The last decade has seen exciting things happening in the area
of the World Wide Web: Some websites have evolved from being simply
static pages to dynamic pages full with rich and sophisticated
applications to improve the users' experience. Google has been one
of the pioneers of this revolution during the 21st Century and they
show no sign of relenting with an entirely web-based office
software suite to challenge the dominance of Microsoft Office.
Google has ingeniously used traditional techniques to provide
this, which include active server pages and client scripting. The
quality of the various user interfaces is quite stunning.
Furthermore, Google has ensured that these applications are
compatible with the plethora of different browsers and platforms
currently in use. However, this all comes at a price, as Google
invests millions of dollars into its software development.
This then brings us to the question of 'Is there a way to create
these rich applications within a more modest budget?' The answer is
'Yes' and one of the technologies that allows us to do this is
Silverlight from Microsoft. In brief, Silverlight allows us to
create web applications using methods and practices similar to
those that we already employ for the desktop applications (i.e.
Windows) that we create. However, the inherent technical challenges
found in the traditional methods are not present. Furthermore,
since the application runs in a browser plug-in, the issues over
compatibility with different platforms and their browsers is not
present. These two advantages remove many of the technical
challenges when producing high quality web applications. They allow
us to concentrate on the real content of the application to deliver
real tangible benefits to our customers and their businesses.
Silverlight's flexibility also bridges the gap between web and
desktop software, enabling applications to easily be started from
the browser and on to the Windows Start Menu. Some
applications may even be used when offline.
By using Silverlight our developers can uniquely use their
current .Net Development knowledge, and also use the C# language.
This familiarity ensures that our developers produce first class
code that continuously exceeds our customers' expectations, on time
and on budget.
