Later this month (June 25, to be exact), Rod Paddock will be visiting the Winnipeg .NET User Group and talking about Silverlight for Business Developers.

While at DevTeach, I had the opportunity to see an all-day presentation by Rod and Jim Duffy on Silverlight development. Their presentation covered a number of items, including how to style Silverlight applications, data access, etc. Basically, it gave a nice broad introduction to a technology that will be growing in use as it begins to mature. Now that Microsoft has announced that Beta 2 of Silverlight will be released soon, alongside of a "Go Live" license for Silverlight (which basically means that Silverlight applications can now be fully launched for clients and customers, but should still be made known that it is still in "Beta"), I foresee that many applications will grow to use it as time goes on.

That being said, not everyone will switch right away. Why? Well, after becoming immersed back in many technological areas of late, I have become introduced to a movement, if you will, called ALT.NET. One of the elements of this movement (and, by no means, is the only piece of the puzzle) is that one should not limit one's self to a specific technology or methodology - basically, "The right tool for the job". Currently, there are many a site out there (including sites that we do for our clients at work) that utilize large elements of Flash content. If it works and does the job, why change? Depends on what we want. If we want a little animation for marketing purposes, use Flash; almost everyone already has the player installed so why change it? However, if we want a Rich Internet Application (RIA), then we now have options with both Flash and Silverlight.

I can see, still, that Flash will continue to dominate at this time. Why? Lots of investment already by companies with employees already skilled in the technology. It works, it has had years to gain maturity in the industry... why break a good thing? However, it is not the most user friendly for a developer. ActionScript is similar in nature to JavaScript, which many a developer has said sucks (although fellow Canadian Justice Gray is not one of them). The largest complaint, and I have only worked with ActionScript in a very cursory manner, is that there is no true IDE in which to code for it (nothing native to the Adobe suite at any rate). (CAVEAT: Yes, I know that Adobe Flex is now out, but I have not used it and have not discussed it with anyone who has. It may be good, and is geared towards developers, but the inherit items within ActionScript may make using it more complex than it has to be.) There are some coming out, sure, but it's not as intuitive for a developer. And, when one is creating a RIA, understanding software development and how to effectively parse, utilize and manipulate data, is essential. I work with some extremely creative and highly intelligent individuals, but only a few of them grasp the "developer mindset". That being said, what a developer would make look like your standard button these guys can make look like gold to the end user. Different skill sets for different folks. And the rare occasion is that you find individuals who can really bridge that gap between developer and designer.

So, what about Silverlight? It uses 2 tools and multiple technologies. First, for designers, there is Expression Blend (to truly take advantage of Silverlight as it currently stands, you need the 2.5 Preview). This is the designer tool that is used in order to build Silverlight (or WPF) applications. It creates the same solution files that the development tools use, which is completely interchangeable. Speaking of, the developers in a Windows environment use Visual Studio 2008. This allows them to build applications using their favourite .NET compliant language. (Personally, though quite comfortable with VB.NET, I am using some of this time to learn C# more effectively and get back into {} and ;.) The same solution file can be passed back and forth, which is great, because then a developer can add actions and events to items within the Silverlight application in a similar way to how they do it with ASP.NET and WinForms - no new language, no new environment, just a comfortable starting point where you learn a new technology and apply it in a much more seamless manner.

So, after all this, what preparation? Before Rod speaks in Winnipeg, I want to give an Introduction to Silverlight presentation to my coworkers and colleagues. I want to encourage attendance to the event, but also want to get people looking into this system for building RIAs, which seem to be where many an application is going. I think that this is going to be key to have a proper evaluation and review of a competing technology, but also a technology that can be used side-by-side with other pieces. Who says you have to be exclusively Flash or exclusively Silverlight? (Although Adobe and Microsoft, respectively, would probably like that; but keep in mind that Microsoft has not yet migrated to all Silverlight yet either... I had a blog post I read on this that I just have to find...) EDIT: Link added to the previous content for information as to why MS has not fully migrated - it is the obvious.

The key thing here, though, is choice. And to get choice, you have to be informed. This is one way that I hope to contribute and drive people to look at this technology. Whether adopted or not, an informed decision cannot be made without investigation, testing, and most of all having fun in building stuff. That will make or break it for a company.