Question

We need to build an administration portal website to support our client/server application. Since we’re a .Net shop the obvious traditional way would be to do that in ASP.Net. But Silverlight 2 will be coming out of beta a good while before our release date. Should we consider building the whole website in silverlight instead, with a supporting WCF backend?

The main function of the portal will be: users, groups and permissions configuration; user profile settings configuration; file upload and download for files needed to support the application.

I think the main reason for taking this approach would be that we have good experience with WPF and WCF, but little experience in ASP.Net. Either way we would have to learn ASP.Net or Silverlight, and learning Silverlight seems a more natural extension of our current skills.

Are there any big no-nos from the experience of StackOverflowers? What are the big positives?

Answer 1

Depends on your goals. If administration portal is part of application and will only be used from computers where your application is installed, there are plenty of advantages of going fully Silverlight – or even WPF.

But if you can see a scenario where it will be used either from random PC or by random person, fully functional HTML/Javascript version is absolutely necessary.

Some reasons are:

• Most people don’t have silverlight and you’ll earn a good load of swearing if they have to download and install it. Some people who have it installed keep it disabled (together with flash and sometimes even images) to avoid distractions and speed up browsing.
• When HTML site fails, user gets error page and reloads. When silverlight fails, it can hang or crash.
• HTML is what is expected – both by users and web browsers: back and refresh buttons work as they should, hyperlinks and forms work as expected.
• Slow internet is still very common, both in remote areas and mobile devices.