Quick Links: Part 1 | Part 2
Here is part three of my behind the scenes look at Christmas is Going to the Dogs Silverlight Extravaganza.
Hey, it's better than the Star Wars Holiday Special. ;)
Why Silverlight 1.0?
The first question I am often asked is: "Why use Silvrlight 1.0?"
The answer is simple: it's the only version of Silverlight that's not alpha software.
As excited as I am about the future of Silverlight, the reality is that version 1.0 is here and it's now. I don't feel comfortable forcing alpha bits on the general public.
Tim Sneath clearly says this on his blog:
It's great to see the excitement around using .NET for web development, of course, but Silverlight 1.1 (now known as 2.0) is not ready for "Go Live" usage at this stage, and the EULA explicitly prohibits deployment in production sites
[..]
And that’s why we’re not clearing 1.1 for "Go Live" / production usage at this stage – we don’t want it to be broadly deployed. It's not fair for us or anyone else to inflict alpha-quality software on their customer base to view a website!
So, that's why the Christmas Card, the Frank's World Nav Control, and Ball Breaker all in Silverlight 1.0.
They are all items I built for consumption by the general public and not just for fellow developers, geeks, and pre-RTM code junkies.
My LED control, on the other hand, is not something that you must use to view the web site and the audience is geared towards folks like me who like to mess around with alpha-bits.
Remember Silverlight 1.1 is in ALPHA, not beta.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.
Fellow AISers Pete Brown and Steve Suing both made the decision to build out the Carbon Calculator in 1.1.
The reason was that version 1.0 didn't meet their needs. (More about that here)
In my case, 1.0 fit the bill for all three of my projects.
Sure, it was a little harder to build stuff in and I missed having Intellisense, but the experience of "roughing it" really made me dig around and learn more.
The decision to use 1.1 over 1.0 should be based on required functionality, not developer comfort.