Silverlight 2 is cool. The graphical expressions and the user experience that it provides far exceed what traditional web technologies such as ASP.NET can do on their own. Silverlight 2 adds to the expanding group of technologies from which developers can choose to create applications. This includes WINForms, Web Forms with ASP.NET, and technologies such as Ajax, WPF, and even Flex. Silverlight works well as an Internet-based application when there are services to consume and a rich user interface is required. WPF and WINForms are great for internal applications (behind a firewall). WPF with XBAP is a solid choice for web-based solutions for internal applications as well. Silverlight 2 fills the niche of a rich user interface on a web browser without losing the powerful array of interactivity you can get by consuming and interacting with remote services.
Styles, templates, animations, storyboards, transitions, and many other features of Silverlight 2 make it a great tool for creating rich interfaces. But developers build applications, usually for businesses, and most often these applications are data-driven and interact with web services. This capability, combined with the glitz of its rich interactive nature, is where Silverlight 2 really shines.
Silverlight 2 is a fantastic tool for designing rich interfaces that work in various browsers. It has extensive support for consuming and pushing data across web services. It also supports a variety of LINQ features, including LINQ to XML, LINQ to Objects, and LINQ to JSON, which makes consuming data from services and manipulating it an easy task. All of these features make Silverlight a viable solution for business applications. This book arms the reader with the knowledge to build visually and functionally robust applications with Silverlight 2.
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