Thanks for your thought.

FYI, the Xceedsoft Grid is for WPF though, not Silverlight. Some points about your comments:

1. If you open the Silverlight.js, you will see this line “new ActiveXObject(“ag.aghost”)”. I believe you aware that many developers don’t like to rely on ActiveXObject, especially since all browsers now have native XmlHttp, including IE.

2. About Silverlight controls, our initial research shows that it is in deed a client-side technology (just like HTML, but with ability to render richer graphics). The XAML file that associated with the Silverlight need to be downloaded to client (like HTML), so if you have 4000 rows of data in the XAML, it still need to be downloaded to client side. Futhermore, the XAML markup seems like generate much more tags/codes than HTML (look at the Canvas things, the basic drawing tags, etc). It doesn’t really solve the Web bottleneck though.

Any thoughts?

Regards,
Jimmy.

It looks like at least one company has already created a datagrid using silverlight: http://download3.xceedsoft.com/demo/gridwpf/Xceed.Wpf.DataGrid.Samples.LiveExplorer.xbap

Also, I’m going to have to disagree with most of the points you’ve made:

1) Silverlight doesn’t require you to use the ActiveXObject. It does require that you’ve installed the client libraries but that shouldn’t be a problem for most companies that want to make use of such apps.

2) The hardware requirements will only depend how you’ve made use of Silverlight since Silverlight itself doesn’t necessarily require lots of resources. If you’re making games and lots of multimedia then yes, you’ll probably need the hardware. However, if you’re making lightweight business controls (such as what Intersoft normally does), then the average computer should suffice.

3) Sure, Silverlight is Microsoft’s response to flash but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be used for business apps. Many of us have always wondered why flash hasn’t been used in more business apps in the past. Even with AJAX, web apps can really only go so far until they hit a brick wall in terms of usability and performance (try creating a webgrid with 50 columns and 4000 rows sometime and you’ll see what I mean). A rich client platform such as this could do wonders to the user’s experience of such apps.

I would strongly encourage Intersoft to persue using Silverlight. Our users deserve better.