Does anyone still develop XBAP Browser Apps | The Coffeehouse

m1keread
Bored of Captions

We are about to begin a development and have been looking into the pro's and cons of XBAP development versus Silverlight 3.0.

We do not want to know the technical differences between the two, these are plentifull if you search around. What we are interested in

is whether XBAP development/support is still ongoing. We cannot locate any roadmaps from MS on Silverlight, there also seems to be a huge web presence for Silverlight, whereas XBAP support is minimal at most. (Unless of course it does not require much web presence, as its just WPF in a browser).

We are developing an intranet LOB application, most of the posts (from 2007/2008) say go with XBAP, but feeling from whats around suggests Silverlight. We do no require any of the additional capabilities of WPF over Silverlight.

So, anyone starting a new browser development and using XBAP or is everyone on the Silverlight wagon?

Thanks

Mike

spivonious

If I was positive that my web app would only ever be used on Windows machines with .NET 3.5 installed and through IE (although I think Firefox supports them too), I would choose XBAP every time, simply because I get the whole framework and if I need to move the app out of the browser, it's simply a matter of changing a couple lines of XAML.

If there was even a small chance that my app would need to be run on Linux or OSX, or a windows machine that doesn't have .NET installed, then I'd go with Silverlight.

CKurt
while( ( !succeed=try() ) ) { }

In reply to spivonious

#Sep 1st @ 7:20 AM

Also, SilverLight 3.0 supports 'out-of-browser'. So I would go with silverlight. Also know more and more Framework functions are being included in SilverLight.

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

In reply to CKurt

#Sep 1st @ 9:09 AM

Only reason to use XBAP is to use things that are "out of the sandbox" like printing. Otherwise Silverlight 3 should suffice.

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

Another reason that Silverlight might be a better idea: if you start with a Silverlight-application, and later you decide that you made the wrong decision, you can migrate your application from Silverlight to XBAP a lot easier than it would be to migrate from XBAP to Silverlight.

figuerres
???

I am starting to work on some stuff in silverlight.

so far as i can see Silverlight is the way to go.

printing seems to be on the 4.0 list for them to add.

RIA looks very much like it will be a very usefull part of the tool set when it's finished. today it's got some bugs to watch out for but if you are just starting i would say start working with it and be ready for some changes before rtw / 1.0 status.

but even with pre-release bugs you can build working stuff and get familar with it.

one cool thing about RIA and WCF on silverlight is that the default config truns on HTTP Binary transport.

that makes the data a lot smaller over the wire.

magicalclick

XBAP is pretty much a developement stage for silverlight. Silverlight is the web version of WPF and XBAP is just something there before Silverlight matures. But mostly XBAP is for business uses. So, if you want to deploy web services, XBAP is probably the way to go because it offers more features.

Anyway, don't lisent to me too mcuh. I am not sure what I am talking about.

m1keread
Bored of Captions

Thanks for your input.

We have decided to go forward with Silverlight, as we are using MVVM pattern and have all our business logic in a separate application server, therefore we dont have a requirement for the full capabilities of the framework.

I still wonder if anyone is begining projects using XBAP technology

contextfree

"Still"? Tongue Out

I'd love to use the full WPF in the browser; Silverlight, even with v3, is still missing some capabilities I find significant. If only it were cross-platform ...