Comments on: Silverlight: How I Really Feel About the Iridescent Thong

By: Daryl

Daryl — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:51:52 +0000

Contrary to what the people at Microsoft keep saying, I do see a strong bias against WPF and in favor of Silverlight.

The best evidence I can point to is the way that XBAPs have withered on the vine. WPF would be great if I could create "Windows-only Silverlight controls" -- ie, WPF controls which could be embedded in a web page, communicate with other objects using Javascript, etc. All the things you can do easily with Silverlight.

XBAPs are currently almost worthless, however. They take over the whole browser window. IE basically disappears into a black hole. It's all-WPF or nothing.

I'd love to be able to use WPF embedded in a web page. It would be like Silverlight with 2 mouse buttons, 3D drawing surfaces, better performance, more controls, and all the other stuff you get from using a "real" environment like .NET.

This would be pretty easy for Microsoft to do, but they're more concerned about making sure it runs in Safari, which is worth exactly nothing to me. It should be: Silverlight if you absolutely must run on Mac and Linux, or embedded-XBAP if you work for the 99% of businesses which don't fool with that stuff.

By: wasim

wasim — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:24:07 +0000

hi Dr. WPF
Thanx for Ur great article. Same Question that u mension on Article was in my mind but Now on they are vanished and i will start again the Development in WPF. Once again Thanx Thanx man.

By: Josh Smith

Josh Smith — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:44:41 +0000

I knew you’d throw in a dig on triggers. Great job!

Josh

By: Laurent

Laurent — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:05:45 +0000

Great post, which summaries admirably what i think too. Even though i am better known for my work in Silverlight, i have a really deep love for WPF that started it all, and seeing all the new features it is getting really made my days at MIX. The convergence story is dear to my heart (why else would i talk about a continuum at MIX?) and i will not leave Microsoft in peace about that (which MVP participants will be able to confirm).

Good work Doc.
Laurent

By: Dr. WPF

Dr. WPF — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:58:41 +0000

Thanks for jumping in here, Ian. It’s great to have the official word!

And on behalf of myself and my daily cohorts, I can tell you that we’re all very excited about the future of XAML technologies!

By: Ian Ellison-Taylor

Ian Ellison-Taylor — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:31:55 +0000

Great article! Just to back you up a little, WPF is not being abandoned and no one should get that impression just because we’re cranking away adding lots of cool features to SL. As hopefully most folks have already seen we’ve been making tons of investments in WPF in the last couple of releases (SP1 was probably not a good name!) and we have a lot more lined up for 4.0 not just in WPF but also in the whole .Net Framework.

We are definitely working on closing the gap between the two (in both directions) so irrespective of the two names they’re increasingly just different points on the whole XAML spectrum.

And yes, probably some of the best evidence is how much Microsoft and other ISVs are making increasing use of WPF (like VS, SketchFlow, Semblio etc) so you’ll see a bunch more WPF apps coming out of Microsoft and from 3rd parties over the coming year.

Hopefully I don’t sound too defensive

Cheers,
Ian.

By: Walt Ritscher

Walt Ritscher — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:50:18 +0000

Happy to help you solve more Sodoku puzzles, though I’m not sure how my being in the first class cabin was beneficial. I was deep into writing an new WPF front end for a Live mesh project on the flight home. Oh and thanks for the new nickname (WPF Wonder Man).

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:48:43 +0000

I was actually expecting .NET 4.0 beta 1 to make an appearance. Seems like the focus was on Web only at mix this time. Which is fine – as long as we get beta 1 some time next month (with a VS2010 refresh)

By: Jeremiah Morrill

Jeremiah Morrill — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:21:12 +0000

You surely calmed any nervousness I had about the “What about WPF?” subject Doc. I had quite a lengthy chat w/ another developer at Mix and our other concern is educating _customers_. With all the publicity of SL, we (we as in both me and the fellow having the convo) have come across high level decision makers who think SL *is* WPF and others who though MS obseleted WPF already in favor for SL. These perception issues can be resolved, but they are bumps in the road that can be smoothed with a little help from Microsoft.

This is the type of conversations I’d love to avoid:

Customer: “I’d like XYZ done in Silverlight”
Me: “Well, you’ll have a hard time doing XYZ in a sandbox. You’d really want to consider WPF.”
Customer: “WPF is already being obseleted. I see it! If it can’t be done in SL because of a sandbox, lets use Adobe AIR instead.;

By: Dr. WPF

Dr. WPF — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:20:00 +0000

Hi WPF Fan,

It can certainly feel that way. SL definitely has the spotlight and a much larger, more vocal community. However, I've been very happy with the advances in WPF (hardware accelerated effects, pixel shaders, Direct3D interop, etc) over the last couple of years and I'm pretty happy with some of the things currently in the pipeline.

WPF was already 6 years old at the time it was released, whereas SL was barely a year old when it was first introduced. This means WPF had time to mature prior to release. Its feature set had time to bake.

SL has been trying to catch up to WPF over the last couple years and it gets better with each release. But I like to remind people that parity advances are not the same as novel or new advances.

To be certain, there are some things in SL that are unique (like deep zoom integration and a better media stack), which is good, since we can expect similar features to be added to WPF. At this point, its not so important to me who gets it first as it is that we both get it. The convergence is a good thing for everyone.

Cheers,
-dw