Monday, 25 August 2008

ASP.NET Silverlight (A vision - Part 1)

At the moment ASP.NET and Silverlight are two different sets of technology.  If you want to build an ASP.NET application you would use an ASP.NET Project, if you want to build a Silverlight application you would use a Silverlight project and integrate with ASP.NET.

ASP.NET 3.5

Silverlight could fit in really well with ASP.NET (but currently doesn't).  However in ASP.NET 3.5 this started to change.  There are now 2 Silverlight based ASP.NET controls which you can drop onto your regular Web Form (Silverlight and Media Player).

ASP.NET The Future (my guess)

If I were to take a punt into the ASP.NET Silverlight future this is where I would guess the ASP.NET framework is going (p.s. I have no actual insight into this, I am just taking a guess).  Slowly but surely I reckon more and more Silverlight based ASP.NET controls will be made available to drop into your designer.

A real easy guess is that a Deep Zoom control will become a standard control on the ASP.NET designer.  There is no reason that you couldn't start to develop such controls yourself (and I encourage you to do so), however I think/hope that one day they will be made available as standard controls.

Next Articles

So in my next article I will discuss in more details where else I think ASP.NET will change to accommodate Silverlight (including modifications to existing controls) not just new ones.

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