Microsoft Webday 2008 - Silverlight Experiences

Silverlight 2.0 - In practice

eCraft

90 employees

Offices in Helsinki, Espoo & Vaasa

Microsoft Gold Partner

Nicklas Andersson

Founder & CTO

Microsoft is giving us yet another platform.

You’ve seen all the cool demos…

Silverlight seems like a good way to make better user experiences.

Adopting this new, and different, technology feels like a risk.

To be successful with Silverlight you need to understand how it is different.

The goal is profitable growth through improved innovation.

The organization is full of brilliant ideas, but most of them are lost.

Innovation is not improved by increased R&D spending.

Many brilliant ideas are lost because of creative apartheid.

Free collaboration improves the ideas.

Everybody should have the chance to speak, regardless of title.

Collaboration with suppliers and customers brings valuable insights

Collaborating on ideas gives everybody influence and power.

Collaborating is fun!

Sproodle is provided as a comprehensive service with regular updates.

We're happy we chose Silverlight.

We replaced an existing ASP.NET prototype.

Impressive development environment.

Silverlight is surprisingly easy to learn.

Very high productivity.

Freedom to create unique user experiences.

What is Silverlight really about?

Silverlight is not a Flash-killer.

Silverlight is not the new web.

Silverlight is a better way to make applications for the web.

Silverlight doesn't enable you to do anything that wasn't already possible.

Silverlight just succeeds in making the hard things easier .

Productivity is king.

Has anything really changed since 1982?

google. On a C64.

But… Productivity is all that matters in business.

At some point we’ll reach a dead end with HTML.

Silverlight just succeeds in making the hard things easier .

Silverlight controls separate behavior from appearance . vs.

A round button behaves the same way as a rectangular one. Source: www.nibblestutorials.net

What is the correct way to display a list of planets? Source: www.beacosta.com/blog or

If you want new behavior you have to build your own control.

Users expects web applications to behave a certain way.

Problem #1: Back and Forward.

Problem #2: The mouse wheel.

Problem #3: Bookmarking a specific part of the application.

RSS is pretty much a requirement these days.

Hint: use “System.ServiceModel.Syndication” SyndicationFeed feed = new SyndicationFeed( "Sproodle", "Automated sproodle feed", new Uri( "http://sproodle.ecraft.internal/" )) ; feed.Authors.Add( new SyndicationPerson( "someone@somewhere.com", "Mr. Sproodle", "http://sproodle.ecraft.internal/" ) ) ; feed.Copyright = new TextSyndicationContent( "Copyright 2008 eCraft" ) ; feed.Generator = "Sproodle RSS Generator"; feed.Language = "en-US";

New workflow involving usability design and graphics design. The developer The UX designer The graphics artist

For the first time ever we had to collaborate with a graphics designer.

Very few designers use Expression (yet).

Do you remember web design tools 10 years ago?

The workflow isn’t perfect. The developer The UX designer The graphics artist

The workflow isn’t perfect. The developer The moron The jerk

Silverlight applications have a lot in common with 3-tier client applications.

Code is not executing near the database.

You probably need to cache data in the client.

The architecture will be different from old skool web apps.

Which is the right road to becoming a Silverlight developer?

Silverlight is similar to WPF, but implemented slightly differently.