One or my recent projects was to work with a client to create a Silverlight control for reporting purposes that has some general flashiness, and is reusable across several sections of the site. It has brushed into some interesting areas. I have used Silverlight for some media and imaging applications before, but this was the first that the control had to integrated with the authorized users profile and other security related server side settings.
In particular, the first thing to keep in mind is that as long as the Silverlight Enabled WCF endpoint is within the web application on IIS, then the service code has access to the users profile info. It’s just as if making a jquery request from a page, there is no need for the Silverlight control to re-authenticate.
The really interesting part is where the project goes from here. The client has asked me to create an equivalent control using HTML 5 technologies. There will be some lunch and learn sessions on how both of these projects were done, and comparing and contrasting both the user experience and developer experience.
I’m excited about doing this type of work for a variety of reasons. First, the training aspect really helps our company differentiate from other consulting companies, especially from rent-a-coder staff augmentation type shops. And I enjoy the challenges and rewards that come with helping other developers work with tools that are new to them. Finally, the very question we’re addressing (plugin vs standards based RIA controls) is on the forefront of lot of minds, given the current state of browser and mobile applications.
Anyway, this is just a general update of what I’m up to, but I hope this work will spin off some presentations I can do locally, and some blog posts.