Is it common for webpages to be built entirely with Silverlight?

Question

I am just starting to learn Silverlight, not too familiar with Markup languages, nor web development.

My question is, is it common to build a web page entirely out of silverlight, instead of having silverlight plug-ins in HTML pages? What are the advantages and disadvantages, thanks :)

Are there any sample codes for building a Silverlight website somewhere? I couldn't find any really relevant ones..

Thanks

Answer 1

Benefits of Silverlight :

• Silverlight offers cross-domain support for applications
• Silverlight plugin is just a 1MB download and is supported in windows XP and above.
• Silverlight also has a browser plugin but still needs to reach at pace with flash.
• Supports asynchronous calls

Disadvantages :

• Silverlight cannot support WSE Web services directly.

A good read :

• Silverlight vs Flash
• Silverlight Overview
• HTML 5 v/s Flash v/s Silverlight

Answer 2

It's impossible to build a page with 100% silverlight. You got to at least have the tab wo include the Silverlight.

That being said, it really depend on your objectives for the page you're designing. If it's an intranet application, I'de say it will be mostly one silverlight application. If you want to create an information web page where a part of it really need a component only found in plug-ins, then I would put only this part in silverlight and leave the reste in HTMl.

The main advantage of Silverlight compared to HTML is that you can do a lot more and it will look more like a 'normal' client application, but it does need a plugin so not everyone will be able to see it. This tend to be less and less true however.

Answer 3

One of the main disadvantages is that the website is not browser-independent anymore. Silverlight is not supported on every OS.

The advantages could be the richer user interfaces and controls you can create. But with HTML (5?) and especially with jQuery-like frameworks, this advantage is not so big anymore.