DXv2: Standby for Silverlight 5

I had to figure this out after installing 11.2. That's one morning (€ 60 per hour) spend for nothing...

I was under the impression that Microsoft gave up totally on silverlight and the new star was born called HTML 5.

I hear you Hans, I installed 11.2, ran project converter only to find all my silverlight projects not loading.  Thank god for source control.

what do you think (at DevExpress) about silverlight' future?

Yeah.. seems that the future is HTML5. What plans with this "new" toy??. Is DevExpress planning support it?.

I don't agree that  HTML 5 is the future. Yes,  some of the application that normally would have targeted Silverlight would go for HTML 5. But most of us would prefer XAML/C# based development.

The more important question is would you use javascript to develop your code or C#/VB.NET? I think most of the .NET developer will take the rout of C# + XAML. Only the developers that are coming from other backgrounds (IOS for example) might go for HTML + Javascript.

I certainly won't be starting any new projects using Silverlight.  I regret choosing silverlight for 2 projects I started last year.

Waitaminute! This means no possibilities for development on Windows Phone 7?!? O.o

I think you are fooling yourself, Abu.  Most of us do not prefer XAML/C# development.  Silverlight, just like Flash, is going to be a dead technology.  The sooner you embrace that fact and get ready for HTML5, the easier it will be for you in the future.  Scoff at me know if you like, but its true.

Heath, if HTML5/javascript is the future, it has a long way to go. No type check, no true polymorphism, no access to native apis, must deal with different renders and script interpreters...

XAML/.NET is a whole different story, and MS is committed to it in too many ways right now (SL, WPF, Windows 8, Windows Phone 7 and XBox) to just let it go.

HTML5 has a bright future ahead for web applications and some basic smart applications. But that doesn't mean there's no room for something else.

Something developed from the ground up to be an application platform. :)

Heath, this is the first time I am hearing someone prefers javascript over C#. Ineresting...

I agree with Crono completely, if you are developing pure web application HTML 5 totally makes sense. But for any other applications why would I prefer a typeless ugly language like javascript that's beyond my comprehension.

So, if I understand correctly, we still don't have the SL controls available in DXv2 even if we want to use them with SL4?

I have a DX Silverlight subscription but the installer does not show the Silverlight Controls (just Winforms).

BTW...can versions 2011.1 and 2011.2 coexist in the same machine? Or do I have to uninstall the 2011.1 components?

Thanks!

You might also have mentioned that this means there are no LightSwitch controls in v11.2 either!

If you are updating your Silverlight controls to ONLY work with Silverlight 5, what is going to happen to the LightSwitch controls given that LightSwitch ONLY supports Silverlight 4 at the moment?

As someone who is heavily involved in Silverlight development for the last 2 years, I would love to see SL go on forever. I have created production Apps in ASP.Net and Windows Forms. But SL is beautiful without a doubt.

I also discovered just now - after having installed 11.2 - that the SL controls won't be released until SL5. I can wait.

Need to fix the project converter so it doesn't upgrade silverlight projects.  Causes confusion and prevents the silverlight project(s) from loading in Visual Studio if SL5 is not installed.

Crono, all your complains about any language lacking true polymorphism or type checking are actually non-issues. Many people will tell you that static type-checking is even inherently evil to put things in perspective.

You should have NO PROBLEMS with type-checking if you put TESTING (unit and integrated tests) at the place they deserve in the development chain. The "discipline" IMPOSED by a programming language syntax is in many ways counter-productive. The discipline should lie in PROPERLY TESTING everything you code, so the language won't matter at all. In fact, the dynamic languages became the more productive ones in this scenario, or, at least languages that are wrist-friendly like BOO start to be much, much better than C#, for the same reasons C# is much, much batter than Java IMHO.

I want more freedom with my language. I want to be able to interfere with the compiling pipeline, change the behavior of inheritance, create dynamic objects, manipulate the abstract syntax tree, and much more (ruby, python, LIPS, BOO even JavaScript... I love them all). I want freedom, and I don't want to pay the price of increased bugs, so I TEST everything... Tests give you the liberty of choice.

Silverlight and WPF are both dead. This is a fact. The biggest problem in embracing HTML5 as "the future" right now has no connection with JavaScript at all. The problem is that there aren't strong tools to support it. No "component" providers like DevExpress. So you'll be by yourself... For Flash you have great tools. For Silverlight and WPF too... But except for iOS development, I don't see any "providers" of JavaScript/HTML5 "components"...

And if you are developing for Windows, I would use good old WinForms + DevExpress.

Silverlight 5 released!

Let us know when your updated release is available.  Thanks.

@felipe

Since you described Silverlight & WPF dead as a fact, let me talk you about other facts.

Fact 1: HTML is with us since early 90s.

Fact 2: The last noticeable update was late 90s. Almost 15 years ago.

Fact 3: Plug ins were almost with us since the beginning.

Fact 4: Plug ins made it until today because HTML could not follow and provide the needs of the market.

Fact 5: HTML 5 finally provides functionality that you could find only in plug ins.

Fact 6: HTML 5 is still under development for how long we don't know.

Fact 7: Needs of the market will still continue. Past saw us that HTML can't.

This are facts and not the one you mentioned. We will see in future what will happen, but until then a new version of a language will not change the world. Actually the need of video in web sites goes back fifteen years. And they were not able to create a new version to support it. This lack of reaction troubles me.

*Fact 7: Needs of the market will still continue. Past saw us that HTML can't follow them.

Silverlight 5 has been released, when can we expect the DevExpress SL components?

@felipe, type-checking is much more a feature than a coding rule. You are "free" to use C# and declare every single variables or methods as "Object" if you want to. Heck, you can also ride your car without fastening your seatbelt, if you like! I hardly think that will make you a better driver, but then again, if you're more comfy this way, maybe it will! :)

Anyway, type-checking is only ONE of my concerns. Far more important is the lack of support for native APIs and polymorphism. I completely disagree with you about the latter being a non-issue. Especially when developing a complex application with lots of entities.

You might be right about WPF and SL as we know them being on their way to death. But I can't imagine MS going backwards to Winform by now either. I find it much more realistic to think that WPF/SL will evolve to something very close to what it is right now in terms of syntax (XAML-based), and that consequently, the current investment made in XAML isn't at risk.

Hi Crono,

Have you ever programmed in Lua? Or python? Or did some heavy work in JavaScript? I'm not attacking you, but there are countless ways to implement polymorphism in all these languages (if they don't support it natively).

The "object" analogy is not fair. It is a pain to work with untyped objects in C# since you'll have to cast everything, all the time. The language is NOT made from the ground up to be good for dynamic programming. The seatbelt is not type-check in my case, it is the unit test cases! Done properly they offer a much, much, much stronger "enforcement of correctness" because they work over the semantics of the code, while type checking works more on the "internals" of the language. If you screw with some code by assigning a wrong type to a variable you'll certainly caught that in testing.

A good example is the rigidity of Java, even requiring up-casts. It was shown to be a bad design decision, and the arguments in favor of this rigidity were pretty much the same you've used for static type-checking...

But then I'm not "against" static type-checking, I'm mostly a C# programmer. But I've seen so much beautiful code done in dynamic languages that I almost started to envy those guys specialized on them (JNode comes to mind ad promptu).

And I know for a fact that you can have a very "dynamic-like" language, with great type-inference that make it much more like the dynamic languages. Take a look at BOO.

I believe that the dynamic languages makes us more productive. And some things can only be "beautifully" expressed using dynamic paradigms. C# got a lot more "dynamic" with time, even the 'var' keyword was introduced to allow the handling of anonymous types elegantly... in a bona-fide dynamic language, or in a static, but wrist-friendly language like BOO that would be an non-issue..

But UNIT TEST is a MUST. I'm not wholeheartedly a TDD guy, I believe they are like a religious sect as I do not buy their arguments that test must come even before design or some coding, but I believe that without tests covering ideally every single part of your code and use cases, you can't possibly hope to benefit from agile methods, or dynamic languages, etc.

Julian: Thanks, looking forward to it! Based on what I see so far, this looks like one of the best releases ever!

any update ?

I was told it would be a minor update once SL5 released.   I was told it would be release by the end of the week...  Its now taking a bit long for a minor update and the week is gone...  What is happening?  

Please keep us in the loop so that we can plan accordingly...

Any follow up?

Where is it!?

i waiting for devexpress 11.2 with SL5 release. as i am developing the application that required SL ribbon with master page. can you please tell me when i expect the final release?

When can we expect the SL5 components?

"We estimate our release will be fully tested and published by the end of this week."

Julian, is there an update? I understand that sometimes things take longer than expected, but I would expect that when an ETA is missed, an update would be posted at the very least!

Guys and Gals,

Give them DX a break. For sure they have a good reason for this silence (working hard on a stable release).

Have some patience ... and lets see what develops... under the Christmas tree :-)

Merry Xmas and happy DX-ing in 2012.

You guys are SO impatient!  Surely, as developers, you yourselves underestimated how long a task might take or missed a deadline?

Better to have a quality finished product than something full of bugs, don't you think?  It'll probably be ready when, er, it's ready???  And I bet they'll anounce it when the time comes!

By the way, I'm really looking forward to this release for SL5!

The problem is - I was thinking that DXv2 was coming with SL components (as usual!) and once you have announced "READY" I've commited myself by asking a special budget to buy licences, telling everybody that the new chart control will have what we need to finish our dashboards (without taking SL version 5 in consideration). 5k$ of licences, downloads, installations, upgrades for nothing... and now my only excuse is .... a problem with the dxscheduler. :(

There is a way to get only libraries for Charts and Gauges ?

The SL Toolkit has employed the concept of "quality bands" that categorize the quality of controls in the toolkit.  Would it be possible to do something similar here?

Is the DXScheduler the only component having issues?  I wouldn't mind having some "yellow" bits to chew on until the "green" bits are ready.  That is, unless you think the show stopper will be fixed before you could even prepare such a package :-).

Anxiously awaiting....

I'm curious why people think DevExpress will abandon the Silverlight controls? I'm expecting them to be the best path to WinRT myself. If XAML is a first class citizen then why wouldn't we expect to see these controls migrated to that platform? Does anyone really think DevExpress will leave that market to someone else? We can still run in or out-of-browser apps on earlier versions of windows just fine (as well as the Mac until a lack of updates from Microsoft at some point sets in). Winforms and WPF to a lesser extent don't appear to have as many platform similarities to WinRT so it seems to me that Silverlight could easily be the best candidate to start a desktop .NET project in going forward.

@Ron Grove

My thoughts as of late have been to build most of the functionality in HTML5 and implement islands of functionality using SL when necessary - such as COM interop.  It might make sense to degrade gracefully when SL is not available.  I have a commercial product I am working on that right now is 100% SL but I might head in this direction for tablet / smart phone compatability.

HTML5 is great to reach across different operating systems on tablets, but I'd rather not suffer through that for the "real" desktop application. Most desktops still run windows and they'll upgrade to the next version of windows. It seems to me your Silverlight application is in the best position to make that move. It will also still work on a Mac as long as you don't rely on Windows specific stuff.That'll be a nice benefit as long Microsoft maintains that capability with updates. By the time they stop perhaps HTML5 will be mature enough, but you still have to suffer through javascript. I'm allergic to the language myself. Yuck...

As developers we invest our time and money in DX based on your marketing hype.

Julian - Please admit that DX made a mistake with the marketing "hype" about 11.2 and Silverlight.

Please admit your announcements were premature and your silverlight components are not ready for SL5.

Please give us a better excuse.

Please give us a better estimate on the release date.

Please give us a release that excludes the DXScheduler - I bet no one us using the new SL version of Schedular yet (it is a new SL control in anycase)...

I wonder which is worse DX11.2 without SL or DX11.2 with SL but excluding Scheduler?

Hey, V. 11.2.6 has appeared in my downloads!

The wait is over!

Great DX,

Thanks !!!!!!

I have question about the new version. Does it only support Silverligh 5 or does it continue supporting Silverligh 4? Do I have to upgrade my project from SL4 to SL5 before I upgrade to DX v2??

Thanks!

@Julian

Any news about the Silverlgiht 5 version?

Thanks