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From: Steve Richter
www.silverlight.net has loads of videos that explain how it all works.
Let me preface by saying that I expect to use Silverlight - for something - someday - perhaps. But that standard HTML w/ a little JavaScript may be better - for most things. Let me begin with a picture:
http://www.radile.com/rdweb/temp/attendance.pdf
Silverlight is touted for rich user interfaces, and I couldn't agree more about the importance of user interfaces in applications. The example above may not look like a traditional database maintenance application, but it is. It provides a way for school administrators to query and maintain classroom attendance, quickly.
The calendar format enables users to see non-attendance days (weekends and holidays - disabled), days when attendance was not taken (light blue), days when attendance was taken (yellow), days when all students were marked present (green).
Taking attendance may be as streamlined as clicking the "All present" radio button, then clicking the "day". An AJAX request is forwarded to the server to update the database, and the response from the server updates the color on the screen, or displays an error alert - that day may be a future date!
Or, clicking a day may toggle over to the seating chart view of the class (not shown, above) to similarly mark individual student attendance.
How does this relate to Silverlight? First, you don't need to download entire applications to desktops to offer rich, streamlined user interfaces. Also, consider that the teacher's version of the application is exactly the same as the administrative version, except the initial navigation - teachers don't need to drill down to their classes - the server already "knows", her classes, and doesn't need to expose the drill-down interface.
If you were doing this application in Silverlight, however, it seems that there would be a strong tendency to create a teacher's version and administrator's version, separately - and reference them from separate hyperlinks. Two applications to maintain - even though the interface is essentially identical in both.
-Nathan.
midrange.com
