August 27th, 2009
Out of the browser = out of this world.
There are a lot of resources out there documenting Flash vs Silverlight (ShineDraw is a good one, and provides tons of little demos and source code), and at the end of the day if you want to make a weird rotating interface that blurs and bounces when you throw it, you can pull it off in either. The real question- particularly if you are a shop that has done pretty much everything up to this point in Flash- is “Why”?
Why go to the trouble of learning new tools and juming through some hoops when we can keep doing things like we’ve been doing?
Jack and I will have different answers. I know there are some technical bits he is appreciating, but from my perspective, I just want to make awesome stuff, and I need a reason to use Silverlight other than much higher quality video support (especially if the bulk of my projects aren’t video based). To me, I want to make awesome web apps that can break out of the browser and live on the desktop. And Silverlight 3 is starting to deliver that in a sweet way.
Yes, I know about AIR, and I am not a fan. As a mac end user, I feel like I am getting a compromised experience- the clunky performance doesn’t help this perception either.
We’re starting to play with one ourselves, but until we unleash it, I’d like to take a sec and point out a particularly awesome example of this in action- Gadfly, from Clarity Consultanting. (Full disclosure- we met some Clarity folks out having some beers last night and they are nice folks).
First, it’s a nice, full featured web-based twitter client authored in Silverlight. See:
Nice. But where it get’s really cool is clicking on that little “out of browser” button. That brings up a very familiar looking screen to those used to installing modern Mac apps.
Very Cool. Upon launching it, Gadfly behaves like a regular Mac App, with a dock icon, and about this app screen and so on. The best part, it’s the same app thats deployed online, and I didn’t need to install and optional runtime environment locally to run it. I just hit the button. Compare that to tweetdeck or something, where you have to go install the AIR framework before you can even see the app in action.
No contest. Silverlight 3 is the best cross platform tool for deploying rich internet apps (RIAs as the cool kids say) on the web and desktop in one fell swoop, and THAT’S why I am interested in jumping through a couple hoops to get a new tool into my team’s toolbox.
[...] Out of the browser = out of this world. at Mess with Silverlight http://www.messwithsilverlight.com/2009/08/ – view page – cached #Mess With Silverlight Feed Mess with Silverlight » Out of the browser = out of this world. Comments Feed Mess with Silverlight Welcome to Mess with Silverlight Tighter integration for tighter products. — From the page [...]
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“Compare that to tweetdeck or something, where you have to go install the AIR framework before you can even see the app in action.”
I had to install Silverlight before I could see Gladfly in action. How is that any different?
Posted by Scott on September 25th, 2009
If you’ve already got Silverlight installed, it’s a much more seamless experience, IMO, then having to go get the Air Runtime kit IN ADDITION to the regular flash plugin.
Also, correct me if I am wrong, but from a dev side, you cant just enable regular flash objects to magically turn into Air apps.. you have to do download a separate version.
Posted by Rob on September 28th, 2009