Chapter 37. Next Generation Web: Silverlight and ASP.NET MVC

There's no doubt that users are expecting richer and more sophisticated user interfaces in web applications. High-profile web applications such as Google Maps, Windows Live Local, and Gmail have captured the imagination of web developers and led to an increased interest in pushing the boundaries of what is possible to build using HTML.

Unfortunately, web applications that are as rich and functional as these are notoriously complex to build and maintain. The tangle of technologies that is used by these applications, such as Ajax, DHTML, and JavaScript, is such that you need specialist development expertise that focuses purely on client-side web technologies.

Silverlight solves this problem by bringing the managed code to client-side development. Silverlight is a cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in that includes a lightweight version of the .NET Framework and delivers advanced functionality such as vector graphics, animation, and streaming media.

At the same time that client-side demands have increased, the complexity of the ASP.NET code on the server side has also increased. Enter the ASP.NET MVC framework. ASP.NET MVC applies the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, which allows you to separate an application into three components: the Model, the View, and the Controller. This provides better testability of the front-end code and gives you full control over the behavior and output produced by your web application.

In this chapter, you learn how to build the next generation of web applications using Silverlight 2 and the ASP.NET MVC framework. In the first half of the chapter you walk through the process to build a new Silverlight component and integrate it into an existing web page. The second half explains the details and benefits of the Model-View-Controller pattern and shows you how to build a new ASP.NET MVC application.

This chapter covers products that were in beta at the time of writing. As such, some of the content and screenshots may have changed in subsequent releases. When the products are released in their final version, we will offer a download of the new version of this chapter at wrox.com. Just search for this book by the ISBN number 978-0-4702-2988-0, and look in the Chapter 37 folder under "errata."