Every day I get about 10-30 questions that I answer with a stock response (sorry) that says something like
Hello and thank you for writing.
I would encourage you to post your question in the Silverlight Forums. Be sure to include:
* which version of Silverlight you are running,
* which version of Visual Studio and/or Blend you are using and
* whatever else you can add to help reproduce the problem.Meanwhile I’ll try to look into this as well.
Thank you,
I hate this answer; but it is the right thing; I can’t possibly do my job and also dive deep into all the questions I get; the forums really are the right place and 1,000 brains are better than one. Oh, and I do follow and I do look into many (though not all) of them.
That said, some questions come up a lot, and today I received a note with 4 that I must get at least five times a week, so here are my quick responses (I’ve paraphrased some of the questions)
I'd like to make my website a bit more "rich" and a better UI experience for the users and I'm considering Silverlight. It currently uses…. What would be your advice?
Since you are new to Silverlight you probably want to work your way through a suggested learning path and then ask a lot of questions in the forums. I wish I could spend a day (or a week) working on the design with you
For this website, with respect to your multiple page example…Let's say I have 30 existing .aspx pages. Would I make page1.xaml, page2.xaml, page3.xaml, etc. that would correspond to each respective page that I currently have?
Not necessarily (and I hope you’d use better names <grin>). In fact, there is no reason you wouldn’t have a mixed model, using ASP.NET where it is working for you and Silverlight for enhanced (richer, faster, etc.) experiences.
Are there any resources that tell you how to convert a complex ASP.NET web site into a complex Silverlight site?
Not that I know of, but more information is coming every day. Be sure to keep an eye on silverlight.net and subscribe to Silverlight Cream, and Silverlight News.
4. This may sound odd, but how do I know that wanting to do this in Silverlight is not completely strange when it works and looks satisfactory now? Still make the change and why I guess is what I'm asking here.
If it is satisfactory now, go do something else <smile>. But maybe it isn’t completely satisfactory; maybe a faster richer experience, in at least some parts of the application would be valuable. Take a look at some of the showcase applications to get an idea of what is possible.
Hope that helps
