SilverlightShow: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business" Comments

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( Craig) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:26:53 +0300

I am sorry to say that silverlight 3 is not ready for business for all of our potential projects, LOB absolutely requires out-of-the-box printing support as well as ability to view xps and other document formats. While there may are third parties who are providing solutions, I find it a hard sell to have thirdparty solutions approved by business and government clients, esp. when this is a fundamental requirement of LOB applications. While Silverlight 3 is a huge leap forward there are still these areas that need to be addressed to become part of the client solutions tool box.

We can not spend weeks to get a third party component approved, prior to committing to a particular development path.

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( phang) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:11:33 +0300

let's say i build application in siliverlight. For printing report, i'll need to customized the report for viewing, export to pdf and printing. Can we do that easily in silverlight?

I am building closely 70% the applciation. But now, i am stucked on the report. I need to put the company logo, customize soem fields, allow for printing. especially bulk printing for letters. how can this be achieved with silverlight3?

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( Ward) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:58:15 +0300

I think we'll be hearing a lot more from 3rd parties over the coming months. Not just in the UI Control space either.

As long as you asked, I might as well throw my hat into the ring. If you are looking for a robust and low-hassle way to get data to and from your Silverlight application, check out DevForce at http://www.ideablade.com/DevForceSilverlight/DevForceSilverlight_overview.aspx.

Compare it with RIA Services or CSLA for Silverlight.

MAQ might find what he is looking for in the way of an "application framework which can make silverlight development a breeze and improve the efficiency and quality of deliverables".

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( Ward) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:44:21 +0300

I agree that we'd all feel better if Microsoft said more about its plans for Silverlight printing and reporting.

On the other hand, a little perspective, please. Reporting is only one of the functions of an LOB application and far from the most important. The first order of business is to build an application that does something useful in an efficient and effective manner. There is something fundamentally wrong if printed reports are the centerpiece of your application. I thought the days of band printers and rivers of ink were behind us.

Most ASP LOB applications have no intrinsic reporting capabilities at all. Banking sites, trading sites, purchasing sites offer the most primitive of print and download options. You typically fire off some server process that generates a report for pickup ... often a PDF ... often viewed and printed from a separate browser window. You can do that today in Silverlight.

Sure it's less than ideal ... and something should be done ... but the lack is far from fatal for LOB, IMHO.

Finally, I don't know why anyone building an LOB application would think Perpetuum ( http://www.perpetuumsoft.com/Product.aspx?lang=en&pid=102) pricing is "expensive". It isn't free, but it's not outrageous. You are building a business app, yes? Then Time to Market and ROI ought to mean something to you. Btw, I have no affiliation with Perpetuum.

You can also go after SL 3 for missing mouse wheel support. Lack of decent context menu support bothers me too. But ... let's get real ... these are annoyances. You are really lost in the weeds if these are the reasons you can't make SL3 work for you.

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( Brian) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:37:44 +0300

Ivan:

Yes, I am aware of that reporting solution. I've been watching it's progress in beta for months now.

The point of my original post is to understand what Microsoft's reporting / printing strategy is for Silverlight. There has really been no guidance on this topic. Is it XPS? XAML? SQL Reporting Services? Are they working on a printing framework? The fact that there is so little information from Microsoft tells me they are still in the process of figuring this out....which is okay, it's just that you won't see a lot of LOB applications until they do.

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( MAQ) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 05:36:40 +0300

The support from third party vendors is very limited. There are not any architecture or application frameworks which makes the development easier. I would love to see vendors coming out with their own application frameworks on silverlight platform which can make silverlight development breeze and improve the efficeincy and quality deliverables. This will help software companies to go live earlier with their new products.

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( Andy B) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:16:16 +0300

Thanks for asking :-)

For me another 'Silverlight Hole' is the lack of mouse event support. Despite the i-style touchscreen gestures on display at Mix, most real business users will still be using the computer mouse for at least the next decade. At the coal face when, for example, showing Deep Zoom in full screen mode ( a big silverlight tick ) people ask of their user experience, "why can't I use the scroll wheel?" Silence.

It's these little 'hygene factors' that make Silverlight feel like a product in a perpetual state of Beta. That is, a solution not ready for business.

If developers don't believe in Silverlight, why should anyone else?

Andy B

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( Alan B) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:00:52 +0300

Yep, printing and reporting need to be *seriously* addressed - and not exclusively by expensive third-party approaches.

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( DavidJKelley) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:46:21 +0300

here is the presentation at MIX about. there is a short demo in the key note too:

http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/C01F

good read, more on Sketch Flow?

( David) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:03:49 +0300

Good read, thanks for the post - I would like to hear more about Sketch Flow, it's pretty good stuff and should be highlighted in SL3 discussions with a little more explanation than is usually given (I know it's early still).

great site, bookmarked!

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( idragoev) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:10:24 +0300

Hi Brian,

thanks for your comment.

Definitely, reporting is one of the most important features needed in each LOB application.

We will add this question in our list...

However, threre are some solutions to that problem but if you are looking for Silverlight solution check http://www.perpetuumsoft.com/Product.aspx?lang=en&pid=102

Ivan Dragoev

RE: David Kelley on "Is Silverlight 3 ready for business"

( brian) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:06:05 +0300

What is the reporting / printing story in Silverlight? I can't believe this is not mentioned for LOB applications or in this article. Everybody is so blinded by "UX design" experiences. The first thing my customers say to me when I show off Silverlight capabilities is, "wow, that's a pretty interface. How do I print it?" And "Okay, show me the reports." Today, you have to cludge reporting by opening a new browser window and use html. Sorry, in my opinion Silverlight 3 is NOT ready for business.