It’s been 2 days that i’m testing the microsoft silverlight and i wanted to share my opinion about it. It simply the end of the HTML. This is what dev, designers and project managers waited for; a finally clear cut of the tasks that lead to improve the coordination in the creation flow. But first let’s do a small presentation.
- Presentation.
There’s two version of silverlight actually, 1.x and the beta 2.- version 1.x : it’s a XAML based application from the huge SGML familly. The interaction are coded in javascript and it’s interpreted on the client side. An interpreted flex-like.
- version 2 : Still based on the XAML representation but integrate the .net framework. That mean you can code it in the language you like (c#,VB,php,…), it’s compiled and get the best of the infamous frameworks.
- Why silverlight 1.1 was a deception.
It’s maybe because i thought to hight about it. When i knew that it what an interpreted SGML (XML) my first thought was to generate it dynamically with server side language (php, perl) and it works (see this article). Q funny tricks lead to another one, i tried to DOM scripting a little bit. It was a failure. Then i was in front of a flash/flex like. But flash player is installed on around 90% of the computer that goes on internet; abode won. - Why silverlight 2 make me dream.
By integrating the .net framework, it directly a step beyond pragmatically wise and production wise. For those who are already familiar with the .net environment, they can start right away in the project production as they’re used to. At this moment, my craziest dream was in from of my eyes : the end of this good but too old html. I already briefly saw this dream in flex but flex is just a 0Kal flash 9 version instead of silverlight 2 that can be used as a graphic protocol. - Conclusion
i’m very interesting in this technology, because i’m pretty sure if the development continue in the way, it’s the end of the html. All the most important interface design software as firework can export in XAML, That mean once the designers finished the mock up, the whole design is finish in the same time. On top of that in the visual studio 2008 when you create silverlight project, the software generate a class skeleton like the Poseidon module for java/eclipse. No more designer that touch the js or server-side code or dev that play around with the css or the div