Silverlight and Flex

[invidia]

I need some input on this. I'm trying to make a financial RIA that manages the user's debt and budget. I had my share in experimenting with SL and Adobe Flex but not to the point where I have to make a complex application. I also want to incorporate the web app into a ASP.NET site, since .NET is my area of expertise.

At the moment SL makes the most sense since I would be developing in the .NET environment. But SL seems to be lacking built-in charts and graphics components, which my project will be centered around. It looks like I have to build graphs using the .NET drawing code. I've seen Flex's use of graphs and charts and it fits what I will be doing. It will also be a data intensive application, so SL seems to be the better choice for this.

I am looking to attract as many users as possible and Flex would seem to be the best choice. Not sure which one to use. If anyone with more experience in both of these technologies lend me some feedback?

 

[Crusty]

I could be wrong, but it's my understanding that with Silverlight you can use any WPF or Windows Form controls in your display, so if you find a charting library for WPF that suits your needs you should be able to use that.

 

[Rangoric]

http://silverlight.codeplex.com/ I haven't really used the charting tools in there but you might want to give em a look.

 

[invidia]

http://silverlight.codeplex.com/ I haven't really used the charting tools in there but you might want to give em a look.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that one. Most of the good ones I have found so far are proprietary and rather expensive.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I could be wrong, but it's my understanding that with Silverlight you can use any WPF or Windows Form controls in your display, so if you find a charting library for WPF that suits your needs you should be able to use that.

It's certainly not any WPF code, as my forays into WPF3D will happily attest to. You sure you're not thinking of WPF browser apps, which are not the same as silverlight?

 

[Crusty]

It's certainly not any WPF code, as my forays into WPF3D will happily attest to. You sure you're not thinking of WPF browser apps, which are not the same as silverlight?

I could be 😛. My silverlight experience is very limited, but IIRC Silverlight uses a subset of the .NET framework that includes support for WPF so I don't see why one couldn't use any WPF control they want.

 

[Markbnj]

I could be 😛. My silverlight experience is very limited, but IIRC Silverlight uses a subset of the .NET framework that includes support for WPF so I don't see why one couldn't use any WPF control they want.

Silverlight uses a subset of WPF. WPF controls will not work with Silverlight as they will not have been built against the Silverlight version of the CLR. If they don't step outside the subset of stuff that is supported you can actually change like 1 value in the assembly and make them work. David Betz did a blog post on it last year. But, usually they do use stuff that isn't supported, otherwise they would just rebuild the code and put out a Silverlight version too 🙂.

There are a lot of components available for SL now, including a number of charting tools. Shouldn't be hard to find something.

 

[Crusty]

Silverlight uses a subset of WPF. WPF controls will not work with Silverlight as they will not have been built against the Silverlight version of the CLR. If they don't step outside the subset of stuff that is supported you can actually change like 1 value in the assembly and make them work. David Betz did a blog post on it last year. But, usually they do use stuff that isn't supported, otherwise they would just rebuild the code and put out a Silverlight version too 🙂.

There are a lot of components available for SL now, including a number of charting tools. Shouldn't be hard to find something.

Good point, I didn't think about having to target a different CLR version.
Now I'm curious to see what you can't do in Silverlight... 😛

 

[Markbnj]

Good point, I didn't think about having to target a different CLR version.
Now I'm curious to see what you can't do in Silverlight... 😛

Less and less all the time, and in fact there is a bit of a debate right now about whether SL4 is complete enough that it's "out of browser" app support makes desktop WPF obsolete.