The diagram represents a spectrum of application development approaches and technologies/platforms with increasing reach on one end, and increasing capabilities on the other. Applications have distinct scenarios and correspondingly gravitate toward a sweet spot. Some apps lie squarely on the left, with the need to first and foremost prioritize universal reach. At the same time, some apps have experience or functionality as the high order bit, where it is necessary to leverage a more capable platform, even if it means somewhat reduced reach. Still, the best apps will probably be those that leverage multiple front-end options to follow the user, with a common back-end.
Why RIA App – Silverlight
With Silverlight you get cross platform (almost all browsers on Mac and Windows) .NET runtimes. Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for Web, desktop, and mobile applications when online or offline.
Silverlight is different. It is an immediate win if you have desktop .NET apps which you would like to convert to web applications, or ASP.NET apps for which you would like a richer client. Why Silverlight and not WPF? For one thing, cross-platform, essential for public web applications and very useful internally as well. For another thing, lightweight deployment.
The contradiction in the title of this post is that both Silverlight and WPF use XAML, so in learning one you are to some extent learning the other. Nevertheless, Silverlight was shaping up to be a more significant platform than WPF at the time of writing.
WCF RIA Services
Microsoft WCF RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier.
HTML – Replaced by XAML – Very powerful (vector graphics) for rich UI
Client-side Javascript – Replaced by client side C# without .Net framework – cross platform, cross browsers, even on mobile device
Web services – Replaced by WCF RIA service – Fast and robust development.
Rajnish Noonia
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