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What to learn FIRST, Ajax or Silverlight or Flash or WPF? RSS

7 replies

Last post Jun 04, 2009 05:13 PM by ksleung

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  • MarlServin

    MarlServin

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    What to learn FIRST, Ajax or Silverlight or Flash or WPF?

    Jun 02, 2009 04:15 PM | LINK

    Should I learn Ajax first, or Silverlight?  The problem with the SL is that I cannot get it to install (I am following the *protocol below).  But more fundamentally, I see that SL does not play at all with Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, though it should (I hope, if I get it installed) work with Visual C# 2008 Express.

     Should I learn Ajax first?  Apparently SF -> WPF and of course there's always Flash, which they just released a new framework for.

     MS

     

    * http://silverlight.net/forums/t/98125.aspx

    Take a look at the "Get Started" section of silverlight.net:

    Install Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
    Install Microsoft Expression Blend 2 and then install Microsoft Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1
    Install Deep Zoom Composer
    Download Silverlight Toolkit
    The updated Silverlight tools require Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and contain Silverlight 2 SDK / .NET

    framework 3.5 SP1 as well.

    To avoid problems you should install the tools as described.

    Thanks, Davide


     

    Silverlight vs Flash vs Ajax

    MS
  • Ken Tucker

    Ken Tucker

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    Re: What to learn FIRST, Ajax or Silverlight or Flash or WPF?

    Jun 02, 2009 05:00 PM | LINK

    You should learn what you are most interested in first.  That should be the easiest for you to learn. 

     

    Note ajax, silverlight, and flash are web technologies while wpf is a windows app

  • MarlServin

    MarlServin

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    Re: What to learn FIRST, Ajax or Silverlight or Flash or WPF?

    Jun 02, 2009 06:30 PM | LINK

    That's nice.  But which of the three is most commercially practical?  That is the real question.

     

    Tx!

    MS
  • davleus

    davleus

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    Re: What to learn FIRST, Ajax or Silverlight or Flash or WPF?

    Jun 02, 2009 07:53 PM | LINK

    Get your setup to work and learn Silverlight first. That's why you're here on Silverlight.net right? :)

  • MarlServin

    MarlServin

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    Re: What to learn FIRST, Ajax or Silverlight or Flash or WPF?

    Jun 03, 2009 07:24 PM | LINK

    davleus

    Get your setup to work and learn Silverlight first. That's why you're here on Silverlight.net right? :)

    Thanks.  That's right, I did get it to work, but only version 2.0 is showing up (I'm afraid to play around too much) not version 3.0 of SL, but it's working, much to my surprise, not only in Visual Studio 2008 express for C#, but also in Visual Web Developer 2008 Express, which I did not think supported SL (from an old FAQ I was looking at).

    MS
  • ksleung

    ksleung

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    Re: What to learn FIRST, Ajax or Silverlight or Flash or WPF?

    Jun 03, 2009 09:10 PM | LINK

    Perhaps you didn't install Silverlight3_Tools.exe?

    I am using both VS2008 Professional and VS2008 Visual Web Developer (and for a while, VS2010 as well).  Both support SL3, and they can open the same SL projects.

    Visit http://www.tagxedo.com, a Silverlight-based word cloud generator. If you like it, please help me spread the word!
  • MarlServin

    MarlServin

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    Re: What to learn FIRST, Ajax or Silverlight or Flash or WPF?

    Jun 04, 2009 02:21 PM | LINK

    ksleung

    Perhaps you didn't install Silverlight3_Tools.exe?

    I am using both VS2008 Professional and VS2008 Visual Web Developer (and for a while, VS2010 as well).  Both support SL3, and they can open the same SL projects.

     I did install Silverlight3 tools.  And under "Tools", "Choose Toolbox Items" in Visual Web Developer 2008 Express they are showing up if I go under the Silverlight Components Tab, the "Browse" and go to the ver3.0 rather than v2.0 directory.  But I'm afraid to add them since they might conflict with v 2.0, which is working.  Visual Studio suite is not robust IMO--and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  I hear VS2010 will incorporate the latest version of Silverlight, so when that comes out I'll get that, built in.

     Unless you feel there's something in version 3.0 of Silverlight that I really can't do without--but I'm a newbie, so I doubt it.  But if so pls let me know.

     

    MS
  • ksleung

    ksleung

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    Re: What to learn FIRST, Ajax or Silverlight or Flash or WPF?

    Jun 04, 2009 05:13 PM | LINK

    Since Silverlight 3 is very likely to come out in a month, I think it doesn't hurt to go to SL3 now.  There are many reasons to go to Silverlight 3, but the following are selected few features that are available in SL3 only: (1) SaveFileDialog -- you cannot do this easily in SL2, (2) pixel shader -- but depending on what your app is about, (3) local messages -- communicate between different SL apps on the same machine, (4) Out-of-browser.

    Only one caveat about SL3 is that if you want Linux support, it won't be available.  The Mono project is about to catch up to SL2.

    Visit http://www.tagxedo.com, a Silverlight-based word cloud generator. If you like it, please help me spread the word!