Hot AJAX+Silverlight2 in Warm Mallorca

Published 06 March 08 09:38 AM | despos

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 is out and I just installed it on my machines. OK--we're now ready for the next stage. A key question to answer for virtually everybody planning RIA development is:

  • Should I go with a Plain New Web approach and opt for AJAX on top of ASP.NET (or whatever else)?
  • Should I go with a Silverlight 2 approach in just a few months when it'll be released?

Put down simply, it's a matter of deciding whether you may or may not afford a plug-in of approx 4 MB to be downloaded/installed on client machines. Not an issue for intranet applications and most Web sites. Possibly an issue if you want to maximize (and even more) the audience of your portal. I expect to start seeing on home pages a choice Web|Silverlight in much the same way we see today a choice among languages.

To explore the tools, to refresh the techniques, to learn patterns and models, to grab directions, may I suggest you some hot stuff happening in a warm place this Spring?

What Next Generation Web Applications
Where Mallorca, Spain
When April 9 thru 11
Details and Costs here NB: all-inclusive-but-flight!!!

If you have a strong interest in sun and beaches in the warm Mediterranian islands, now you can also have some AJAX and Silverlight training in the same package :)

People of Europe (and not just Europe), join us ...

 

Comments

# Dave said on March 6, 2008 10:55 AM:

I think the real question is, will administrators allow users to run Silverlight?

It stands to reason that it won't be long until a big gaping security hole is found. Will there be privacy concerns over its ability to pull content in from different domains?

I'm not willing to put my eggs in one basket quite yet.

# despos said on March 8, 2008 03:32 AM:

I don't know how much will it take to find holes. If ever. I'm here trying new things that help me out with customers. As for cross-domains, have you ever used frames?

# Matt said on March 12, 2008 01:14 PM:

I think the answer lies somewhere in the middle for most developers. The new features of Silverlight are very attractive in many ways, but this does not mean that we know enough yet to deploy mission critical applications running on it. The plain new web approach gives a more reliable platform to work with for the near future. Many developers will be deploying plain new web apps with Silverlight features hosted in them. This will be as close to the best of both worlds you will get IMHO.

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