I am a massive Silverlight user.
Since I started to realize that sooner or later Silverlight is gonna die (there is not going to be a SL 6 from what I heard), I’m starting to sniff around for an alternative technology.
I need a fluid responsive UI like Silverlight, and I need a technology that costs zero development effort. Silverlight is actually just great but it’s missing some key features (binding types, shared size group and more), and since it’s not going to be developed anymore I am considering other things. It’s also not really multi-platform (Android and iOS support is a minimum).
Anyway, I looked into ASP.NET SPA, and I kinda liked the idea, but in the other hand, I think HTML5/javascript are decades far from Silverlight, first of all C#/VB.NET as a language, then all the related tools, such as Entity-Framework, WCF-RIA with scaffolding and validation, SDK/Toolkit and more.
So my question is if there is any kind of way to make a generator that turns my Silverlight website into HTML5+CSS3+Javascript so it works on every platform, perhaps by converting it to a SPA app.
Have you ever heard about any existing project that covers this issue? Do you think it’s doable or it will take me years to develop it?
“Is there a generator?” – The answer to that is no, at least nothing I have seen that is worth it. The good news is that all of your services from Silverlight are still very viable with a SPA. You can certainly do a lot with HTML5/JavaScript, so don;t worry too much about that. The big difference for capabilities is if you need machine integration. Since you are in a browser you are sandboxed. If you need that, WPF/Silverlight are better options, especially since you know them.
There are SPA’s out there. The biggest ones I can think of are gmail and facebook. SPA’s aren;t new, they are just taking more of the forefront lately since the technology has evolved and the opportunity is there.
This should answer your questions. But if you have other specific questions, feel free to fire away.