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Will Silverlight Topple ClickOnce?

by kevin 4/3/2008 10:21:00 PM

I attended the Richmond .NET User Group meeting this evening. Craig Adams of Vivus Software presented concerning ClickOnce application deployment issues from the real world. It was a good presentation. Although I know quite a bit about ClickOnce deployment, I learned a few things at the meeting. As I sat there, listening to Craig, I couldn't help but think about how Silverlight 2 packages its XAP files to include an application manifest. Certainly, the CoreCLR and BCL in Silverlight aren't as full featured as what the full CLR and FCL provide. And the range of deployment options in ClickOnce is good for system administrators and who need finer control over the process.

But I found myself thinking about how simple Silverlight 2 deloyment is. And now that we have the Silverlight Controls in Beta 1, how long will it be before we start seeing mass migration to Silverlight for doing what we once would have used ClickOnce deployment? At SnagAJob.com, we have one tool that we developed as a ClickOnce application because it was just too hard to build as a web application. So, we have this fantastic web application for our employer community with a hole where the ClickOnce application would go if we could make it run on the web without a lot of effort. So, we are actively porting it to Silverlight right now and I suppose we will retire the ClickOnce application as soon as it passes QA.

Personally, I'm excited thinking about a web-centric world where the browser can easily host rich, interactive forms that run my C# code on the desktop. I understand the glitz and glamour of Silverlight as a media-savvy presentation engine. But if I can get it to do Windows Forms cleanly and easily, I'll be very happy. Let's face it. Web development is just terrible today because HTML and JavaScript are awful. I tell people all the time that if I had to write HTML and JavaScript every day, I would find another lineof work. Using C# and XAML on the desktop through the browser is the best idea in computing in the last decade, in my opinion.

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Tags: silverlight, clickonce

Richmond .NET Code Camp NewsNews Concerning Richmond .NET Code CampSoftware Development MemeKevin Hazzard's Software Development Meme contribution.The Business Case for SilverlightMakig a sound business case for choosing Silverlight.

Comments

4/4/2008 9:02:30 AM

I think that looking at it from the perspective of an internal company application, then Silverlight is going to make an amazing difference. In your situation where you are migrating an internal desktop C# app into Silverlight is exactly the kind of scenario that I think Silverlight 2 is really going to shine.

On the flip side though, I see what Microsoft has done with the beta of the download center, and I am worried that we are going to again see whole websites developed in a proprietary technology. I don't know if you ever saw tafiti.com, but a lot of people were quite smitten with it. Even before they gave it that horrible Halo skin, it was still a completely non-standard, unintuitive interface. I believe that Silverlight actually created a far less usable application than what would have been easily accomplished in HTML.

So, in effect, I am very torn on Silverlight. On one hand I see this huge potential in having the ability to run the .net runtime in a browser, but I am worried that Silverlight could cause a backslide in website predictability, usability, and accessibility. Even as a Microsoft developer I strongly believe that the web should be built on open technologies, and products such as Silverlight and Flash should only enhance the experience.

Justin Etheredge

4/12/2008 8:33:24 PM

Sorry I didn't reply sooner, Justin. I've been super busy at the office. Your point about predicability is well received. I agree. One of the reasons we haven't migrated to using Flash applications is for this very reason. We could have used Flash safely for internal applications where we can control plug-in deployment, I suppose. But ActionScript is icky stuff, in my opinion. Being able to author in C# and Python, two languages I love, makes the experience approachable. We're starting small, of course. I'll let you know how it goes.

kevin