Some great points there for sure, also it’s interesting (from a “Silverlight is dead” point of view)that the VB6 runtime still ships with Windows 8 😊
Jason Roberts Journeyman Software Developer Twitter: @robertsjason Blog: http://DontCodeTired.com Pluralsight Courses: http://bit.ly/psjasonroberts From: Scott Barnes Sent: Wednesday, 11 September 2013 9:19 AM To: ozDotNet Yeah the canvas tag has taken everything you get inside XAML and moved two steps backwards and if you really formulate enough discipline and pain you get to play the game of "I'm thinking of an animation framework, it has a vowel in it and hopefully all of your team can learn and write code at the same time with the pressure of delivery" I'm still using Silverlight/WPF today with new projects and i keep telling people that as long as Windows XP -> Windows 8 exists there is no real issue at hand other than you won't get a new feature added to the product. I will say this when we were pushing out Silverlight 4 out the door it was at that point we were struggling to come up with features that you needed vs we could do to make the world better. In that the core of Silverlight was pretty much baked and it was really down to making features that did things differently, whereby what else can we do to encroach on WPF/WinForms tightly held territory. So you really aren't getting much in the way of "new" even if Silverlight was still pumping out features today, it would have likely centred around 3D / GPU specifics and probably would have shifted gear from being a 9month release cycle back to say an 18month one with all of the other product(s). We could argue that we needed to clean house with Silverlight whereby optimise / bug fix ensure WPF and Silverlight reach feature parity in terms of execution with one another but you have that today with Windows 8 as that's actually Silverlight 7 in a way... its realistically teh answer you wanted but not ready to move into (Windows 8 is like those ghost cities in China, its all built and has stuff ready to build out a society with ...but people just aren't moving in yet). I think it's a two part problem firstly some of you guys drip feed off Microsoft way to much to the point where you're not thinking for yourselves at times ( Java etc community often give two sh***ts what Oracle/Sun were doing if they saw something they like they'd adopt but it was never a race to rise with their tide - Microsoft its always the same, its a conditioned response that often made us Product Managers giggle at how easy it was to manipulate you :D). If you write code today using a variety of techniques you can easily make applications work with WPF/Silverlight and even Windows 8 (XAML is a re-usable specification) and you can also bring that into other solutions like Mono/Unity3D ..all the pieces are there but for some unless Visual Studio has the option in the menu bar folks just go "ahh f**k that, to hard*.. The whole Silverlight vs HTML5/JS bullsh*t is really the wrong argument at play and it's been filled with a lot of redudant arguments around future proofing or protecting IP. For instance majority of code written today is disposable code and is unlikely to be supported post a 5-yr timeframe before someone turns and goes "File --> New" especially given how fluid and volatile the device market is shaping up to becoming (mixed with indecision from brands like Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Apple etc). Secondly when you get to he heart of the discussion the ask is "I want breadth deployment but with depth features" and often HTML5 becomes this position you retreat back to because it seems to tick off all the breadth checklists and hints at some of the depth - but nevery really follows through on the promise. It also on paper tells the story about developer adoption (resource allocation and costs) meaning you can hire any graduate today to write HTML/JS/CSS "code" (i use that word with contempt) because its a lazy concept that doesn't require a lot of mental muscle around OOP or Tooling "know how". You will however watch your development allocation get bogged into stupid scenarios like "why won't this f**king div tag centre" which is then followed by some smart ass list-apart-clone-of-the-Web2.0 hipster crowd given you a lecture on why CSS rox and you just don't understand its subtle forms of chromosome deficiencies ... If you manage to retain your human capital past that point you then get into the space of "who's framework has the biggest d***k" posturing in around trying to get all your developer base to ride with your JS selection tide (which they'll likely beg and plea for a concept like ECMA6+ - TypeScript way of doing things because then they aren't arguing over the merits of Prototype vs Class. Assuming you can retain discipline in the ranks (which all research from 2007-2009 on the word AJAX points to "yeah this shit is broken, you can execute but its code you never want to open up again past shipping") you then still have to come up with some way to emulate what you'd typically expect to see in Native Experiences like "Touch" or "Windows moving around in Z space" - sure you have zIndex and sure you can do drag and drop but oh yeah you can't do data packet / socket without having to go through some hacky JSON form of retardation or react until AFTER (not during) the data comes into place... hence why most sites seem to always feel as if they are stalling when you do anything with progressive data prediction. My point is this... HTML5 is like a hooker turned school teacher - seems innocent at first but when you get home you soon realise just how dirty things have become. Silverlight is dead as to WinForms is dead. Think about it. --- Regards, Scott Barnes http://www.riagenic.com On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Sam Lai <[email protected]> wrote: I think you'll be surprised how far HTML5 has come along. Between the canvas tag, SVG and WebGL, I struggle to think what your graphics-intensive app may do that those technologies can't do effectively. They've all been supported by Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari for many versions now, and all largely supported in IE9+ except WebGL which is coming in IE11. Some links - http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/ http://www.chartjs.org/ On 11 September 2013 09:04, Greg Keogh <[email protected]> wrote: > Greg (H), sometime earlier this year I finally reached a point where I can > create a WPF app at roughly the same speed as a WinForms app. It took years > to find the right patterns, use command routing wisely, overcome the > countless quirks, and finally become proficient at coding UIs in XAML by > hand. I have loads of pre-baked WPF code now to help me write new apps > faster. I have found that WPF is only superior if you need a really "rich" > UI with elastic layout, shading, opacity, resizing and animations. > Otherwise, WinForms are robust and familiar, the designer is fabulous and > the DataGridView control is a dream compared to the tangled nightmare of the > WPF DataGrid -- Greg (K) > > > On 11 September 2013 00:51, Greg Harris <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> Hi Greg, >> >> Basic HTML will be simple CRUD table maintenance and reports. >> Rich interaction, not in the initial plan. >> >> Winforms - Yes at this stage that is what I am thinking, the app needs to >> do some extensive custom graphics which at this stage I intend to build up >> with GDI+ as it is what I have used before, but I am open to suggestions. >> >> I may go with WPF but that is not the way I am thinking just now. As the >> client wants to keep it cheap and fast. >> >> I like to look at job trends to see where the industry is going and >> WPF/Silverlight has not been happy for 2 years: >> http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=wpf%2Csilverlight&l=silverlight >> >> Regards >> Greg (H) >> >> >> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 11:17 PM, Greg Keogh <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> At this point I am working on a new app, it will have an HTML web site >>>> for basic stuff and a downloadable win forms app for the intensive stuff, I >>>> would much rather do it with SL but MS has so upset the SL story that it is >>>> just not going to happen! >>> >>> >>> Oh boy, another scary response. Will the html "basic stuff" have any kind >>> of rich interaction? Also, you really mean WinForms and not WPF? >>> >>> Greg (K) >> >> >
