Yep, the fact that MS was going on about Richness vs Reach at PDC, where desktop is rich and web is reach and Siverlight is a balance between them, shows that if you want both then Silverlight is your only option from MS at the moment and probably for a while. Having said that, given MS is supporting Silverlight on MAC they may support Live Mesh at some point which would allow you to host Silverlight apps on a MAC desktop within some kind of sand box.
This post claims that Live Mesh will support MAC. http://blogs.computerworld.com/live_mesh_solution_in_search_of_problem On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 5:58 PM, Sam Lai <[email protected]> wrote: > > well, it slots nicely into an N-tiered environment. While I used to > > get away with small VB5 apps having the UI talking directly to the > > database (using DAO - shudder), it wasn't really very flexible. > > See the thing is, I'm trying to use AIR not to build RIAs, but rather > cross-platform desktop apps with spiffy interfaces. I don't have the > luxury here of client/server architecture and the ability to use > something else for the backend (the .NET/Java proxy aside, which > doesn't have a very good deployment story). There isn't much else out > there with the ease and features of AIR for desktop apps, which is > annoying. > > As an RIA platform, which is what they're focusing on, it's great. But > it's got so many attributes that would make it a good desktop app > platform too, and is so close, yet so far from being about to do that > too. But hey, desktop apps are dying slowly right? :) > > > Mono was mentioned before as a way of getting around having > > non-windows clients: maybe I'm far too conservitative or afraid, but I > > find it really hard to embrace Mono. > > True, but you have that problem even with platforms where the apps are > supposed to be cross-OS compatible due to inherent differences between > OSs, e.g. Java. Granted the likelihood might be less, and it all > depends on the features you leverage, but then I'd expect simple apps > to work fine between .NET and Mono also. > > It isn't an ideal situation, but it's probably the best solution > possible realistically - the chance of seeing a Microsoft supported > release of .NET on Linux is minuscule :) > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > List address: [email protected] > Subscribe: [email protected] > Unsubscribe: [email protected] > List FAQ: http://www.codify.com/lists/ozsilverlight > Other lists you might want to join: http://www.codify.com/lists > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- List address: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] List FAQ: http://www.codify.com/lists/ozsilverlight Other lists you might want to join: http://www.codify.com/lists
