Saturday, May 2, 2009

Silverlight 3 Wish List ---- What We Got

Hi all,

Silverlight 3 Beta is released. Now it does fulfill many of the features that the community has hoped for. Joe Stegman has marged the Silverlight 3 wish lists from different sources (Including the thread I have started) and put them in a table sorted on popularity. Lets check it with what we got. This is partial and please help me complete it and let me know in cases I am wrong.


Feature Count Comments Status Note
Web camera and/or microphone input 33 Includes requests for just microphone as well No

Bitmap APIs 26 Support get/set pixels and/or rendering a XAML scene to a bitmap. Partial. (After reading the comments and in forums and agree with it)
Check this application.
Full 3D 24 Full 3D support (full 3D models) Partial
Video1
Video2
Printing 20 Printing APIs No

Offline and/or out of browser support 16 Support running Silverlight when not online (or completely out of the browser) Yes
Video
Bi-directional text and/or complex script 9
No

UDP/P2P 9 UDP APIs generally for Peer to Peer support No

Rich text support 8 Editing and display No

Right mouse button 8 Ability to configure the right click No

Text quality 8 Improved text quality Partial
Clear type will be supported
HTML Integration 7 Support HTML hosting (live HTML documents) and/or HTML translation No

Interactive designer 7 Support an interactive designer in Visual Studio No
Will be with VS 2010
Support more than BasicHttpBinding 7 Most common request is for WSHttpBinding No

Improve Silverlight/WPF compatibility 6 Mostly feature requests for either Silverlight and/or WPF Partial
Gap is reducing over time
More controls 6 Random/general requests Yes
With the new toolkit release it increases.
SaveFileDialog 6
Yes

Data and/or property triggers 5
No

Reporting services 5
No

Synchronous web service calls 5
No
Is it really needed?
ADO.NET DataSet/DataTable 4
Partial
Check out new data controls and RIA services.
Alpha video 4 Chroma key support

Clipboard support 4
No
Some people think of it as security threat.
Workaround
Drawing APIs (immediate mode) 4

Pixel effects?
Element name binding 4

Element to element binding is now possible.
Improved DataGrid 4 Several different requests

Local relational database (SQL) 4


Modal dialog 4


Mouse wheel 4 API and support in existing controls No
Helper class available
Selectable text 4


Assembly caching 3 Want a framework for downloading/managing assemblies Yes
Here.
Credentials/auth 3 Requests for networking stack and ASP.NET type integration

Custom markup extensions 3
No

Multi-target DLLs for .NET/SL 3 Build a business object DLL once for both .NET and Silverlight No

Multi-touch support 3


Path Animation 3
No

Speech and better audio decoder 3


VisualBrush 3
No

9 Grid 2


Better keyboard APIs 2 Platform independent keycode

Better SEO 2
Yes
Check this blog.
Binding support to anonymous types 2


Direct database access 2 OLEDB/ODBC equivalent No

Flow panel 2


GIF support 2
No
Probably it wont be there. See what Pete Brown says.
Global/dynamic styles (skinning) 2


Integrated CTRL+F (in page search) 2


Sound APIs (equalizer) 2 Includes looping No

TileBrush (Image Tiling) 2
No

XPS Support 2


64-bit platform support 1


Android support 1


Better N-tier support 1 Improved data access Yes
RIA Services
Better SharePoint integration 1


Block style text 1 Bulleted lists, paragraphs No
But check this out
Cell based animation 1


CollectionView 1


Color management 1


Digital/XAP signing 1


Double Click event 1
No
work around
Drag and Drop 1 Between the desktop and Silverlight No

Full 5.1 sound 1 Currently fold down to stereo No

IDataErrorInfo 1


Inverse kinematics (bones) 1 Flash 10 feature

MediaTimeline 1


Multi-binding 1


Navigation model 1 Includes browser history integration Yes
Video
Validation controls 1
Yes
Check this.
XPATH support for data binding 1




Thanks...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bitmap API support is only "partial" because you lose readability as soon as the bitmap has been "rendered" into. That means that you can do things like creating thumbnails, making games using direct pixel manipulation, but not others like red eye correction, uploading screen capture. This is a gaping hole, so this is only partial support.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but the bitmap API most definitely isn't a "yes". I interpreted the bitmap API to mean a legitimate drawing API like we have with WPF. In any case, Silverlight 3 fell way short on both fronts. There's still time?