I was going to take one small code example and try to put it in a browser with Silverlight this evening. I added some code, then I added a reference to System.ComponentModel. There was considerably less there. I then began comparing Silverlight’s assemblies with what you get in a normal .net app. Needless to say - there is no where near the same level of stuff. They have done well - it feels like developing a normal .net app with C#, or with Ruby which is great. BUT there is a TON missing compared to a normal .net 3.5 app.

Let us look for example @ just the System stuff:

Here is where Silverlight’s System assembly is:

Here is what is in there:

Here is what is in the .net 3.5 Framework’s system:

So -while it is a great effort to get this stuff running cross platform and in a browser - there is simply a lot of stuff missing that you would be accustomed to when just coding up in the .net 3.5 framework.

-Chris

You can now go and get the Dynamic Silverlight bits here. This will let you run Silverlight 2 applications based on IronRuby and IronPython in the browser. It feels like real WPF actually - you make xaml files, you make ruby files, you embed them in an silverlight applet in a webpage and you are good to go.

Not only this - but you can also build your Dynamic Silverlight apps with Mono on a Mac. the downloads have the things you need to do so.

XBAP based WPF applications will have the ‘full richness’ of WPF - but you will only run on Windows machines. I still need to sort out the security sandboxing models of XBAP applications and for Silverlight applications. How do you interact with local resources from a Silverlight app?? Can you?? How much client side state can you store in a Silverlight app - can I store 20 mb of static data in client memory?? Regarding XBAPS - can you do everything you can do in an installed WPF app via an XBAP app?? Questions, questions, questions.

With MIX 08 Happening this past week, there is just a ton going on in the Microsoft community. I also had to download the iPhone SDK (even though I have not bought an iPhone yet) just to see what it was all about since that was the other bug techie dev news this week IPHONE SDK!