In a completely non-scientific straw poll conducted on Telerik Watch over the last two weeks, the overwhelming majority of respondents said they will be waiting for Silverlight 1.1 before doing any serious Silverlight development. This is in sync with my general belief and statements
that Silverlight 1.0 is more or less a "placeholder" release for Silverlight 1.1 in most developer's minds. Sure there are some big Microsoft partners releasing Silverlight 1.0-based applications, but the real goal of Silverlight 1.0 is to start generating the all important install base for the auto-updating Silverlight plug-in. The serious use of Silverlight on many sites is going to depend heavily on Microsoft's ability to quickly distribute their plug-in to a large percentage of Internet users.
I'm not suggesting that Silverlight 1.0 doesn't have any merit. If you look at the "large partners" implementing Silverlight applications this year you'll find a lot of interesting media-centric applications- MLB, WWE, HSN. And that's about all you'll find. Silverlight 1.0 is a great web-based video player, but a lot of business applications aren't looking for fancy video players. Instead, business developers are waiting for Silverlight 1.1 before they really place a lot of weight in this new platform.
But don't take my word for it. The survey says it all.
2 comments:
Until SilverLight has a control framework that can be used to develope RIA, it's pretty much useless. Too much work for not enough return. Without some sort of automatic install I can't see it getting the penetration needed to compete with Flash. And of course designers hate the blasted thing, it's just a bit too technical ... apparently :) Still, it could be a decent enough platform and it would be worth it just to get rid of viewstate! :P
Pete
count me in the waiting list as well :)
the tools for SL 1.0 are not mature and currently they seem a bit cluttered.
i hope things will be good to start SL when 1.1 will be ready.
// chall3ng3r //
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