topic Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one? in ArcGIS Enterprise Questions

Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

TimHayes — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 16:34:33 GMT

I have been using Flex for awhile now. Works good. Just wondering if there are any advantages/disadvantages of using Flex vs Silverlight? Is there a reason why you would choose one over the other? is there a Flex vs Silverlight Functionality Matrix?

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

RichardWatson — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 17:18:42 GMT

Do you like chocolate or vanilla ice cream?

The tools are similar in terms of capabilities. If you are a Microsoft shop then choosing Silverlight makes sense. If you already know Flex then stick with it.

Both Silverlight and Flex are mature and powerful technologies. Neither of them will have significant investments in new capabilities because the industry is focused on HTML5/JavaScript.

Browser plugins are not currently in vogue. I find it fascinating how the industry goes in circles. For example, many years ago a lot of work went into virtual machines and distributed computing. That then faded away but it is back in vogue now. I think that web programming will have to evolve to something at a higher level of abstraction than HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I call this devolution.

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

KevinHibma — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 17:24:49 GMT

My 2cents as a consumer (not an Esri employee)... My my iPad doesnt have Flex or Silverlight support. It's really annoying when I visit a site which tells me to install Flash and I can't.

Who are you building apps for? How will they consume them? Just other questions to consider.

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

nicogis — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 18:16:34 GMT

Extra info if you need see your web app on mobile:
http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/files/2013/03/table.png

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

KevinGooss — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 20:29:32 GMT

survey says......html5 and javascript

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

TimHayes — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 21:06:32 GMT

Do you like chocolate or vanilla ice cream?

The tools are similar in terms of capabilities. If you are a Microsoft shop then choosing Silverlight makes sense. If you already know Flex then stick with it.

Both Silverlight and Flex are mature and powerful technologies. Neither of them will have significant investments in new capabilities because the industry is focused on HTML5/JavaScript.

Browser plugins are not currently in vogue. I find it fascinating how the industry goes in circles. For example, many years ago a lot of work went into virtual machines and distributed computing. That then faded away but it is back in vogue now. I think that web programming will have to evolve to something at a higher level of abstraction than HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I call this devolution.

I like Vanilla Ice Cream, actually Vanilla Bean.

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

TimHayes — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 21:11:03 GMT

My 2cents as a consumer (not an Esri employee)... My my iPad doesnt have Flex or Silverlight support. It's really annoying when I visit a site which tells me to install Flash and I can't.

Who are you building apps for? How will they consume them? Just other questions to consider.

No mobile apps that's for sure. We tried to get our Maintenance people to go mobile, 3 times. Complete disasters each time. The apps (we tried ArcGIS Mobile, ArcPad, Trimble Terrasync) and tablets were fine and easy to use and useful, their resistance to mobile has more to do with organizational philosophy and lack of high level leadership to make it so. The leaders in our utility are AWIO (Absent While In Office). We, me and my GIS Team, estimate it will be another decade before our utility crews are ready for mobile.

We are using a Desktop Flex Viewer. This is wildly popular with all our utility's staff.

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

TimHayes — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 21:12:18 GMT

survey says......html5 and javascript

When? when do you estimate that HTML5 will be available? Also, JavaScript? Was this not what ArcIMS used or ArcGIS Server 9.3?

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

DerekLaw — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 13:41:56 GMT

Hi Timothy,

FYI, we've integrated HTML5 technology into our JavaScript API, where appropriate. Please see the recent UC 2013 Q&A,

Can I develop web and mobile applications with ArcGIS and HTML5 now?

And this article might be helpful,

Creating Custom Web Mapping Applications without Programming

Hope this helps,

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

TimHayes — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 20:49:25 GMT

Hi Timothy,

FYI, we've integrated HTML5 technology into our JavaScript API, where appropriate. Please see the recent UC 2013 Q&A,

Can I develop web and mobile applications with ArcGIS and HTML5 now?

And this article might be helpful,

Creating Custom Web Mapping Applications without Programming

Hope this helps,

This is good to hear. Unfortunately, in our situation our IT Dept is usually 3-5 years behind in every way when it comes to technology, thus according to them our plethora of browsers of different types and versions will for the most part not support HTML5 to a level needed for GIS. Fortunately, our GIS is not under our IT Dept otherwise we would still be using ArcView 3.3! We will be sticking with Flex for at least a few more years until our IT Dept plays catch-up.

Re: Silverlight or Flex? Which one?

MikeHargreaves — Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:35:53 GMT

Since HTML5 was mentioned in this forum, I'll ask my question here. We have an HTML5 viewer that works quite well for viewing:

http://agsmaps.ci.santa-rosa.ca.us/Html5Viewer/Index.html?viewer=PublicHtml5

But when I set it up for editing, I'm running into periodic lock errors - any ideas why this might be happening? I'm wondering if I haven't set up the GDB correctly...