Comments on: What do you miss in Silverlight now? What do you want in v4?

By: Emil

Emil — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:42:26 +0000

@Anthony, that’s right! I completely agree with you. There is a lot of frameworks out there that implement the MVVM pattern, commanding, etc. I’m not sure why so many people develop their own implementation.
My personal feeling is that for now we should stick with Prism.
Silverlight.FX also provides some goodies in this direction, but there are Blend compatibility and design time issues.
Built-in MVVM pattern would serve like a good kick start for short term projects.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:15:36 +0000

MVVM will be in WPF first if it’s ever built in. This is an app development style (even if its a very good one), and so arguably the library should be neutral on these – support it but not mandate it.

Prism apparently handles this as the “official addon” for WPF and SL. The main problem with MVVM in SL now is that there are so many frameworks for it.

Commanding (as per WPF) in SL is definitely a good idea, once people just add it back in anyway with third-party code. Which means a confusion of choice again.

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:45:11 +0000

MVVM support built in like ASP.NET MVC. Project templates, and commanding, etc. Enhanced Unit test suport. Make it easy for us to build applications the right way.

By: Erik

Erik — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:30:38 +0000

@Emil: Peter Ryskin explains one scenario well, another would be functionality like PowerPoint has: when pressing F5 on a dual screen setup, the presentation is sent to the second screen.
In other words; I would like to be able to open a secondary window in my application, and have it open full screen on a second screen.

By: brian

brian — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:36:09 +0000

this is more of a LOB request: a silverlight version of the SQL Server ReportViewer control (currently available for ASP.NET and Winforms) would be awesome! This would make reporting a lot more integrated.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:33:47 +0000

VisualBrush
DrawingBrush
Commanding
Databinding functionality in sync with WPF (i.e. UpdateSourceTrigger.PropertyChanged)
UDP/P2P
System.ServiceModel.Description.IOperationBehavior

By: Peter Ryskin

Peter Ryskin — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:27:30 +0000

Fullscreen support for multiple display devices would be grand:

Say I run a SL media presentation on monitor 3 – it could be a video walkthrough that I intend to follow <- business value, I learn to use a new system whilst having hands on.

I would really like to be able to Fullscreen the video on monitor 3 so I can see all details clearly and then turn to monitor 2, following the video step by step.

Currently thats not possible, as soon as I click on the other application, the fullscreen is collapsed.

Even for a laptop user with a fixed screen, this would be beneficial.

By: Emil

Emil — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:06:14 +0000

@Erik, the multi screen support sounds interesting, but I don’t see what exactly Silverlight have to support. Am I missing your idea?

Thank for all the comments. Most of them are already in the list that Microsoft provides publicly so I think they’ll make it in the next release.

Better compatibility with WPF, rich text support, camera and mic, P2P, 3D are all features that can boost Silverlight adoption and make it ideal for a lot of usage scenarios.

By: Erik

Erik — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:41:58 +0000

Multi screen support for (for instance) a setup with a desktop with screen + beamer

By: Erik

Erik — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:36:11 +0000

My request would be less syntactical differences between WPF xaml and Silverlight xaml, so basically more support for code reuse across WPF and Silverlight

I agree with Alexey Zakharov on the text select and copy support