Do users have problems adopting Silverlight?

Question

My group is thinking about switching our platform for web UI from ASP.net to Silverlight for several reasons. To be clear, these are business websites that provide a service to our users, we develop and host them ourselves.

Has anyone switched their business / intranet web site from a traditional server-based web technology such as ASP.net to Silverlight? Or have you added Silverlight to your website? If so...

• Have your users complained or resisted installing Silverlight?
• Have any significant number of users been unable to install Silverlight?
• Have they commented on the look or responsiveness of Silverlight UI?
• What other comments have they had?

In short, are my web site's users gonna freak if I start using Silverlight on my page?
If your answer is "It depends" then please give an idea of what the determining factors are.

As an aside, is there an easy way to detect how many of your users install / have already installed Silverlight?

Edit:
Thanks for the answers so far! I may be reaching, but has anyone yet had concrete experience with deploying a Silverlight app? I was wondering if anyone had gone through this and if their users had any major issues.

Answer 1

No as a user I am not going to freak but it has put me in a position of not being able to use those site... reason.. we are now into version 4, I can neither install the current version or uninstall the file Microsoft is telling me to, in order to update. Have tried a couple times to do it and have wasted enough time now so if they need Silverlight to operate, I don't need to be on that site.

Answer 2

Other things you might want to consider when changing an existing website to Silverlight

• you want to keep as much content as possible as plain text for search engine rankings (if it's a public site)
• if a user has JavaScript disabled in their browser it will not be able to load embedded Silverlight content

Answer 3

Every .NET developer particularly ASP/WFP(XBAP) coders are the main benificiaries of Silverlight, they can bring Rich Internet Experience to thier users with a very little learning curve, by using your familiar choice of language wheter C# or VB or other .NET language. .NET developers can now create RIA in a breeze without learning new scripting language ;)).

Answer 4

To address Element's answer about it breaking the back button, Silverlight 3 has been released and has a navigation framework built into it which allows each "page" to have a separate url and maintains browser history so that the back button works.

Answer 5

Why don't you take a look at Visual WebGui @ www.visualwebgui.com. This way you will not have to choose presentation layer at this point and concentrate on developing a generic application which will currently support multi-browsers DHTML (no installation) or Silverlight... and they have plans to implement flash/flex which you will be able to use the same source code for... well how cool is that?

Answer 6

I'm not sure whether with "business web UI platform" you refer to your own website or to some web application you are selling.

• If you mean your own website, I agree with Samuel that you will currently limit your user base as not many "ordinary users" have Silverlight installed yet.
• If you are talking about a software you're selling, I think the most important fact to take into regard is whether your clients will find it problematic that they have to roll out software (the Silverlight framework) in comparison to buying an application that they only need to install on the server. We also had this discussion in my company (whether to switch from ASP.net with lots of JavaScript code on the client to either Silverlight or Flex), and we didn't do it because we thought the customers will not like that extra deployment effort. In addition, users (e.g. working in a bank, insurenace company etc.) are not allowed to install browser plug-ins due to company policies, so you would have a harder time selling to such clients when Silverlight is required.

Edit: Actually the fact that users who are surfing from their workplace are often not allowed to install browser plug-ins applies to both scenarios. It seems that an ever increasing number of employers put strict poicies into place where users can only use the software that is preinstalled or on a "whitelist", and do not have sufficient operating system rights to install anything on their own.

Answer 7

Netflix uses Silverlight for their website player, which is available for Windows and MacOS X. Everyuser who wants to use Netflix's streaming services on their computer need to use the player, as well as every video from the Olympics was available through NBC's site using Silverlight 2. That might help you to figure out some of the numbers related to users that have the plug in installed.

Also all the videos from the ASP .NET run on Silverlight in case you'd like a functionality example. The SDK integrates with visual studio and free, and there are also server side controlers which with the use of XAML their behavior and looks can be edited and customized.

Is a new technology and theres going to be skepticism but eventually will catch up, and users/programmers will stop dishing it without using it ;)

Answer 8

Speaking for myself as a user:

I haven't yet installed Silverlight, and if a site required it, I'd probably reconsider whether I really needed to visit that site in the first place. As a user, I don't see the need, or the benefit over Flash or plain AJAX. It's not widely used, so I'd be installing it just for 1 or 2 sites. And it doesn't do anything new from a user's point of view. Yes, it runs .NET, but as a user, I don't care. I'm not a big fan of Flash in the first place. For websites, I by far prefer plain, well, websites. Javascript is fine, AJAX is fine, Flash is a pain, and a Flash-clone from Microsoft is no better. The difference is that I need Flash anyway for other purposes, as it is used for a lot of content on the net. Silverlight isn't as ubiquitous.

I would never install Flash for a single website, and I will never install Silverlight for a single website either.

Websites are easier to navigate than Flash/Silverlight apps. They also work in any browser without requiring special plugins. And with today's AJAX prevalence, you can do a lot of things that a few years ago would have been done in Flash or Java applets only. Silverlight just seems late to the party in that respect.

Answer 9

One issue with using silverlight for a public website that a senior developer pointed out to me is it can totally break navigation (i.e. using the back button).

Answer 10

I would also say that if you're aiming for something available to everyone no matter what Operating System they might use. Silverlight is probably not the way to go at the moment.

If you really want something interactive, I would go the flex way. As flash is freely available on most platform. Mac/Linux/Windows and mobile devices.

And because I don't really value flash/silverlight.

I would say to do something with Ajax and javascript effects (prototype, jQuery or any other javascript lib I don't know). It should reduce the load time for users.

Switching completely to flash or silverlight might be a terrible idea...as for me, flash always make my firefox unstable...memory leak and things like that. As for silverlight, I do not have any support for it on my Os.

Answer 11

If you plan on making your website only usable by users with Silverlight, then you are going to limit the potential use of the site.

Whilst those in the know about IT, may well have heard of Silverlight, and have it installed, many users may not have at all, and asking them to download it to be able to view your website may very well put them off.

That said, if your users are not casual users, but ones who visit regularly, part of a community, or just plain have to use your site, then they will be more inclined to install Silverlight.

The only reason Flash has become so ubiquitous on the web today is that enough people had, or would download the client, mainly to be able to play flash based games! Once/If Silverlight gets to that point, then this will no longer be an issue.