"Three screens and the cloud"

Interesting blog article from Keith Elder about information from PDC 2009:

.Net 4.0 - Start Reading Between the Lines ? Learn Silverlight and Entity Framework

Here's a quote: "Three screens and the cloud"

We heard this over and over at PDC. Let's read between the lines a bit shall we?

I have three screens: Windows Desktop, Web, Mobile. Ok, if I want to write an app that will run on all three what do I as a developer have to do today? Let?s see, well, we could write a ClickOnce deployed Smart Client for the Desktop that uses WPF. For the web, well, we would have to switch gears completely and rewrite our app in Asp.Net or Asp.Net MVC to get that screen. For mobile, even tougher, we have to rewrite the app again to get the mobile version. Let?s think about this differently again. Think about it, how many technologies would a developer have to know in order to an application for these three different screens; WPF, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS will be used just to name a few.

Now, let's switch gears. What if I used Silverlight 4 to write my app? Well, it could work in the browser no doubt. Hmmm, it could also work on the Desktop using the out of browser experience with elevated permissions. What about mobile?

"Wait, didn?t you just say Keith that at Mix we?ll get to see Windows Mobile 7?"

Yes!

"And hasn't there already been talk of using Silverlight for mobile?"

Yes!

"Aha! Three screens with Silverlight, I get it!"

That's right my friendly .Net developers the writing is on the wall. The vision of WPF/e (WPF Everywhere) is about to come true. We've waited for years but it is just around the corner as I predicted would happen years ago.