Blackhand said:
I hardly think Silverlight will replace ASP.Net, because truly rich applications
can be developed using them in conjunction with each other.
It also needs to be taken into account that most people don't like installing
plugins in their browser, so large scale uptake will be slow.
Personally I would still prefer to do back office applications without
Silverlight. Myself and the other seniors at our company still aren't
particularly thrilled with Silverlight.
Silverlight 2.0 will likely be a big thing, like LINQ to SQL, until people start
using it in enterprise applications and start taking all the extra implications
into account.
I was speaking to the future, I wasn't suggesting that Silverlight is ready
now. However with a stronger control framework a future Silverlight will be
very compelling.
Simply put HTML is just not the right platform to deliver a UI (as opposed
to displaying content). The use of HTML in this way was forced on to users
by IT departments trying to regain control of applications delvered to users
and by woefully inadequate means of centrally managing what is installed on
PCs.
The continued focus of those developing the HTML standard and the related
CSS standard is content delivery with only a secondary nod to UI. The fact
is though that a UI developer wants a much finer control over the
presentation whereas the HTML/CSS committees are going in the other
direction, trying to separate content from presentation.
This means that UI developer often has to wrestle HTML into doing what is
needed. That's not to mention that various browsers don't always interpret
the same HTML/CSS in the same way. Yes ASP.NET does help reduce that
significantly by insulating the developer somewhat but it can never be
complete and it still doesn't fix the fact that the underlying technology
isn't properly suited to the task.
Having a sandbox on the client which has few external dependacies running
code written in C# that does what you ask it to, is over time, going to be
prefered to struggling with HTML based UIs. This is of course an my own
conjectured opinion and depends a great deal on whether a usable control
framework appears in Silverlight.
In the wider world of the public web where, as you say, some users are loath
to install additional components Silverlight may not have as much impact.
It already has established competitors which are fairly ubiquitous.
Yes it could be just another flash (oops) in the pan.