Obviously, I think you're better off building Flex clients, but ... if you are tinkering with Silverlight, Andrew Powell explains how to power your apps using ColdFusion and AMF.
Andrew Powell Explains ColdFusion Powered Silverlight
5 Comments
A
I'm of the opinion that, in the world of RIA, everyone should play well with everyone else. Adobe's opening of the AMF protocol has really been a good step in this direction. So, now you can mix Java, ColdFusion, Ruby, PHP, or any other AMF backend with a Flex or Silverlight front-end. This means that middle-tiers are now more versatile and able to expand the SaaS concept to all RIA platforms.
J
Jack London
I like the concept. :)
If Flex guys deals with .NET, Java and Php etc., we can play with Silverlight as CF developers.
Fair enough. :)
T
Hi Andrew,
I know that there's binding support in Silverlight but they forget to tell you that you need to dispatch a property changed event yourself. This is exactly what you get when you put the [Bindable] attribute on top of a property in Flex. In Silverlight you need to code this all by hand. It's a bit similar to layout support in Silverlight: there's some support but it's far from what is available in Flex. Could you let me know how I can get menu's in Silverlight using the standard Silverlight 2 controls? I have looked in all different places and couldn't find anything. I'm not saying Silverlight is bad - it's just way more productive to build something in Flex today.
A
Tom - I think you need to do a little more research. Silverlight has bindings, One Time, One Way, and Two Way. Menu bars are possible, but not via something like and application control bar. Granted, it is still behind Flex in a lot of ways, but you need to be accurate in your criticisms.
T
I'm currently doing a RIA study for a customer. I'm developing a proof of concept application using different RIA technologies. There are some glitches in Flex (global exception handler to name one) but in the mean time it's clear to me that Silverlight is far from ready (only Web Services and JSON for server-side communications, no menu bar, no [Bindable] attribute (therefore the implicit getters/setters of .NET can't be used), ...). So those who decided for Flex made the right decision!