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.
Best Answer
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.