The Silverlight Sweet Spot - Is It Sweet Enough?
Microsoft has just announced the details of its plans for building the .NET runtime and .NET class libraries into its new Silverlight, cross-platform, cross-browser Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform. It’s an important announcement. The devil is in the detail with all this stuff, and from what Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie has said, I think they’ve broadly made good decisions in the design. Now, of course, they have to make it work well (it’s just an alpha release at the moment); but at least the design choices are pretty intelligent.
Most importantly, however, this announcement makes it clear what the Silverlight sweet spot really is. So, if you’ve been wondering - “Should I be thinking about using Silverlight?” - then read on…
There are four broad technologies in the RIA space: Flash, Ajax, Java and now Silverlight. In terms of software you develop, everything you can build using Silverlight, you can pretty much build by using one or more of the other RIA technologies. Some types of application will probably end up working better in Silverlight than on other platforms. However, the sweet spot for Silverlight isn’t about the software you can build with it, it’s about the kind of developer you are:
1. If you use Visual Studio and program in a .NET language like C#, you might be interested in Silverlight
2. If #1 above applies, and you use Windows on the server side, you might be even more interested in Silverlight
In other words, if you already develop for Windows on the client-side, and/or you already develop for Windows on the server-side, then there’s a lot to like about Silverlight.
On the other hand, if you use Linux or Solaris on the server side, and you develop using Linux or Solaris or Mac OS X as your main development environment(s), there’s not really much for you in Silverlight.
So, is the sweet spot for Silverlight - the 100% Microsoft development shop - big enough for making a splash in the RIA space? I’m really not sure…
Neil Bartlett wrote:
This was my feeling as well. I’m a Mac user, so it’s handy that Silverlight supports the Mac… but all I can do is _run_ Silverlight. To do any development, I need Visual Studio which obviously only runs on Windows. Therefore Silverlight isn’t interesting to me.
Now, if there was an Eclipse-based IDE for it, that would be another story.
Posted 01 May 2007 at 8:55 am ¶