What do you miss in Silverlight now? What do you want in v4?
Monday, July 27, 2009
I know that not much time passed since the release of Silverlight 3, but I’m looking ahead and thinking about Silverlight 4 (or whatever the next version is called). Features like printing, HTML formatting, better duplex support, etc are currently not supported out of the box, but many of you need them. I’m interested in hearing from you what are the features that you miss?
Something that you really need in building line-of-business or other rich media applications. Something that will boost the process of delivering your applications in time, that will boost your performance.
Of course, there is a way to support printing in Silverlight apps now, but is that what you really expect from a platform like Silverlight? Do you need anything more? Anything that can be easier and faster achieved?
How many times did you hear from clients that they want ‘just a little formatting in the text’? Or a hyperlink?
Entry Filed under: Silverlight. Tags: Silverlight.
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1.
Rene | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 9:26 am
Basic formatting and Inline Hyperlinks.
The WriteableBitmap should be extended like Flash’s BitmapData: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/display/BitmapData.html
2.
Joan Miro | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 10:52 am
Support for commanding
More 3D
VisualBrush support
Menu/MenuItem controls
3.
Yogesh Potdar | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 11:57 am
Binary Serilization is still missing in SL3, We are not able to achive Binary Serilization, as SL3 does not support IClonable and ISerilizable.
4.
DavidL | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 12:12 pm
- UDP support!
5.
Emil | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 1:36 pm
@Rene, yes, basic formatting and inline hyperlinks seem like the most wanted features in LOB applications. Could you point anything specific from Flash’s BitmapData that you miss in WriteableBitmap?
@Joan, Commanding – yes, there are a lot of custom solutions out there, but there is a lot to do in that field.
@Yogesh, good point
@David, UDP/P2P are in the list. Do you want them for some gaming or you have another case?
6.
Rene | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Missing WriteableBitmap:
Esp. Blitting: copyPixels(), fill() / clear()
7.
ANaimi | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Clipboard! my current project requires clipboard access.
8.
Mark | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 7:02 pm
wsHTTP binding support for message level encryption not requiring https.
Better support for localization.
9.
Rene Schulte | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 7:06 pm
I almost forgot. WriteableBitmap should also integrate my Extensions:
http://kodierer.blogspot.com/2009/07/silverlight-3-writeablebitmap.html
Webcam & microphone support would also be great.
10.
Rene Schulte | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Sorry wrong link. The Extensions are here: http://kodierer.blogspot.com/2009/07/writeablebitmap-extension-methods.html
11.
Alexey Zakharov | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Rich Text Support. (Tables, Inline images, lists, paragraphs etc) Text should support select and copy operations. (Flex can do it very nice!!!!)
Peer To Peer communications.
Better Design to Blend import.
Full Linux support.
RIA Services and other MS Silverlight stuff should be open source!!
12.
Alexey Zakharov | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Microphone and Camera support.
No more ugly code generation based features!
Dynamic resources.
13.
krudo meir | Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 9:08 pm
hebrew & arabic support would be nice
14.
Pooran | Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 4:56 am
Audio and Video recording
15.
Ivan Dragoev | Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 6:32 am
Mic and Camera but with the possibility to use the installed codecs for compress the video/audio stream.
Just imagine video conference based on SL…
Another important for LOB is printing.
16.
Anthony | Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I want to do basic FlowDocument Style stuff. I know that full Flowdocument is too large, but I want to show text that wraps, has formatting (bold, italic, font size etc) applied to parts and has inline clickable hyperlinks and other UI elements (e.g. buttons).
17.
Rene | Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Another one.
Improved 3D capabilities and GPU acceleration. The Pixel shaders should also be executed on the GPU if possible.
XNA in the browser would be the best. Imagine all the stuff one could do. A good 3D game could really push Silverlight.
18.
Erik | Friday, July 31, 2009 at 8:36 am
My request would be less syntactical differences between WPF xaml and Silverlight xaml, so basically more support for code reuse across WPF and Silverlight
I agree with Alexey Zakharov on the text select and copy support
19.
Erik | Friday, July 31, 2009 at 8:41 am
Multi screen support for (for instance) a setup with a desktop with screen + beamer
20.
Emil | Friday, July 31, 2009 at 9:06 am
@Erik, the multi screen support sounds interesting, but I don’t see what exactly Silverlight have to support. Am I missing your idea?
Thank for all the comments. Most of them are already in the list that Microsoft provides publicly so I think they’ll make it in the next release.
Better compatibility with WPF, rich text support, camera and mic, P2P, 3D are all features that can boost Silverlight adoption and make it ideal for a lot of usage scenarios.
21.
Peter Ryskin | Friday, July 31, 2009 at 9:27 am
Fullscreen support for multiple display devices would be grand:
Say I run a SL media presentation on monitor 3 – it could be a video walkthrough that I intend to follow <- business value, I learn to use a new system whilst having hands on.
I would really like to be able to Fullscreen the video on monitor 3 so I can see all details clearly and then turn to monitor 2, following the video step by step.
Currently thats not possible, as soon as I click on the other application, the fullscreen is collapsed.
Even for a laptop user with a fixed screen, this would be beneficial.
22.
Erik | Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 9:30 am
@Emil: Peter Ryskin explains one scenario well, another would be functionality like PowerPoint has: when pressing F5 on a dual screen setup, the presentation is sent to the second screen.
In other words; I would like to be able to open a secondary window in my application, and have it open full screen on a second screen.
23.
Brandon | Friday, July 31, 2009 at 7:33 pm
VisualBrush
DrawingBrush
Commanding
Databinding functionality in sync with WPF (i.e. UpdateSourceTrigger.PropertyChanged)
UDP/P2P
System.ServiceModel.Description.IOperationBehavior
24.
brian | Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 10:36 am
this is more of a LOB request: a silverlight version of the SQL Server ReportViewer control (currently available for ASP.NET and Winforms) would be awesome! This would make reporting a lot more integrated.
25.
Keith | Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 9:45 am
MVVM support built in like ASP.NET MVC. Project templates, and commanding, etc. Enhanced Unit test suport. Make it easy for us to build applications the right way.
26.
Anthony | Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 10:15 am
MVVM will be in WPF first if it’s ever built in. This is an app development style (even if its a very good one), and so arguably the library should be neutral on these – support it but not mandate it.
Prism apparently handles this as the “official addon” for WPF and SL. The main problem with MVVM in SL now is that there are so many frameworks for it.
Commanding (as per WPF) in SL is definitely a good idea, once people just add it back in anyway with third-party code. Which means a confusion of choice again.
27.
Emil | Tuesday, August 4, 2009 at 10:42 am
@Anthony, that’s right! I completely agree with you. There is a lot of frameworks out there that implement the MVVM pattern, commanding, etc. I’m not sure why so many people develop their own implementation.
My personal feeling is that for now we should stick with Prism.
Silverlight.FX also provides some goodies in this direction, but there are Blend compatibility and design time issues.
Built-in MVVM pattern would serve like a good kick start for short term projects.