3 ms·

There is probably another reason here. WPF and Silverlight were meant to bring rich beautiful interfaces to Windows. But they did not succeed not because of the

by teyc 15y ago

There is probably another reason here. WPF and Silverlight were meant to bring rich beautiful interfaces to Windows. But they did not succeed not because of the technology. The reason is precisely because a majority of the people who are prepared to learn .NET is the old breed of developers who still think in terms of WIMP interfaces. So years after WPF, there are few good looking apps in the wild. In contrast, the devsigner community in HTML is vibrant and competitive. Just look at how many beautiful SaaS apps there are. MS needs these people working on their stack and they realize Silverlight and WPF is a hard sell for these people who already have HTML chops. If they could get these devsigners working on Windows, it will present a shot in the arm for better looking UI on Windows again.

Meai 15y ago
Well this is off topic in my opinion, but I think Silverlight simply has worse designer tools than Flash. There isn't anything intrinsically bad about .NET, it just so happens that the tools are nothing a designer would ever put up with. I encourage you to try Blend...defining a few animations is magnitudes more complicated than just drag and dropping stuff into keyframes and then pressing play.
jinushaun 15y ago
No, as a WPF/Silverlight developer, I think those technologies failed to take off because the development workflow of WPF/Silverlight simply sucks ass. Expression Blend is awful and is incompatible enough with VS that it becomes a nuisance to use. XAML, WPF and Silverlight were designed by .NET developers for .NET developers, but marketed towards designers. You cannot develop/design in that ecosystem without already knowing C#, VS project and solution files. The workflow was very dev-centric, and that's why I think it failed to take off as MS would like.
- teyc 15y ago
  Well, the tools may be awful, but designers are not easily persuaded to change their tools. Even today, Photoshop trumps Illustrator in popularity. There is no workflow from PSD to HTML other than a secondary market of slicers. If MS wished to succeed, it had to bring the same familiar workflow into the process. The workflow was very dev-centric, and that's why I think it failed to take off as MS would like. +1

by teyc 15y ago

Meai 15y ago

Well this is off topic in my opinion, but I think Silverlight simply has worse designer tools than Flash. There isn't anything intrinsically bad about .NET, it just so happens that the tools are nothing a designer would ever put up with. I encourage you to try Blend...defining a few animations is magnitudes more complicated than just drag and dropping stuff into keyframes and then pressing play.

jinushaun 15y ago

No, as a WPF/Silverlight developer, I think those technologies failed to take off because the development workflow of WPF/Silverlight simply sucks ass. Expression Blend is awful and is incompatible enough with VS that it becomes a nuisance to use. XAML, WPF and Silverlight were designed by .NET developers for .NET developers, but marketed towards designers. You cannot develop/design in that ecosystem without already knowing C#, VS project and solution files. The workflow was very dev-centric, and that's why I think it failed to take off as MS would like.

teyc 15y ago
Well, the tools may be awful, but designers are not easily persuaded to change their tools. Even today, Photoshop trumps Illustrator in popularity. There is no workflow from PSD to HTML other than a secondary market of slicers. If MS wished to succeed, it had to bring the same familiar workflow into the process. The workflow was very dev-centric, and that's why I think it failed to take off as MS would like. +1