Two interrelated questions:
-
For an app suite with an app for each major device platform (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, and WinRT), is Silverlight a good platform for a “downlevel” (Mac/7/Vista/XP) version of the WinRT app?
-
If so (or to make it so), what Silverlight components emulate the Metro controls and their themes to minimize the effort of making the Silverlight app consistent with the WinRT app?
I don’t think so. Silverlight does not give you the kind of touch support you need to truly match with a Metro style app. You can use things like NESL or roll your own gesture library, but it can never really match the type of experience you will get from a Metro style apps and of course stops being cross platform at that point. The closest I’ve ever come is building a Silverlight full-screen out of the browser app where we rolled our own gesture library and it was still unsatisfying.
Metro is a new and unique design language and without an OS that has been built from the ground up to support the experience, you will find it a bad experience and worse, you will be battling the technology the whole way.
Responding to comment: It absolutely can be done. See http://www.flickr.com/windows7 for example.