大学生眼中的“银光”

这次的博客和技术无关，也和Silverlight或CLR的最新发布没什么关系，而是想和大家一起分享一下几个学生在学习用Silverlight技术完成项目之后的一些体会的感想。
 
最近我在上海交通大学指导几名学生（Jianxun Wang, Jiao Jin, 以及Shanshan Chen）使用Silverlight技术制作校园选课系统，以完成他们的暑期实践项目。从项目概念生成到最后功能成形也不过短短6周的时间。这段时间无论是对他们，还是对我自己而言都是一段有趣的体验。我尝试让他们学会从用户的角度去设计项目，开发出用户体验良好的，健壮而实用产品。毕竟，对于一个真实的产品而言，最终产品是否成功的验收者始终是产品的使用者。几名聪明的大学生很快的明白了我的意思，从每周末的项目小结中，总能或多或少看到他们的改进和创新，让我感到意外的欣喜。
 
项目结束后，几名大学生应邀写下了他们在项目过程中的所学所想，读来挺有意思的。在industry摸爬滚打了一阵子，再看看那些来自于学生的文字和思想，亲切依然。而他们的一些想法，却也能在无形中帮助我们从另一个角度去看待一些事物。: )
 
让我们先看看学生们是怎么做项目的，又学到了些什么（用英文写的，不过句子还是挺容易理解的 : )）：
 
we learned the enterprise project development process. First, we collected the requirements. As college students, the requirements could be understood easily. The school’s Course Registration System could be refer to. Also, we collected the students' and teachers’ suggestion. They gave us a lot of good advice. Thanks to them. Also, a lot of students are interested in this technology, and they wanted to use it to design their interface. We analyzed the requirements and set the priority of the requirements. Then we determined the schedule. In the process of the project we tried to finish our work according to the schedule and we learned to change the schedule according to the actual progress. Also we got the experience of communicate with stakeholders. We learned how to show our work, and make the stakeholder satisfied.

既然是关于Silverlight的项目，对于Silverlight技术本身，学生们还是做足了功课的。在文章中他们提到了Silverlight的这些优点：

Five weeks ago, when we started learning to do some applications with Silverlight, we all felt that Silverlight was easy to use. Some sample applications could be done in a very short time, and we could add animations and 3D effect very easily. Sometimes we just need to use the mouse to drag the control items to complete the work. We compared Silverlight with Flash, and we found something.

First of all, the type of developer job they focus on is not the same. Flash is more flexible for professional designers, however Silverlight is more suitable to software coders. Just think，a software coders is more familiar with the programming languages, such as C#, C++ and so on. It is certainly inconvenient for him to use Flash which needs action scripts. Silverlight is a good choice because the developers can write codes in the background, and the events or action can be easily controlled by programming language. Also, Silverlight is more receptive. We found there are more and more people start to use Silverlight to make their blogs more beautiful. We thought that was because Silverlight is easier to use. On the other hand, there is superiority over Flash that Silverlight has industry standard video codec. Expression Encoder can be used to design video easily and it has many templates for developers to use to enable the video more fantastic. It provides animation effects which gives more surprises to users. And Silverlight is a XML-based presentation layer. XML has at least two advantages. It is good for SEO(search engine optimization). As we all know, the websites using technology of Flash or Flex are difficult to be found by the search engines. But Silverlight doesn't have this problem at all. Another reason is that xml is easy for developers to make modification.

Silverlight 2 Beta 2 includes a new type of template named Visual State Manager. Actually, we can use Expression Blend to edit a template. For example, we can add several image or button or other controls just through clicking the mouse to automatically generate codes instead of writing xaml in the app xaml to create template. And it can also be reused.

而对于Silverlight欠缺的地方，学生们也提出了自己的观点：

After further study in Silverlight, we also find Silverlight has some aspects to improve. The compatibility of different versions is a problem. The Visual Studio with new version can not open the projects with older ones. When browsing website with an older version of Silverlight, if the PC which has installed a new version, a notice will appear to remind you to install the older version. Although Silverlight 2 Beta 2 provide some control items, that’s not rich enough. We believe Silverlight will be more consummate. The new version of Expression Studio is expected.

关于学生们提到的Silverlight的美中不足，也是我们正在努力改进的地方。虽然现在预言下个版本的Silverlight中究竟有哪些新功能还有些为时过早，但可以肯定的是，它会在现有的版本基础上做很多改进，使开发设计人员对Silverlight项目的开发体验更好。我们一直很关注用户对技术的反馈。如果您对Silverlight有任何的想法，也欢迎通过这个博客告诉我们。很有可能，您会在不久的将来，在我们的产品中惊喜地发现一些变化。 : )

学生们用Silverlight制作的校园选课系统的首页效果