Erwyn van der Meer : Architecture and Design, WPF

Silverlight: FONT tags all over again?!

Erwyn van der Meer — Sat, 05 May 2007 08:55:00 GMT

Some people use hyperbole to refer to the disclosure of Silverlight and CoreCLR by Microsoft at MIX07. April 30, 2007 has been called the day that will be remembered as the day that Microsoft "rebooted the web".

This might be true in more than one way. I was just reading the Silverlight SDK and was struck by a feeling of deja-vu:

<TextBlock FontFamily="Arial" Width="400" Text="Sample text formatting runs">
  <LineBreak/> 
  <Run Foreground="Maroon" FontFamily="Courier New" FontSize="24">Courier New 24</Run>
  <LineBreak/>
  <Run Foreground="Teal" FontFamily="Times New Roman" FontSize="18" FontStyle="Italic">Times New Roman Italic 18</Run>
  <LineBreak/>
  <Run Foreground="SteelBlue" FontFamily="Verdana" FontSize="14" FontWeight="Bold">Verdana Bold 14</Run>
</TextBlock>

Doesn't it feel like FONT tags all over again to you too?

This is not revolutionizing the web, this is indeed rebooting the web. Just after text on the web has been semantically liberated from FONT and TABLE tags by judicious use of CSS, we are going back to the future...

PS: Although there is extremely tight coupling between text and layout in this piece of XAML, it is still a much better situation than text locked up in .swf files. At least it is indexable by search engines. Hopefully, Microsoft is just going after the Flash market and doesn't lure us into putting all text inside Silverlight controls leaving the (X)HTML page as just an otherwise empty shell around such controls.

PS2: Here is another commentary by someone who sees some downsides to this new "rich" web as well.

Silverlight (fka WPF/E) and ASP.NET

Erwyn van der Meer — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:32:00 GMT

Microsoft has announced that the little cross-platform, cross-browser cousin of Windows Presentation Foundation will be called Silverlight. This technology which was first announced at PDC05 was codenamed "WPF/E".

Tim Sneath has the best list so far of the features and power of this "Flash killer" technology. Microsoft doesn't ever call Silverlight a Flash killer, but the overlap in feature set is so large, that it cannot be viewed as anything other than a direct Flash competitor.

However, I do believe that Silverlight leapfrogs Flash in a couple of ways. The programmability and ease of use is better than Flash. You can build Silverlight sites using just Notepad if you want. The direct integration of the Silverlight DOM (Document Object Model) with JavaScript in the browser and the ability to create Silverlight UI elements on the fly with the createFromXaml method is a killer feature.

Tim Sneath mentions a secret number 10 feature on his list:

"Ah... #10. I can't reveal this yet - there's a big surprise up our collective corporate sleeve that will be announced at MIX. I hate to hold back on you, but anticipation is part of the pleasure, as my mother used to tell me as a child when I was waiting impatiently for Christmas to come!"

Could this be the .NET programmability that was previously speculated about? Soma spills some more details in his announcement:

"As I mentioned, this Silverlight announcement at NAB is only part of the story, the rest will be unveiled at MIX including details about how Silverlight is a core component of Microsoft’s broader .NET platform."

I commented previously on Robert McLaws' blog that I didn't think that Microsoft wasn't going to release a lightweight crossplatform CLR for Silverlight programmability. But I also speculated that Microsoft was working on a bigger crossplatform CLR based on the .NET Compact Framework.

What I am pretty sure about, is that Microsoft will announce ASP.NET controls that will allow you to very easily integrate Silverlight on your web pages and to expose dynamic data as XAML to Silverlight controls. I.e., AJAX on steroids UI-wise.

Adding ASP.NET to the mix shows that there is no direct need for a CLR on the client in order to enable C# or VB.NET programmability: coding in C#, compiling to IL and converting that IL to JavaScript on the fly! Prototype efforts by Nikhil Kothari with Script# show that this is quite possible. Check out Nikhil's example.

Hybridizing Java, Flash and WPF/E

Erwyn van der Meer — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:37:01 GMT

Bruce Eckel has an interesting post on hybridizing Java with Flash. He notices the trend in the Java world to replace Java-based GUI frameworks (AWT, Swing, etc.) for Java apps by Flash.

Incidently, I came across one such app yesterday evening when I installed PowerSnap. The UI indeed was somewhat snappy. This application claims it can keep your locally stored photographs in sync with those posted on Flickr.

Of course, the major benefit of using Flash over UI technologies as WPF is reach. WPF only runs on a subset of the Windows platforms. PowerSnap is working on a Mac version which should be relatively easy because Java and Flash are available on the Mac.

WPF/E is nice and will be cross-platform but I think it will be confined to the browser in v1. Currently the WPF/E engine can only be scripted using JavaScript.

Maybe in future versions it can be used for the GUI layer of a standalone cross-platform .NET application. Microsoft is quietly working on versions of the CLR that will run on other platforms so that WPF/E can be "scripted" using C#. The work done by the .NET Compact Framework team already proves that this is possible. This CLR runs on devices like SmartPhones, PDAs and the Xbox 360.