Question

I’m starting a new web project and I am considering two presentation frameworks. I am thinking either about ASP.NET MVC or Silverlight. I would tend toward Silverlight since I’m quite experienced .NET developer while I have just a basic knowledge of ASP.NET controls.

Answer 1

It is mainly going to be an iternal product so browsers are not an issue.

You still have not written a proper description about the nature of your application. It is difficult to assess which technology is a good fit without first knowing well enough the domain the application is being applied to, and the problems it is designed to solve.

In general, Microsoft is positioning these array of presentation technologies on the ‘Reach vs Rich‘ continuum. You have ‘plain old’ HTML and Javascript on one end, acceptable by the most number of client machines out there, and the ultimate full-blown WPF on the other side where limited number of machines can handle. You did mention this to be an internal app, so WPF via XBAP or ClickOnce are also possible.

So the scale would align this way: (reach) ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight, WPF (rich).

So the question is just how rich you want/need it to be for the users until it hurts the deployment base? Frankly if all you fetch are forms and tabular data and statistics then regular ASP.NET web forms are just fine. If you want on-the-fly resizable graphs and client-side interactive with back-end WCF web services Silverlight can do that. If you want even more powerful graphical rendering than WPF via the remote deployment options is your bet.