Developer roadmap - 1. Moving to MVC. Your thoughts.

thought wrote:

There are many instances where html/js/ajax methods do not cut the mustard, and many of the reasons within the stackoverflow posts are just opinions, have no weight, or are completely invalid.

"When HTML site fails, user gets error page and reloads. When silverlight fails, it can hang or crash." This for example is not a valid point because the site should be tested before it is released. Any Silverlight error is programmatic and not related to the client because everyone has the same plug in installed. All errors should be fledged out during development/acceptance testing before going 'live'. Silverlight errors do not cause the entire application to crash, only the parts that have the gremlins. You can't just do a Google search about "Silverlight for an entire site" and take the first search results content as dogma.

What is your role in nopCommerce thought? Do you help develop the nopCommerce application?

breakskater wrote:


Oh really? So you've never seen facebook, ebay, paypal, your bank, or any other website chuck out errors in live arenas? They happen, regardless of how good the programmer is and how much testing has been done.

Silverlight is a browser plug-in and is more susceptible to crashing that a normal html site, fact.


breakskater wrote:

I don't mean to be rude, but I have followed your comments and they are exhausting. The fact I didn't want to write out a page about how wrong you are led me to stack overview to point you in the right direction rather than wasting more time.

I won't be replying any more with regards to silverlight - it has its uses, an e-commerce site built completely from it is not one of them!

I have helped contribute to nop but am not in anyway directly affiliated - what has this to do with this thread?

Will,

What was that you told me - it's not worth it... :p

nopCommerce team | retroviz wrote:

I hate myself now for biting :)

Haha. You and me both.

I'm going to have to unsubscribe from this topic now otherwise I will never get any sleep with all the alerts.

It's been....emotional.

thought wrote:

That is true. Both Silverlight and HTML sites can throw errors, but that doesn't mean don't use Silverlight because it can throw errors.

thought wrote:

That is not a true statement. The reason being is because with Silverlight you have Exception Handling which can trap all errors and gracefully handle all unhandled exceptions.  Because it is in a plug-in doesn't make it more susceptible to crashing. Html sites have cross-browser issues with CSS and Javascript, that is alleviated with Silverlight.

thought wrote:
But you are! LOL <--- just joking

through wrote:
It can be done. You shouldn't stop replying. No one is mad at you. You are right Silverlight has its place, and nopCommerce is a perfect place for Silverlight (3D product viewer). This can be configured and enabled/disabled for specified products. For example, skateboarders need to see the shape of the board; it is very important to them (some like longer noses, some shorter, some more concaved, etc). This can be achieved easily with Silverlight. Again, I never said rewrite the entire site using Silverlight, but that IS the direction MS is heading: Office is being rewritten in XAML. I've already listed numerous other MS applications. It is definately something to consider going forward, especially for the admin section as someone else mentioned, but AGAIN bit by bit. You can't eat an elephant all at once.

thought wrote:

Because I am considering denoting some of my free time to helping nopCommerce develop portions of their site where needed. I have a vested interest in nopCommerce because of 1) I use it, and 2) I am modifying it and I would like to contribute my code to help improve it, as long as the nopCommerce team likes what I have done with consensus.

lakario wrote:
I think that we should not mix WebForms and MVC. If we move to MVC, then the entire site will be moved to MVC

P.S. Let's don't discuss moving to Silverlight in this topic. We're talking about MVC.

breakskater wrote:

'Cut the mustard' has got to be one of the most absurd expressions I've ever heard. :(

nopCommerce team | a.m. wrote:

Any reasoning in particular for this outlook? I'm all for it, but I only suggested the incremental switch as a means to ease developers into a changeover. Is it primarily because you'd like to minimize code quality-degradation that would likely accompany disjoint development patterns?

It's worth noting that although the administration area and the customer front-end of nopCommerce come in a single package, they really are essentially separate applications. Really, there isn't any compelling reason that the development of one must hinge on that of the other. Personally, I think it would be interesting to see the development of the storefront and the administration area become entirely decoupled so that they can each be maintained semi-independently of one another, which in turn would open up the door for forked projects like a Silverlight administration area or similar.

I'm just thinking out loud here, but really I think Silverlight would be awesome for the management end of things given the speed, power, and ease of development; meanwhile the storefront could gain that same speed and power without sacrificing usability by running MVC in place of Webforms. Sooner or later (later) HTML will be obsoleted by technologies like Silverlight, but until that happens we're stuck with HTML for building websites; however, when you get right down to it, the administration area of nopCommerce is more an application than it is a website. Everyone knows that Silverlight is more capable of creating rich applications than HTML, CSS and JavaScript are, which is why Silverlight really makes sense for application-like websites. Despite the obvious advantages of Silverlight, dependency on a third party plugin is foolish because it precludes the majority of users. Fortunately, the administrator of a nopCommerce website is not the majority of users and it is not unreasonable to ask that an administrator install a third-party plugin in order to manage their content in the most effective way possible. Imagine the improvements possible with a client-side, event-driven platform like Silverlight operating in the administration area. Just off the top of my head: live interaction with customers as they navigate the store, instant access to specific data without having to navigate (page load) away from what you're doing, rapid input and management of content, the list goes on.

That's just my two cents.

lakario wrote:

I agree. Unfortunately, I've picked up many absurd expressions to my repertoire over the years from the people I've come in contact with. =)

lakario wrote:

I totally agree. It would take too long to convert the entire nopCommerce app to MVC. I just went through a complete rewrite of a .NET 1.1 app to using EF, VS 2008, LINQ, etc.. We would be done already if we had just converted the code to .NET 3.5 and incrementally improved the parts of the code that needed updating.

lakario wrote:

There's pros and cons to doing this. The disadvantage of doing this is that you will need either two DataContexts or a shared project which houses the DataContext. I believe that is already there, but, if you share it, you would still have to be cognizant about changing the DataContext and what impact that would have on both applications (admin and store).

lakario wrote:

I couldn't agree more! And, good idea about live interaction with customers while they shop. Looks like a lot of sites are already doing this. With Silverlight, it will be a piece of cake to implement.

paraphrasing Andrei:
This is a discussion for MVC.

I agree, but at the same time, topics such as what do you think about MVC, typically lead to subjective opinions and alternative technologies, debates, and sometimes heated debates. But, ultimately, everyone learns something and gains insight and a better understanding of what is out there and which direction to move.

Perhaps we should start a topic on adding Silverlight to nopCommerce? I assure you that there will be tremendous support for adding Silverlight, even if it is just for parts of the admin, but it will be one foot in the right direction.