>>>>If you need a rich user interface on a web browser AND if you don't have a whole lot of people using the application at once, terminal server or Citrix or GoGlobal is a much better alternative than writing an application in ASP/C# what have you. With ASP apps you just won't get the same rich user interface as you can with WIndows apps. This all may change dramatically and soon with SilverLight, but it is not quite there yet...
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>>>I see that. For an invoice entry web applications terrible but in some cases, that can be tolerable. I saw silverlight but it seem me just a multimedia toy from Microsoft's demos. I couldn't see a good demo for data things.
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>>IMHO, Microsoft has done an unusually poor job explaining what Silverlight really is all about. The few early demos also were quite toyish, as well.
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>>However, there are some newer demos that are very impressive indeed, and show the potentially incredible power of this new approach (for example, see http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/01/09/silverlight_media_application_service/)
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>>I have not personally done anything with it yet, but once the next version comes out, I will certainly take a very close look at it. If MS manages to give us most of the Windows controls in a stable SilverLight package, I am all set to develop rich user interface applications for the web (Windows, Mac, Linux...) AND non-web Windows environment with just one code base.
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>>Having said that, I'm not about to drink the "Silverlight Kool Aid" until I see what happens to the trail blazers <g>.
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>>Pertti
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>That's a problem with silverlight. Clients should install silverlight companent to their computers. That's not a problem for me (because all of my clients have windows machines) but it's a barrier on top of cross-platform.

Silverlight apps can automatically install the "runtime" within a browser on any supported platform (such as Mac or Linux) -- at least that's the dream. The runtime (or whatever they will call it) is pretty much completely contained in the browser and interacts with the browser rather than the underlying OS. The size of the runtime is small in modern standards, some 2MB (I hear), so it is kind of like installing Adobe reader or Flash plugins. No biggie.