Bruce Tate
Adam Nathan
Safari: Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed was recently released in the Rough Cuts program. What do you think about the idea of providing early access to your material as it is being developed?
Nathan: Releasing the book on Rough Cuts was a great way to satisfy the immediate demand out there, while giving me the time to polish the book and ensure that it is completely compatible with the final release of Silverlight.
Safari: Silverlight 1.0 was just released. How on earth did you get a book done on it so quickly? Do you have a social life?
Nathan: Being a Microsoft employee definitely helps. I started the book back in April, not long after the public announcement of the technology (then known as the more cryptic "WPF/E"). But in addition to that, my day job is to work on Popfly, Microsoft's first product built on Silverlight. We are using just about every feature in Silverlight 1.0 quite heavily, so this experience naturally lends itself to writing a book filled with real-world advice. If I ran into a confusing issue, I'd be sure to mention it in the book (usually as a "warning" sidebar). And, no, I don't have a social life.
Safari: Another one of your books, Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed, was recently praised by Jeff Atwood especially for its clear and helpful layout and formatting choices. Does Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed use similar layout conventions, and how important do you think 4-color printing has been for your books?
Nathan: Yes, Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed is also in full-color and uses the same layout techniques. I think it is important for a number of reasons. Full-color pictures help bring the concepts to life, and I think colored sidebars make the book easier to navigate. And code with syntax coloring is a huge help for developers, which is why tools such as Visual Studio do the same thing. Nothing beats top-notch content, but spending time on its presentation can help people absorb it and perhaps get more people to give it a chance.
Safari: OK, in 25 words or less, what is Silverlight?
Nathan: Silverlight is a web browser add-on that enables you to build and deliver stunning content in a way that's natural for both designers and developers.
Safari: Do you think Silverlight is an Adobe Flash killer? Why or why not.
Nathan: I think that, for many situations, Silverlight provides an attractive alternative for Flash. The road ahead for Silverlight offers a lot more capability than fancy user interfaces, however. It's a full-fledged development platform that will enable developers to use any number of different languages inside a web browser. And if Silverlight code is used to drive user interfaces, it can seamlessly work with XAML, HTML, or a mixture of both.
Safari: How about Ajax? Do you think Silverlight will have a significant impact on the current popularity of Ajax?
Nathan: I don't really see them as two competing technologies. Silverlight is a natural enhancement to Ajax, expanding your choices of programming languages, giving you a robust and platform-neutral framework, and providing more powerful user interface capabilities. As a result of this, however, certain Ajax tricks can be more naturally done with Silverlight alone.
Safari: What do you like most about Silverlight?
Nathan: In version 1.0, it would have to be its rich graphical capability and seamless integration with HTML and JavaScript. These features are what enabled us to build Microsoft Popfly. Although the end-to-end experience of sharing video (with the help of Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live and Expression Encoder) has to be a close runner-up. I've shared high-quality videos with my family this way, and it almost couldn't be any easier.
Safari: What advice would you give developers who are considering learning Silverlight? Are there any problem areas or issues to be wary of?
Nathan: Naturally, my primary advice would be to read Silverlight 1.0 Unleashed! There are a number of limitations and gotchas in version 1.0, but the book leads you through them so you can accomplish your goals.
Safari: You've been involved with .NET technologies at Microsoft since the very beginning. How do you see Silverlight fitting into the evolution of .NET?
Nathan: Silverlight is a great way to leverage .NET tools and technologies on the client and get extremely broad reach. Although it probably will never be as full-featured and powerful as the Windows-specific .NET technologies, it will continue to become richer. It's an exciting time to be a .NET developer, and learning Silverlight is a great opportunity to see how fun and productive software development can be!
Safari: What do you think about the recent announcement that Microsoft will work with Novell to get a Linux version out?
Nathan: I think it's a win-win-win situation. It's great for Microsoft, great for Novell, and great for customers.
