Silverlight's developer appeal, designer challenge

Recently I have been working with Microsoft Silverlight, looking at how to put together a simple database application. I am no designer; my interest in Silverlight is to do with cross-platform deployment, a consistent runtime, and an alternative to HTML and Javascript. It seems I am not alone in this respect; the Silverlight forums are dominated by programming rather than design queries. Here are the message counts at the time of writing:

• Programming with .NET: 61,022
• Designing with Silverlight: 4,912

The Silverlight 3 wish list is also illuminating. You soon get a feel for what developers are most frustrated about, such as: no printing support, no easy way to save documents to the user's hard drive, ugly fonts, no clipboard support, no access to devices like web cams and microphones, and no support for WSHttpBinding which adds transactions and reliable messaging to web services.

Only a few of these things are fixed in the Silverlight 3.0 beta. There is a file save dialog, and text rendering is improved though Microsoft is a long way behind Adobe Flash in this respect.

That said, Silverlight 3 does offer substantial improvements for business applications. For example, in Silverlight 2.0 you have to handle client-side validation manually, whereas Silverlight 3.0 adds validation support similar to what is in ASP.NET. There is also a new server-side piece called .NET RIA Services, which wraps key areas like authentication and transactions. Although Silverlight cannot do real transactions, .NET RIA Services introduces changesets, which let you bundle a set of database updates into a single web service call. You can also include arbitrary custom operations, such as approving a purchase order. On the server side, where you do have transaction support, this is processed and can succeed or fail as an entire unit.

Despite the snags, there is a lot to like in Silverlight. As a GUI framework it works really well, and it is good to know that special effects and transitions are available are available if you need them. Microsoft appears to have executed well on the challenge of creating a smaller, cross-platform build of the .NET Framework, which is really Silverlight's key advantage.

Another plus is the ability to work in Visual Studio with the server and client projects side by side, integrated for debugging. You can set a breakpoint in the Silverlight client, and another in the ASP.NET web service implementation, and it just works.

Presuming that Microsoft's continues its rapid pace of Silverlight development, my guess it that it will evolve into an excellent client for .NET applications, since this is what the community is demanding. As yet though, Silverlight has made little impact on the wider world of web design, which remains dominated by Flash, and it is hard to see that changing.