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If I Were in a Silverlight Focus Group, Here are Ten Things I Would Say.

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17 Jan 2011CPOL3 min read 11.3K   1   4
Ten things I would say if I were in a Silverlight focus group

Silverlight is a great product right off the shelf. I use it, love it and spend a lot of time helping the community understand it. This however, doesn’t mean that I don’t think that it can get better. If I were invited to a Microsoft Focus Group about Silverlight, here are 10 things I would say:

  1. We need more navigation templates.
    • I’ve found (4) templates that Microsoft has released (Cosmo, Windows 7, Accent and JetPack). This number needs to be around 16. In order to get more people developing for Silverlight, we need to give them a variety of templates to get them off the ground quickly.
  2. Silverlight needs to ship with the next version of Windows.
    • At least version 4 needs to be pre-installed on Windows going forward. It’s small, in its own sandbox and I cannot find a reason for it not to be included.
  3. Silverlight needs to run on more platforms.
    • iOS and Android are the key here. I think Microsoft should shoot for Android first since I believe Android will take the lead in the mobile market (at least for the short-term). It would also be great to see Microsoft use Silverlight as the focus on their new tablets / “AppleTV”. I would even invest in getting it working with Kinect.
  4. When creating a new project in Silverlight, we should have the option to create a Unit Test.
    • Most Silverlight developers are not unit testing. If this is surprising to you, then you need to get out and talk to more developers. I partially blame this on Microsoft. When you create a new ASP.NET MVC application, you simply put a check to create a Unit Test project. We need the same thing for Silverlight. We should steer the developer into the right direction.
  5. Design patterns such as MVVM need to be easier to implement in Silverlight solutions.
    • I’d go so far as to say that MVVM Light should ship with Visual Studio. With the project / item templates and code snippets, Laurent puts you into the right direction. This is the way that it should have been. Easy for the 9-5 developer to grasp. I believe the majority of developers use code behind because that’s what is in all the demos provided by Microsoft. They are not trying to write sucky code it is that they simply don’t know a better way.
  6. The XAP Files should be obfuscated/unused references deleted by default when in “Release” mode.
    • A better Silverlight experience starts with a smaller XAP file. The less that a user has to download is the better, even with the majority of people on broadband. I would also recommend built-in obfuscation by Microsoft. People are paranoid that they can rename the .zip and run it through reflector.
  7. Get rid of the boring install experiences.
    • Here is a great write up on what I’m talking about. The default “Install Silverlight” and “Loading screens” suck. They suck bad. We need a choice of templates that a professional designer has created.
  8. Silverlight needs to supports more image formats.
    • For example: it would be great to use .gif’s without converting them to .png.
  9. Switching between Blend 4 and VS2010 to develop a Silverlight application is a pain.
    • Probably one of the biggest issues that I can’t think of a good solution for. It would be nice if VS2012 had the best of both worlds and you never have to leave VS.
  10. We need reporting controls with SSRS included with the Silverlight Toolkit.
    • I can’t think of another control that we need built into the toolkit. It would also be helpful to have export to .xls, .pdf and .doc included with the control.

I hope that this post will at least get a few people talking. Who knows, Microsoft could be working on these things right now. Thanks for reading!

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License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Software Developer (Senior) Telerik
United States United States
Michael Crump is a Silverlight MVP and MCPD that has been involved with computers in one way or another for as long as he can remember, but started professionally in 2002. After spending years working as a systems administrator/tech support analyst, Michael branched out and started developing internal utilities that automated repetitive tasks and freed up full-time employees. From there, he was offered a job working at McKesson corporation and has been working with some form of .NET and VB/C# since 2003.

He has worked at Fortune 500 companies where he gained experience in embedded systems design and software development to systems administration and database programming, and everything in between.

His primary focus right now is developing healthcare software solutions using Microsoft .NET technologies. He prefers building infrastructure components, reusable shared libraries and helping companies define, develop and automate process standards and guidelines.

You can read his blog at: MichaelCrump.net or follow him on Twitter at @mbcrump.

Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralMy vote of 5 Pin
solaadio24-Jan-11 3:49
solaadio24-Jan-11 3:49 
GeneralInteresting but... Pin
Kunal Chowdhury «IN»19-Jan-11 0:54
professionalKunal Chowdhury «IN»19-Jan-11 0:54 
GeneralRe: Interesting but... Pin
mbcrump19-Jan-11 1:36
mentormbcrump19-Jan-11 1:36 
GeneralRe: Interesting but... Pin
ednrg24-Jan-11 3:45
ednrg24-Jan-11 3:45 

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