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Home Forums General Silverlight Getting Started Silverlight vs Flex/Flash/AIR
9 replies. Latest Post by rasmasyean on June 21, 2009.
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iceangel89
Member
2 points
3 Posts
06-14-2009 11:45 PM |
i am actually looking at these few technologies to see which best fits my need. basically i am a PHP developer (recently used Zend Framework - MVC). i did some ASP.NET b4 and also looking at ASP.NET MVC vs Zend Framework. but now Silverlight vs Flex/Flash/AIR 1st.
i guess having more Silverlight developers here, maybe some used Flash/Flex/AIR b4. what do u think are some advantages and disadvantages of both?
Silverlight seems to have an advantage in Programming because of C# & .NET framework, LINQ, Entity Framework and all. Flex using actionscript dont seem that powerful. furthermore Adobe (ok i refer to Flex/Flash/AIR by Adobe now...) does not have a integrated backend/server side. Zend Framework provides Zend_AMF for that tho i havent tried it.
however, animation and looks wise, Flex/Flash/AIR seems to look nicer with just simple fades and now 3D effects. but i dunno how Silverlight is easily customisable thru Blend yet ...
AIR provides a way to deply apps both in Web & Desktop, tho i also havent tried it. does silverlight has something similar? or must i develop a windows app for that?
since Silverlight is so good, in UI, data binding and all, can it replace ASP.NET MVC? or integrate with it? how? i mean like instead of having a XHTML/CSS layout, i build a Silverlight UI. i am not consering the fact that many ppl may not have silverlight yet.
SharpGIS
Contributor
3387 points
611 Posts
06-15-2009 1:56 AM |
If you are primarily a .NET developer, Silverlight is probably your best bet. Then again if you are comfortable in Java/JavaScript, then ActionScript might come more natural for you. Flex does have larger market penetration, printing support (major limitation in Silverlight), webcam, Adobe AIR, 3D. On the other hand Silverlight has multi threading support, a huge .NET developer community, some simple 3D planar projectino (v3). My experience is also that it seems like corporations prefer Microsoft backed technologies and the Silverlight penetration isn't a big issue for them to push out on their desktops. Silverlight has "out of browser" installs as an alternative to Adobe AIR. Or you can in most cases just compile your code for WPF, and voila you got a true Windows app.
IceAngel89
06-15-2009 10:51 PM |
why did Microsoft actually create so many things that uses XAML/WPF.
like WPF Windows Apps, Silverlight Web Apps & XBAP web apps i guess?
can't they make say WPF windows apps that can do animations possible in silverlight and so on?
and my packaging Silverlight with .NET Framework will mean higher penitration rates right?
06-16-2009 1:04 AM |
> why did Microsoft actually create so many things that uses XAML/WPF.
So we can reuse our skills and knowledge across multiple platforms. Saves us from having to learn yet another thing. It´s just the same.
> can't they make say WPF windows apps that can do animations possible in silverlight and so on?
Animations is possible in Silverlight, and it's done the same way.
> packaging Silverlight with .NET Framework will mean higher penitration rates right?
No! Shipping the entire .NET Framework would be a 50+ mb install. Silverlight is 4.5mb. Then there are other issues/features like security, sandbox, browser integration etc. And if they were to ship it with something that today is a core component of Windows, Microsoft would just get another anti-trust case on their neck.
06-16-2009 7:48 AM |
> So we can reuse our skills and knowledge across multiple platforms. Saves us from having to learn yet another thing. It´s just the same.
> Animations is possible in Silverlight, and it's done the same way.
i mean like since u say its done the same way, can i like port a Silverlight app to Windows and vice versa? i think there will be somethings that cannot be done from Silverlight because of security right? like Flash cannot write files i think to HDD... hmm but i think the later flash can ... not sure
Krasshirsch
Participant
1042 points
300 Posts
06-16-2009 8:56 AM |
iceangel89: i mean like since u say its done the same way, can i like port a Silverlight app to Windows and vice versa? i think there will be somethings that cannot be done from Silverlight because of security right? like Flash cannot write files i think to HDD... hmm but i think the later flash can ... not sure
What my posting predecessor meant was the simplicity of swapping between different technologies like Web, RIA, Client Apps without the need to learn new languages.Of course there are differences in capabilities and limitations between WPF and SL.In principle with SL3 there will be no need to port anything to WPF, since you can just use the SL3 app offline, without additional settings or implementations.Porting from WPF to Silverlight is a little harder, since you have to ommit all aspects of your program that are not supported in browser applications,like for instance hard drive access or pointer operations.Fortunately, since WPF and Silveright use a similar architecture, you won't need to rewrite everything from scratch, you'll be able to copy and paste a lot.
06-16-2009 12:37 PM |
Yes you can "port" your code between the two platforms. Port is actually an overstatement. I'm working on a fairly large API where the same .cs codefiles are used for both our WPF and Silverlight builds. We have a few lines of code differences, but overall I would say the code is 99.99% the same.
You might want to download and read the whitepaper from here: http://wpfslguidance.codeplex.com/
The last pages specifically discuss how to do code reuse in Silverlight and WPF, and is similar to how I do it.
rasmasyean
82 points
165 Posts
06-21-2009 1:05 AM |
Windows is a platform and the browser is a different platform. You can’t do a lot of things in a browser, but you can do anything imaginable in a computer.On other reason that they made these is so that “designers” and “developers” can theoretically collaborate in one environment over the network using the same base. It’s a lot better than passing work back and forth with varied technologies. In an ideal case, you can have a design team with no technical knowledge work on the UI and implied functionality and a programming team who has no concept of “usability” work on the processing.
06-21-2009 3:36 AM |
Everytime that designer/programmer argument is brought up, I have to laugh. It is SO rare that this is actually the case. Most often the programmer and designer is the same person, and in almost all the remaining cases, all the designer does is throw a mockup together in photoshop or even just a simple hand drawing, and it's still up to the developer to make that look and behave in XAML.
I work for a very large software company and we have a whole department that does our graphics, and I have yet to see the designers touch anything XAML.
I´m not saying that it isnt´t a great concept. Just stating that the real world is not how Microsoft says it is. Even at Microsoft that doesn´t seem to be the case.
06-21-2009 4:01 AM |
Yeah, I’ll agree with that but that’s why I said “theoretically”. I think however, it takes some time to change and as UI’s get really fancy and stuff like multi-touch comes about, we may see more of these types of work-flows. Also, as more younger people graduate and enter the workforce, you will have designers that are more computer/tech savvy and that will help as some of the older folks either move into management / retire / get laid-off. :)
Silverlight vs Flex/Flash/AIR