by Miha Markič
23. March 2009 10:04
Looks like Silverlight 3 is very much geared towards line of business applications. That’s great and I guess what many people were looking for, including me.
So what does one need for a typical LOB application anyway? For me there are three front end ingredients:
- editors (date, currency, etc.)
- grid
- printing
First two points are covered pretty well, and if they aren’t you can implement them by yourself or use 3rd party controls. The problem is the third point: printing.
I have yet to see a LOB application that doesn’t do any printing. Heck, even Notepad does printing. Since there is much talking about LOB acronym in conjunction with Silverlight 3 I’d assume printing will be natively supported by Silverlight 3. Now, sit down and take a deep breath: there is no printing support feature announced whatsoever! Looks like Microsoft is creating a new bread of LOB applications: green ones – they won’t pollute the earth with wasted papers. That’s good in the time of global warming. But that’s not good for LOB applications nor for Silverlight 3.
Imagine a customer asking: “The application looks great but how can I print the reports?”
Manager/whatever (selling a Silverlight 3 application): “You can’t but you can see the data in 3D using your graphic card’s GPU! Why would you need printing for?”
Silverlight 3 developer (kicking in): “Ehm, there is a PrtScn button on the keyboard.”
Looks like I am not alone in printing quest (just to name first two from what I’ve read):
Redmon Developer News readers
Oliver Sturm (point 1 on the list)
… (I am sure the list is a long one)
477287f2-92c2-49d5-9a33-ac060a066489|3|4.3
Tags:
Silverlight