SilverLight, ClickOnce, and AIR, Google Gear, DOJO

SilverLight, ClickOnce, and AIR, Google Gear, DOJO


Why clickOnce is not enough? It is not cool, first of all – it will limit our applications on Windows. The more practical considerations is that the framework itself is 20M, further, it takes 20 min to install, and it needs administrator privilege. We want to synced with technology changes, we do not want to use .net 1.1, simply because our client machines are not easy to upgrade to .net 2.0 – this is an extremely critical thing for developers, obviously, but it is also so, if not more so, for a healthy IT.

Why I need to use it outside browser? Because I need extra privileges, offline features, and near-real time reaction time (robot, machine control). Actually there is a “workaround” for the last one, put a web server there, etc. However, the thing is that all those must be zero-administration, just like a web in-browser application. Think about it, the last one is not really necessary: the embedded part is embedded, and if you need to access database, it cannot be “real-time” already. So, the real thing is privileges for socket (or, serial ports etc) and offline features (i.e. privileges to files and some added features).

I know I must look for it from mono. Why, because SilverLight is great for mono. Now, mono (do not forget, mono is the ultimate runtime – it combines java and .net) can have a decent “face” (UI). However, to do that we need to run it outside browser (for privileges etc.) – i.e., it is a just like Adobe’s AIR (Apollo).

All we need is to have a generic, small (do can be downloaded fast), “unsafe” host (webtop host, or, let’s call it “browser2”). This browser2 should have sockets API, so that SliverLight can use it. In a sense, the browser2 will give back all the power of a full .Net runtime – only the really useful ones though, so, the size can be much smaller also. It is, of course, the AIR, Google Gear, DOJO (http://dojotoolkit.org/offline) -- of course, those things must be done in C, and they must be platform specific.


http://ttlnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/test_22.html
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:Open_Source

http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2007/05/03/silverlight-vs-flash-the-developer-story.aspx

http://ectropic.com/wordpress/?p=3