Wednesday 12 March 2008

Hiding one's SilverLight under a bushel...

Ok, yes, it's clever. I've just got back from attending a Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 promo at Bletchley Park, and I confess that I'm impressed with the concept.

Ok, yes, it's clever. I've just got back from attending a Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 promo at Bletchley Park, and I confess that I'm impressed with the concept, and to some extent with what I've seen of the results. As a staunch advocate of building multi-tiered applications, (i.e. those in which presentation layer, business-logic layer and data layer, say, are separated out), it builds on such an obvious and logical progression of that concept... using XAML to define controls which separate out the presentational information (what they look like) from the code-behind (what they do and how they do it) .
The session also provided a walkthrough of how Expression Studio supports that methodology. And that's where I got a bit stuck... Here's the scenario that Studio/Silverlight is supposed to be a panacea for...

The designer creates an idea for a web page, then passes it to the developer,
who can only recreate the design as much as the technical limitations allow.
Before they know it, the work is compromised. The designer blames the developer.
The developer blames the designer.

There's a neat promo video alluding that harmony is now magically achieved through use of this XAML approach, as both parties can now tinker with their specialist design/development of controls without treading on each others' toes.

I take the point on board totally. Been there; fought that battle. Many times. The prima-donna designer makes a visualisation; then the geeky developer cuts code-behind to make it work, and tweaks the design to fit the code. Repeat ad nauseam until they reach a compromise. But in my mind the bigger snake-in-the-grass is in the layers below. Preparing for the prettiest richest user experience is doomed to failure (or at least a lot of development
iterations) if the business process model isn't clear before anyone even paints a pixel or binds a byte of code. I know the styling of the headlights and dashboard of a concept car make just as much impact as how many valves it's got, but one that misfires on one cylinder is still going to be dead in the water.
Type rest of the post here

1 comment:

Ed Bedell said...

Rog,

Excellent article. This is what Soapbox is all about!!!

Thanks.....