#15 – WPF vs. Silverlight and ASP.NET

WPF, Silverlight and ASP.NET are Microsoft’s three main application development platforms.

• WPF
  • For developing Windows applications
  • Thick client user interface, with most rich set of user controls and Windows-specific features
  • Platforms–runs only on Windows, in or out of browser
  • Requires full .NET Framework installed on client
• Silverlight
  • For developing web applications that can also run out of browser
  • Thin client, with richer UI controls that are closer to traditional thick client controls
  • Platforms
    • Runs as browser plug-in in most browsers
    • Silverlight client software runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Windows Phone 7
    • Moonlight version of Silverlight allows running on Linux
  • Requires Silverlight framework installed on client (when page is first loaded)
• ASP.NET
  • For developing web applications
  • Thin client, with fairly generic web-based controls
  • Platforms–runs on server, so client is delivered as standard HTML on any platform–including browsers on mobile devices
  • Requires nothing to be installed on client