Programming with .NET - General

Unusable without basic UI controls

Without basic UI controls such as text box, drop down list, radio button list, data table, etc., Silverlight is completely unusable for what I want to use it for. I want to use it for data driven applications that make use of web services. I have no use for audio or video or the other more wiz bang features. This is not a Flash killer. Not yet anyway. It's looking like it'll be several years before the technology will be mature enough to use if it doesn't even have the most fundamental UI elements in it. Also, it crashed on me in Firefox on Mac OS X within a minute of use. It's going to need to match Flash in terms of stability. Stable only in IE on Windows isn't going to cut it.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

1.1a already includes a couple of controls, but for 1.0 I've now started the process of making some of my own.

I expect a lot of people will be making easy to implement UI controls, so it'll just be a matter of time before you can download and use the ones that you like.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

jemiller

Without basic UI controls such as text box, drop down list, radio button list, data table, etc., Silverlight is completely unusable for what I want to use it for. I want to use it for data driven applications that make use of web services. I have no use for audio or video or the other more wiz bang features. This is not a Flash killer. Not yet anyway. It's looking like it'll be several years before the technology will be mature enough to use if it doesn't even have the most fundamental UI elements in it. Also, it crashed on me in Firefox on Mac OS X within a minute of use. It's going to need to match Flash in terms of stability. Stable only in IE on Windows isn't going to cut it.

1.0 is a Beta, 1.1 is an Alpha. Isn't it a bit premature to be complaining about stability?

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

I'm assuming they'll iron out the stability issues. However, the lack of basic controls means I won't be using this anytime soon. My guess is that it'll be several years before it's in a usable state. Look how long it's taken Microsoft to get an ORM out the door. They still haven't implemented the provider model that allows LINQ to SQL to use databases other than SQL Server. It also lacks basic mappings such as many-to-many that pretty every other ORM supports. Silverlight appears to have the same issues. In the long run, it can fundamentally change the way we develop applications for the better. The problem is that it isn't fully baked yet and I don't believe it will be for several years. The notion of having to use third-party controls for something as simple as a text box is pretty ridiculus IMHO. This isn't going to "kill" Flash anytime soon.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

Basic controls are available as a sample with the 1.1 Alpha, and they will be part of the final release of 1.1. The only reason they aren't included now is they are trying to decide which basic controls to create - its a balancing act of keeping the Silverlight download as small as possible while still providing developers with the controls they need.

During MIX '07 they specifically asked developers to tell them which controls they thought were necessary for Silverlight to be viable.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

jemiller

I'm assuming they'll iron out the stability issues. However, the lack of basic controls means I won't be using this anytime soon. My guess is that it'll be several years before it's in a usable state. Look how long it's taken Microsoft to get an ORM out the door. They still haven't implemented the provider model that allows LINQ to SQL to use databases other than SQL Server. It also lacks basic mappings such as many-to-many that pretty every other ORM supports. Silverlight appears to have the same issues. In the long run, it can fundamentally change the way we develop applications for the better. The problem is that it isn't fully baked yet and I don't believe it will be for several years. The notion of having to use third-party controls for something as simple as a text box is pretty ridiculus IMHO. This isn't going to "kill" Flash anytime soon.

Also, you can use an HTML text box and manipulate it from the code-behind if you don't feel like using the sample text box or rolling your own.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

jemiller

I'm assuming they'll iron out the stability issues. However, the lack of basic controls means I won't be using this anytime soon. My guess is that it'll be several years before it's in a usable state. Look how long it's taken Microsoft to get an ORM out the door. They still haven't implemented the provider model that allows LINQ to SQL to use databases other than SQL Server. It also lacks basic mappings such as many-to-many that pretty every other ORM supports. Silverlight appears to have the same issues. In the long run, it can fundamentally change the way we develop applications for the better. The problem is that it isn't fully baked yet and I don't believe it will be for several years. The notion of having to use third-party controls for something as simple as a text box is pretty ridiculus IMHO. This isn't going to "kill" Flash anytime soon.

Lucky for you that a text box control is available in 1.1a then.
In regard to the whole eco system of tools and services available to feed Silverlight with, SL is already years ahead of Flash and it isn't even 1.0 yet.
We'll see how it all works out, but it's pretty silly to say that SL won't be competing because it's missing a text box control.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

If you look at the Widget sets for Flash, they are implemented in ActionScript on top of the Flash core library that does similar things as Silverlight with respect to lines, fills etc. All Flash widgets are build up using these primitive operations. Due to the usage of ActionScript, the performance of these controls is sub-optimal, although the new Flash 9 version solved a lot of the performance issues due to the new JIT compiler included in this version.

Silverlight is very similar to WPF, and you already see loads of control makers jumping on the WPF controls bandwagon. It wan't take long before they jump the Silverlight bandwagon as well, because Silverlight will get way more exposure than WPF (I think). One of the control builders is already providing a set of controls to get started with. Have a look at http://www.telerik.com/products/silverlight/overview.aspx.

Serge van den Oever [Macaw]
http://weblogs.asp.net/soever

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

Why worry about constraining the download to only 2 MB, when the user, if they are running Windows, has to download hundreds of MBs if not GBs of patches via Windows Update already? Running Windows without a high-speed Internet connection is nearly impossible if you want to keep your system up to date. I'm sure there are plenty of developers out there who feel as I do that having basic UI controls is a necessity not a nicety. Would they really increase the download size that much? Having to rely on third party controls for something so fundamental seems pretty crazy to me.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

What requirements do you specifically have for controls such as a textbox and button? Do you want richer controls than the ones that are part of the HTML DOM? Or do you simply want direct wrappers for those elements?

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

Hey Wilco,

Long time no see... so this was 'it', huh? <s>

I think it's a fundamental issue and one that Microsoft is currently not addressing well in either WPF or Silverlight. MS is pandering to the designer set, which is needed for the platform for sure, but I think the impression most people get when they saw all the cool Silverlight stuff is that you can write fully self-contained UIs on the client side without having to muck with HTML markup and JavaScript.

Sure you can use the 7 or so HTML controls and get the same limited functionality you get with HTML and you get to code interop between two platforms and deal with all the browser incompatibilities on top of it. I think the Html interop is not terribly useful without a much bigger (ala MS Ajax style) browser interop layer. Otherwise we're back to writing browser sniffing code and tweaking the DOM to make it work with different browsers...

Native SL controls are very important to productivity. The basic primitives should be there as soon as possible because without it a non-designer type like me will be lost - well you can still do cool stuff with the code behind and flailing around with rectangles and textblocks, but it's terribly unproductive that way.

Textbox, button, listbox, dropdown, checkbox, radio at the very least. Beyond that a ListView type control to display data without having to start from scratch creating rectangles and text runs <s>. Eventually there shoud be a full set of controls that can do many WinForms like UI features in the browser. DateTime picker, masked input, grid etc. - those are for later on surely, but this stuff should come in the box or as a separate UI library that's not part of the core package.

To the designer set this may seem totally out of place, but if Microsoft wants quick uptake of this technology I think this is a vital requirement to get non-designers involved and playing with this stuff. I very much doubt if you take someone who hasn't looked at WPF at all to this point (a large number - most developers?) trying to do even the simplest thing will be pretty painful. A few controls can take that initial sticker shock away.

+++ Rick ---

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

I believe there are currently already some C# controls available as a separate download. I'm not directly involved with this stuff though, so I don't know what's currently there, what you can expect, what kind of limitations there are, etc. That said, I absolutely agree it's important to have controls available for those using the presentation stuff provided as part of Silverlight.

However, I'm not convinced that everyone will (or should for that matter) replace all their forms with Silverlight controls. If you just want to back up your existing forms with some managed code/new services (e.g. automatically saving a draft on the client using isolated storage every 10 seconds), I don't see any reason to having to replace that with Silverlight controls. Basic interop with form elements (read/write value) should work fine across all browsers. It's things like positioning/styling that gets messy real quick, and if that's what you're playing with, then sure, Silverlight controls are probably be the way to go to avoid dealing with browser differences.

So basically I guess I'd like to know what the exact context is in which we're discussing. :)

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

What I'm looking for in Silverlight is the ability to do the same thing that I'm able to do with Flex which is to create an application that makes use of basic UI controls such as text boxes, drop down lists, buttons, data grids, tabs, etc. I want to write the UI logic on the client side in .NET and not have to mess around with HTML or ASP.NET. The business logic for the application would be in a web service and the Silverlight application would make calls to the web service. I would also like to have the ability to popup modal dialog boxes. Basically, what I want to do is create a Windows Forms or WPF-like application that would run in a web browser that is cross platform. I would also like to make use of the data binding that WPF uses. If the controls were split into a separate downloadable library that would be fine, but, I would want it developed and supported by Microsoft. I wouldn't want to have to use a third party library for something as simple as a text box or button. One of the major benefits that I would see to Silverlight is a simplified programming model. I shouldn't have to mess around with DOM. I should be able to work at the same level of abstraction that I would if I were developing a Windows Form or WPF application. If I wanted to mess around with DOM, then, I wouldn't need Silverlight, I can use JavaScript for that. I shouldn't have to deal with browser differences as I would be working within the context of Silverlight.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

Please see http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh/archive/2007/05/03/silverlight-c-controls.aspx.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

I think everybody would LOVE to see that. I mean if it were possible to do Microsoft would have built WPF this way in the first place to run in the browser.

I think the browser and cross platform scenario however makes a lot of this not as trivial as it may seem offhand. A lot of work has to go into the process for cross platform - if it wasn't for that you can already do what you're looking for with XBAP which is a full featured client side platform that can do all the things you are asking. Adobe has Flex that does some right now but the platform that Flex exposes is pretty thin compared to he richness of the CLR coupled with the XML based markup of XAML for wich Adobe has no equivalent.

No matter what happens the client side in the browser will never have that kind of richness that full WPF has I'd expect at least not unless Silverlight is a huge runaway success and truly takes over which I find doubtful - the anti-Microsoft league will see to that <s>.

So in order to run in the browser a lot of tradeoffs have to be made and Microsoft is still in the process from feedback like this trying to figure out what needs to go into this distributed runtime. I'm going to bet that a set of controls will be a part of the shipping set at one point (and ScottGu mentioned that this is coming in the future) but just how rich this set of controls is is to be seen.

But the good news is that Silverlight has an open component model so it's going to be reasonably straightforward for control vendors (or individual developers) to step in and fill this void. While I agree that this stuff should be in the box my guess is that the first decent UI library won't come from Microsoft but an enterprising third party. Let's hope they're not all going after the high end designer control market though - in the current state of wow everybody's seems to be the 'check out the pretty pictures dude' mode - let's hope that the basics that are needed for 90% of applications will be attended to. Even the full WPF doesn't do this at the moment.

But give it some time. Microsoft has just unveiled this technology and from a platform perspective I for one am impressed and excited of the possibilities it offers. Right now probably the most important thing is that the base platform works and has what's needed to build on top of. Remember we're looking at an Alpha - lots can and will change before this technology goes RTM.

+++ Rick ---

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

Yeah, let's not jump the gun. The alpha just came out. But I can understand the concern of not wanting to monkey around with HTML and CSS. The Flex controls are very cool, but as others have noted, Silverlight is years ahead of the Flash/Flex offering in other ways, so it's not a big deal.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

I'm one of the folks on the Silverlight team working on the controls story. For Silverlight 1.1 Alpha we've released source code samples for a modest set including Button, Slider, ScrollBar, ScrollViewer and ListBox. See my post here. I welcome you to try them and give us feedback on these forums.

We're still debating what set of controls are part of the platform and what set get released as source code or binaries so your apps can depend on them. But make no mistake, a rich and robust controls set is indeed part of our goals. As with everything else, limitations of time and resources force us to prioritize some controls over others. This is another area where we'd appreciate feedback. If you are building or intend to build Silverlight applications, what canonical controls do you foresee using? Granted some can be easily built as part of the app development process. But for our part, we'd like you to focus on building your core app and leave the plumbing to us.

Nevertheless, we're designing the platform features such that you are able to build rich custom controls (say, carousel view, for now) completely in user code by extending some platform types. For controls that cannot be build fully in user code (say, editing-related ones like TextBox), we'll have you covered. Keep the feedback coming.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

I think you need to use WPF browser application in this case,but I still prefer more consistent intergration with existent (D)HTML code and js libraries-otherwise it's not browser anymore!

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

I see the point about keeping the Silverlight download small, however as a developer lets say I create 5 controls to get my app going then another developer uses 3 3rd party controls from vendor A and then a 3rd developer uses 4 controls from 3rd party developer B all up we are looking at 12 controls. I am assuming the controls are cached or put into a GAC or something now if MS had provided the controls from the start perhaps 8 intrinsic controls could have been used and only 4 3rd part controls therefore the net download speed for all 3 apps is significantly less then if the 3 apps used all different controls. This makes allot of assumptions concerning how controls are cached and perhaps they are not in which case please ignore my rantings.

Re: Unusable without basic UI controls

I think we need basic controls to replace what exists in HTML so that from there we the community can extend. However we need a basic control set such as:

Button (maybe)
TextBox
CheckBox
ComboBox
ListBox

Ontop of that we definately need what exists in WPF for layout. It makes making rich UI very simple and otherwise will require a lot of resize code manually done for every site etc.

Border
WrapPanel
FlowPanel
StackPanel
.. etc..

Ontop of that we really need docking/anchoring layout logic.

With these things I think the UI of Silverlight will be awesome but I think we really need them.