Silverlight tools for the Mac
Just reading about the efforts to produce an Eclipse-based Silverlight development platform for the Mac - quite cool.
I have to think though, perhaps the effort would have been better spent creating a port of Blend for the Mac... it seems to me that only a tiny minority of developers would opt for Eclipse over Visual Studio; whereas I'd guess nearly all designers would prefer to work natively within MacOS.
I can kind of understand why they've done it, but I can only hope there's another project underway with that Blend port...
Where to begin?
So I've been thinking about what I could kick start this blog with - stuff in which I've developed a bit of a niche and have something to share with a wider audience. My background has been primarily in web-based application development, with the tools focused largely within the .NET and the RIA spaces.
I recently helped a colleague out with an article on Flex vs. Silverlight in the Enterprise. Both of us have a strong .NET background, and have more recently been heavily involved on a massive enterprise-scale Flex application. Although I still stand by the original article, I realise it's impossible to accurately and fairly detail each platforms' strengths and weaknesses in one post.
So, I plan to start a bit of a series - comparing different user experiences as created with Silverlight and Flex, and hopefully reaching a conclusion on the benefits of each platform, based upon developer experience/efficiency, and of course how the end result meets the original client requirements.
Each post will focus on a technical area that you may find within any enterprise RIA. Example areas could be video streaming, datagrid customisation, push messaging, theming/skinning, just to name a few.
It's as much for my own benefit as anyone else's - in order to deliver the best client experience, you HAVE to know what the best tools or platform are for any given situation!
