What is better, C# and Silverlight or HTML5 / Lightswitch and Javascript?

[RayLopez99]

For a three-tier architecture web services application.

Of course it is C# and Silverlight. But the issue is why the marketplace has moved away from this logical API / language to HTML5? I think it was Microsoft bowing to marketing pressure rather than logical thought. Microsoft thinks it can influence HTML5 to become like Silverlight in the future. Which is fine, but in the interim we have to suffer with Javascript, which is prone to error. I myself played around with LightSwitch and did not likeit.

RL

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

For a three-tier architecture web services application.

Of course it is C# and Silverlight. But the issue is why the
marketplace has moved away from this logical API / language to HTML5?
I think it was Microsoft bowing to marketing pressure rather than
logical thought. Microsoft thinks it can influence HTML5 to become
like Silverlight in the future. Which is fine, but in the interim we
have to suffer with Javascript, which is prone to error. I myself
played around with LightSwitch and did not like it.

Everybody is going the "HTML5" (really HTML+JS+CSS) route.

MS is dropping SL for HTML5.

Adobe is dropping Flash for HTML5.

Oracle is dropping Java applets for HTML5.

HTML5 have some advantages:
* vendor independent (not ties to MS, Adobe or Oracle)
* many more developers available with skills

It also has some disadvantages:
* it is 3 rather old technologies that were originally
created for something else that have been hacked together
to provide RIA functionality
* in general the web paradigm is more cumbersome than the
traditional fat client model

But the market has spoken.

8 mm vs VHS etc..

Arne

 

[RayLopez99]

But the market has spoken.

8 mm vs VHS etc..

Arne

Good points Arne, as usual. You watch though, MSFT is on those "Standards Committees" and slowly, year by year, they will steer HTML5 to become more like the old Silverlight was. And those writers of HowTo books and seminarspeakers will rejoice, as they'll have new students to teach the old Silverlight to! The more things change...the more they stay the same.

RL