Sex Sells....but you still can't print

I attended an MSDN conference this week where I learned more about Silverlight 3. Compared to V2.0 its new features make it slicker:

• 3D graphics are sexier;
• Runs as a desktop app and in the browser;
• Apps run online or offline (and run faster).

Should you consider Silverlight or WPF for your Intranet / Line of Business (LOB) apps? My take:

• Silverlight will make a very Rich Internet App (RIA). BUT you still can't print without a major code hack, and it has basic HTTP binding (no full security).
• If you have existing WinForm apps, WPF may be the better choice (it's a logical extension of your existing platform).
• If you have most of your stuff in ASP.Net, then start with Silverlight (it has a small footprint, produces great cross-platform apps, and is easy to deploy).

Before you blindly walk down the path, figure out what 'features' your end users want, and then figure out which product supports those features. Here are two MSDN blogs that compare the two technologies: Jennifer Marsman (a Microsoft Developer-Evangelist) summarized the differences (although the post is a year old); The Swiss MSDN Team updates it for Silverlight 3.

-Russ

Preview of ResourceWatch

We thought we'd give you a taste of something that's been in development and now in beta. We've been doing analysis of resource use in Exchange for a while, and when one of our favorite clients in the world asked us about turning our analysis into something they could use on an on-going basis, we kind of just started writing it.

Since pictures are worth more than words, I'll start the screen grabs here.

That's the screen display, based on Silverlight. We just all love the way the data comes up on the screen.

But since Microsoft believes Silverlight has no need to ever print anything, we have a separate portion handling output (we call it the "Printer-friendly version"), and these are representative samples:

So what the heck can you do with this? Well you can finally

• Have statistics on how often conference rooms / resources are used
• Know how many people have used them
• See when the high demand days / times are
• Start to quantify decisions like "Do I need two conference rooms on this floor or will one do?"

Why would an enterprise user want to print a Silverlight page?

Sumatra is working on a tool to analyze conference room use in Exchange 2007. Sumatra's tool helps facilities managers understand resoure use patterns through 25+ charts and tables. We picked Silverlight as our display engine because it produces the most amazing charts and tables (see below)!

We were days away from a beta-launch, when our QA team decided to print out the entire collection charts. We were stunned when only the first page printed. Looks like Microsoft decided not to include printing in the first two releases of Silverlight. The work-arounds aren't pretty.

Yah, it was nice to see our President's inaugration speech via Silverlight. But does this mean that the only line-of-business apps available to Silverlight are going to be consumer gaming and video-watching apps? Maybe this is the way to make corporate America greener -- prevent enterprise users from printing Silverlight-generated page via the browser?



-RVI