I got a lot of feedback for my last post about Silverlight features that are currently missing. Because it is Christmas time we are allowed to wish everything we want, what we get is another thing. Here are some additional features currently missing and are maybe important for everyone.

1. Socket Support: I don't see this in real life because firewalls will block nearly everything by default. But Sockets are interesting if we want to built peer-to-peer applications (online games and maybe streaming from other web users).
2. What happen if you print an Silverlight application? There are some ideas to render forms to print. Well, I would'n use Silverlight for printing, maybe generating a XPS or PDF document is much easier.
3. More space in local isolated storage to store documents or any other data. This should be easily made configurable in the Silverlight configuration.
4. Web browser history support: well, we have the same problems with the web browser's history feature. When clicking prev/next buttons and go back to the Silverlight web application we will see the initial starting UI instead of the last screen. It would be very nice to have a built-in feature that will resume at the last position.
5. Many Silverlight demonstration web sites are still using images (PNG or JPG) for icons/symbols instead of a XAML representation. Well, we will ever have some images in our Silverlight applications. What I would see are some bitmap filters and effects like shadow, blurring or glows.
6. Better debugging support: I think sometimes it would be nice to have the XAML source available to see where we are.
7. One thing I would like: I don't want to see more different Media Players. I think you agree that there is only a very small range of web developers that have video or audio content to deliver. The media support is very good when i.e. looking at HD video streaming with Silverlight. I would like to see real-world applications instead (my greetings to Oliver Scheer). The first real application using WPF for a big user range is the Yahoo! Messenger for Vista.

One comment for the feature wish no. 3 (running standalone Silverlight applications) in my first post: maybe you can compare it with Adobe Flex. You can run the application in a browser or taking a flex application to the desktop. WPF is not working as it is only supported on Windows desktop PCs. I would like to see Silverlight applications on desktop PCs and, the more important, on Windows Mobile devices. I don't want to connect to the Internet always to run a Silverlight application. Does this make sense?

Conclusion: with the current public available CTP (alpha) of Silverlight 1.1 (now 2.0) we are at the very beginning of a new way to build web applications. Microsoft has done a great job this year (think about AJAX, MFC, VS.NET 2008, .NET 3.5 and all the non-web-related stuff like Windows 2008 Server, SQL Server 2008)!!

14 Comments

• rrobbins said Friday, December 21, 2007 2:30:22 PM

  I don't think you are going to get "bitmap filters and effects like shadow, blurring or glows" for vector graphics. You should examine the features of Adobe Illustrator to see the kinds of effects you can apply to vector graphics.

• interactive said Friday, December 21, 2007 2:39:59 PM

  @Robert: yes, I know that vector graphics are better (or the only correct way), but why are there features to include images like PNG or JPGs? Well, I think that a very small set of bitmap filters/effect are ok. Michael

• Tom said Friday, December 21, 2007 4:10:13 PM

  How could vector graphics be "the only correct way"? What are you supposed to do if you want to display a photograph? Vectorize it? Please. There are some things that are practical to represent as vector graphics, and others for which bitmap is the only way. Silverlight needs to have good support for both.

• interactive said Friday, December 21, 2007 4:27:48 PM

  @Tom: I mean only UI elements, not the "data" like images/photographs. And for those photographs I think it is interested to have some basic bitmap effects. Michael

• Stewart Armbrecht said Friday, December 21, 2007 4:46:42 PM

  We are currently developing an offline application that uses silverlight for the desktop. We are using Google Gears to handle the offline rendering and caching of the application.

• Bob said Friday, December 21, 2007 4:53:36 PM

  Two wish list items 1) Include most of the basic Winforms controls in Silverlight 2.0 2) Run silverlight binaries as a stand alone executable (i.e., to let us deploy the same binary to a web page, a user's desktop or a click once installation).

• Jeff Weber said Friday, December 21, 2007 5:28:21 PM

  I still really want the ability to have full keyboard support when in full screen mode. I'm planning to use Silverlight for games and it would be a shame not to have this.

• Scott Barnes said Saturday, December 22, 2007 12:19:42 PM

  No you can't have it.. *kidding*.. Nice list :) - Scott Barnes RIA Evangelist Microsoft

• Luc D. said Monday, December 24, 2007 6:56:14 PM

  My wish: Audio and video input support, so that the client side is not just consuming media content but also producing it

• RIA_Developer said Friday, December 28, 2007 7:11:53 AM

  Flash window feature to let a user know about arrival of new data, there are other ways like beeping with sound file, but they are annoying. Most of my users prefer flashwindow behavior of IM apps, which is not available neither in adobe flash or ajax. It is available in firefox xul as window.getAttention() that forces me to program in xul, however, I don't like the developer environment. I hope it becomes available in silverlight so I can completely switch to visual studio.

• Painter said Saturday, December 29, 2007 12:18:09 PM

  How could System.Drawing not be in your list ??? I want it! Please? Pretty please? :D

• Ryan said Saturday, December 29, 2007 11:43:41 PM

  Socket support is oh so important to be competitive. Sockets are the key to multiplayer gaming and multiuser real-time apps. This can be simulated with AJAX or possibly through a twisted bridge to other tech like flash but they need to add sockets quickly. I am glad you made it #1.

• interactive said Sunday, December 30, 2007 7:31:28 PM

  @Lic D.: you are thinking about the Flash support for web cams and microphone? @Painter: see point 5, I think we need some support for working with images. @Ryan: well, socket support sometimes could be a problem when firewalls are used, but I think it would be a very nice feature. Michael

• Ieuan said Friday, January 4, 2008 1:38:50 AM

  Three things: Webcam support - Flash has this feature, and I would really prefer to stick with .NET. Or at least the possibility for Silverlight to allow a third party to develop such functionality Sockets - e.g. for a chat application, so that the the client doesn't have to continuously poll the server, rather the server can push the messages to the client. And lots of other possibilities that require non HTTP based protocols e.g. a client server application utilising Silverlight for a cross platform GUI Standalone - Run silverlight applications standalone Thanks - really looking forward to Silverlight 2.0