Folks, we have a serious decision to make about the future directions of our 10 year old Silverlight product that is in wide use in some big companies. I told the boss I'd poll this forum for advice, so I'd really appreciate serious comments from people in-the-know.
The large companies using the Silverlight product are now locking down security, so Internet Explorer is being banned and Edge adopted, which means Silverlight is out (some employees are already being forced to use the product from home). Our product is available as Xamarin authored tablet and phone apps for three platforms, but they won't even allow our apps on their company devices. So for the first time we are forced to produce a "browser based" version of our product, which apparently is acceptable to their security policies and audits. Here are some issues swirling in my head: - The backend services to drive the product are established. - The UIs of other product versions are explorer (master-detail) style, so it would be nice to maintain that feel in the browser. - We have to display data in Excel-like tables and a variety of charts (the richer and more interactive the better). - Should we use server-side ASP.NET Web Forms or MVC to drive it? - Should it be browser-side SPA? (you know I hate JS everything, so there is personal resistance there). - Could server-side and browser-side be combined to produce a better hybrid experience? Are there things to help you do that? - There are development platforms such as GTK and many others I guess that I'm not familiar with. Are they viable? - Other issues I'm forgetting? I'm personally familiar with ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC, but not with quality JS, layout or styling. Perhaps I could write a black-and-white skeleton of the working product and then give it to someone to style and script (I have done that once before). So in summary (I know this is a very broad question) ... if you were in my position, how would you proceed to produce a browser based version of a product? Cheers, *Greg K*
