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What Gives? Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR - Guy kolbis
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 11:29 AM kolbis

What Gives? Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR

After reading Ryan Stewart post about "Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR".

I wanted to add some personal experience and notes.

RAD – Rapid Application Development

Another thing to consider is that silverlight integrates well with wcf and web services, that means that building a client server apps is easier. When I tried using Air, I had to write either HTML file or Flash and in order to communicate with the server I had to use Ajax calles or HTTP get requests. It is possible to achieve, but it is less trivial then building the same app with silverlight OOB.

Silverlight OOB & WPF

OOB for silverlight has its benefits over WPF. For instance, consider users that don't have .NET framework 3.5 installed. In order to run WPF app, they will need to download ~200 MB. This is not an option. So, if you want to deliver a lightweight app to the desktop, it only requires ~5 MB.

OOB – Out Of Browser Winodow

One more thing is the OOB window. With silverlight we have no control over the layout. for instance we cannot change the border, the toolbox and etc. It might sound picky, but it can really annoying...

Air on the other hand allows you to customize the window.

Permissions

With that said, I think that the OOB should have the same permissions as Air. Currently it limits us the developers and the companies to deliver great solutions that interact with the desktop.

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# re: What Gives? Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR

Edgar כתב/ה

I actually think it's a huge advantage that Silverlight OOB apps run in the sandbox.  The sandbox is a trusted environment.  This makes it possible for me to write applications in Silverlight that the user can just trust, with AIR that is not possible.  I realize that this means there are some things that can't be done with Silverlight OOB that can be done in AIR, but honestly those are few and far between.  In almost all instances where the sandbox gets in the way the developer can get around that by taking advantage of the resources on the server, where no such sandbox will exist.

Also when doing Flex development don't forget about using AMF for communication to the server.  If you're using an ASP.NET back end you'll need a third party gateway.  I recommend Fluorine.

Thursday, August 27, 2009 9:37 PM

# re: What Gives? Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR

Tomer Shamam כתב/ה

As for WPF, you can pick the "Client-only Framework subset" and it's about 26MB!.

Also developing real business applications with 5MB comparing to what you've got using WPF, its like eating spaghetti with only a spoon.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 9:56 AM

# re: What Gives? Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR

kolbis כתב/ה

Hi Tommer,

Still 26 MB is a lot to download. Beside that is it possible for a client that has no .NET framework installed to only download the "Client Only Subset"?

Wednesday, September 02, 2009 1:39 AM

# re: What Gives? Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR

Ryan Stewart כתב/ה

"Another thing to consider is that silverlight integrates well with wcf and web services, that means that building a client server apps is easier. When I tried using Air, I had to write either HTML file or Flash and in order to communicate with the server I had to use Ajax calles or HTTP get requests. It is possible to achieve, but it is less trivial then building the same app with silverlight OOB."

That's not really true. We've got what I consider the best RIA stack around. You can use ColdFusion or LiveCycle Data Services to handle a lot of client->server communications for you with the RemoteObject tag and the AMF format (a very efficient way to transfer data). And instead of being limited to .NET there are AMF implementations for almost every major server-side language.

=Ryan

ryan@adobe.com

Wednesday, September 02, 2009 9:07 AM

# re: What Gives? Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR

Tori כתב/ה

This article aicvheed exactly what I wanted it to achieve.

Sunday, October 30, 2011 7:06 PM

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