Why change from WPF to Silverlight 4?

Question

I\'m working on an application we made WPF instead of Silverlight as we wanted a full blown desktop application with the whole unique feeling and advantages that gives. Howe

Answer 1

As Silverlight is a brand and is being heavily promoted by Microsoft project sponsers and funders are more likely to know it whereas WPF although well known by us will not be known outside the community.

So for future project development this may drive demand for SL4 over WPF particularly if there is a perception that Silverlight development is cheaper than WPF if the learning curve is less for a subset technology (although I don't agree with that sentiment myself).

Of course as far as your current app is concerned switching to SL4 would be nothing more than betting on being an early adopter unless there is a specific feature that you need that is in SL4 and not WPF.

I like the power of WPF but come SL5 I think we will all be on that bandwagon what by 2012?

Answer 2

A couple major reasons to consider SL4 over WPF

1. Smaller framework size. Granted SL4 will probably be much bigger than SL3, but currently the Silverlight framework is about 1/10 the size of the smallest version of .NET 3.5.
2. Cross platform support- Silverlight runs on Mac and Linux(in theory). This may not be a big issue to you but it is critical in some scenarios.
3. Much better integration with HTML. Silverlight can live inside a web page and with version 4 html can live inside of Silverlight. Once again, this may not apply to you, but if you need to interoperte with exisiting web apps, Silverlight is definitely the way to go. It will also make it much easier to transition to the web is you need to.
4. It's clearly where Microsoft if putting its energy. I wouldn't be surprised if WPF is pretty much dead in the water, much like Winforms and LINQ to SQL.