Poll: What Will Silverlight’s Future Look Like?

15 commentsWritten on February 8th, 2009 by
Categories: Silverlight

I'm currently working on a project at work where we're using Silverlight for the UI. I wasn't a big fan of Silverlight before i started working with it, but you can consider me converted from now on. It truly is a compelling development platform, and i believe it will be the best choice for a lot of web applications (note that i'm not saying it would be the best choice for all web applications) for the next couple of years.

But it appears that the people who feel this way about Silverlight's future are in the minority. You don't see a lot of the really big name .NET bloggers talking about Silverlight (although there are a few), though i'm hoping that will change over time. In the meantime, i'd like to know what you think Silverlight's future will look like. I've put up a new poll with the following possible answers:

  • It's never going to take off in a meaningful way
  • It might pick up some steam for media-related purposes, but that's about it
  • It will pick up more adopters as the platform matures and offers more out-of-the-box capabilities for typical business applications
  • It's too different from traditional web development to appeal to most web developers
  • It will reach wide adoption, but never more than that of typical web apps
  • Someday it will be the default development platform for .NET web developers

(NOTE: for those of you reading this through the RSS feed, the poll is only accessible on my site and is located at the top right corner of the page)

There will obviously be some missing options, so feel free to point them out in the comments. I'm looking forward to the results and your thoughts on this topic :)

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at 10:59 and is filed under Silverlight. You can subscribe to any comments to this entry via RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://blogs.lessthandot.com chrissie1

    Another option.

    It will mainly be used for intranet sites.

    If you add that in I will vote for that.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    done :)

  • http://www.noctovis.net/blog Laila

    I think Silverlight is a nice platform, which allows you to do amazing things with the UI, but I still can’t image a full business application running on Silverlight.
    I think business apps will include parts that run on Silverlight (the parts with comples user interfaces), but that the main parts will still be ASP.NET.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Laila,

    why ASP.NET specifically? I consider Silverlight as the perfect client UI, but in our case, the real business logic still sits behind a WCF service. Apart from hosting that WCF service in an ASP.NET webapplication, i’m not doing anything with ASP.NET anymore.

  • Rob

    euh, back in the early nineties there was something like java applets, boy did that change the way we make webapps. I hope Silverlight will be able to change webdevelopment.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Rob

    have you actually tried to use silverlight before comparing it to java applets?

  • Rob

    If the only thing they would have come up with after 15 years of technological progress would have been an awt imation they could better fire their entire staff. I’m just saying that bottomline, it’s a comparable technology.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Rob,

    i think that’s an extremely short-sighted vision… and again, have you actually tried to use it before simply dismissing it?

    it is indeed somewhat similar (in concept), but that hardly means that its fate is doomed

    comparing silverlight to java applets is basically like comparing BluRay to VHS

  • Rob

    You’re comparing analog to digital. It would be more appropriate to say it is like comparing BluRay to Vcd, which is, as I said, same the same concept with 15 years of progress.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    trust me, it’s way more like BluRay vs VHS :p

  • Wookie

    If Silverlight get a huge out-of-the-box control library, it might take off for enterprise apps. When it comes to WWW, I think it will be mostly used for media display, things like that. For rich UI it seems that javascript frameworks like jQuery and YUI have the upper hand at the moment, because they are not a “box” inside the browser, and because the average user don’t like these boxes unless it’s to display videos.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Wookie

    when it comes to capabilities for rich UI, i think Silverlight has a lot more to offer than any kind of javascript framework

    and as for what average users like, i really don’t think they care too much about it being javascript or silverlight… they just want something that works great and is responsive. When a web application needs to be fully ‘web compliant’ (bookmark support, SEO, …) then obviously, silverlight is a poor choice. When that is not necessary however, i think most users would actually prefer a nice silverlight client instead of a typical ajaxified web application

  • Wookie

    @Davy

    “i think most users would actually prefer a nice silverlight client instead of a typical ajaxified web application”

    I have the exact opposite impression, but I guess we are both guessing, we’ll have to wait and see. What I understand is that pretty much every web page out there have the pre-requisite of being fully bookmarkable, searchable, SEO-friendly, etc. I would expect to see a touch of Silverlight here and there (say, a menu or a rich search box) but not where the real content is.

    And then there is the fact that one can develop rich javascript code using notepad or vi and anything above that, while Silverlight requires a small set of pre-defined, non-free, heavy-duty tools.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Wookie,

    i’m not talking about typical web pages, but web applications… there’s a big difference i think

    as for the ability to code in a simple editor, while that may appeal to some people, it’s hardly going to be a big factor i think ;)

  • Wookie

    Ah OK, I was thinking in terms of web programming as a whole.

    When you limit it to web apps, Silverlight has a better chance. But this line that separates web apps from web pages is getting thinner and thinner with Web 2.0, I think.

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