications for public-facing web sites | General-purpose public-facing web sites |
Are there any other factors that should be in this matrix?
P.S. Because the media company was developing these applications for internal customers who ran Windows XP, I recommended that they use the WPF XBAP presentation architecture because it provided the rich interaction experience possible with WPF and it was easily deployable and accessible through the Browser.
Notes:
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Windows Vista comes with .Net 3.0. For Windows XP SP2, it is a 50MB one-time download (90MB for 64-bit Windows)
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WPF is the successor to Visual Basic 6, MFC, and Windows Form. If you need to target your application for Windows 2000 as well as XP and Vista, then I suggest using Windows Forms 2.0.
