Editor's Note: Shankar Bharadwaj is an Information Technology professional with more than 16 years of experience in the industry with experience in diverse platforms. He works for Microsoft in Seattle. He will be writing a two part series on User Interface and Cloud Computing. We at Cloud Avenue may or may not share his views but we always encourage alternate viewpoints in our quest to explore the cloud computing terrain. Here is the second part of the series.

In my Part 1 of the series, I talked about the various web technologies and the evolution of the user interface on the web. In this post, I'm going to talk about two technologies, Silverlight and HTML 5, which I think are going to improve that user interface. I had very constructive discussions on this topic with other members of the CloudAve team offline. Some of the statements in this post borrows from those discussions as well.

 

The central theme of my series is that a "rich" user interface will bring more users to cloud computing. The word "rich" means two things: rich in color and graphics (like the Aero interface in Windows Vista), and rich in functionality (having multiple UI elements and controls).

 

Silverlight is rich in both areas, in cool graphics and in great functionality. Silverlight 1.0 was released to enable integration of video and audio in to the web applications. Upcoming release of Silverlight 2.0 builds on that foundation, and also brings a major subset of .NET framework controls and their functionality to the web. This release includes all the common controls a developer is familiar with, like Textbox, Checkbox, Listbox, DataGrid, Layout panels and more. This release also brings built-in support for WS-*, SOAP, ATOM, JSON, REST, POX, RSS and other standard HTTP services. Essentially, one can build a full fledged .NET client application and release it to the world on the web! The users will execute that inside their browser!

 

I want to dispel some of the misconceptions about Silverlight development and hosting:-

Development: Cost of development is same as developing any other web application. Silverlight SDK  and Visual Studio Express editions are free downloads. Of course, the development has to be done on a Windows platform. Development on Linux can be done using Moonlight, which is an open source implementation of Silverlight by the Mono.NET project of Novell. Moonlight is not mature yet, so Linux developers may have to wait a little.
Hosting: Cost of hosting is same as any other web application, because Silverlight applications can be hosted on any web server!, for e.g., in Apache running on Linux. Silverlight is a client technology and so it doesn't matter where it is served from!
End-users:The end-users of the applications should be running a Windows platform. This is not necessarily a cost limitation, but a reach limitation. But with deep penetration of Windows in the desktop market, the application will reach a large number of users. As mentioned above in the development section, users of Linux desktop can use Moonlight to view the application.

HTML 5 on the other hand is pioneered by W3C. If we compare HTML 5 with Silverlight, especially in the development, hosting and the end-user departments, it is definitely a lot simpler. HTML web pages can be developed using a simple text editor on any platform, can be hosted on any web server and can be viewed on any platform on any browser (i.e., after it is released and supported by all the browsers). The specification is still in draft stage, but packs a lot of UI elements that are required by the next wave of web applications.

The changes being made in HTML 5 are truly revolutionary. HTML 5 brings many of the above mentioned (in the Silverlight section) controls to the static web page. In fact, once HTML 5 is implemented, the phrase "static HTML" might disappear. Some of the new controls are DataGrid, DateTime data types, Collapsible panels, Drawing Canvas with Shadows, Video, Audio, AutoComplete for inputs, LocalStorage for in-memory storage, Database element for persisted storage and WebSocket for communication with a remote server! This list is indeed amazing. HTML 5 allows us to create a full fledged client application that can run inside the browser! With the new Database interface, one can create client applications that store data in the local persisted storage! JavaScript will remain the language of choice for HTML 5 applications, though the browser vendors are free to support additional languages. The look and feel of an HTML 5 web page may also differ a little based on the browser.

Both Silverlight and HTML 5 enables the development of rich web applications. We cannot predict how successful these technologies will be, but we can say that the changes in HTML 5 indicate that the industry (i.e., every company, including Google, that is part of the HTML 5 working group) wants to bring the desktop user experience to the web.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own and do not represent my employer or their views in any way.