Silverlight Feature Requests
Currently, there is not a general location to log Silverlight feature requests (we’re considering adding something on Silverlight.net for this). Given the lack of a central spot, I’ve taken a few threads on the Silverlight forums related to a Silverlight wish list as well as some comments from ScottGu’s Silverlight 2 blog post and Scott Barnes’ blog and aggregated the requests into a single list with frequency counts. I left off things that have already been announced in Silverlight 3 but left on others that have not yet been announced. There are numerous reasons why something will or will not appear in the next version of Silverlight including customer demand, time to implement, business need, security concerns, performance concerns, ability to implement consistently cross browser and cross platform, etc. Therefore, items at the top of the list below won’t necessarily appear in the next version of Silverlight – however, it’s likely we’re engaged in solving those problems in one way or another. Net result is the Silverlight product team does look at these requests and they do have some impact on shaping future Silverlight platforms.
Feel free to continue to make requests and I’ll try and update the counts every month or so. One thing that would help for requests is some insight into the scenario for the request (if it’s not obvious). For example, if you need UDP, include details on your scenario for UDP (e.g. P2P game and if so, we may be able to solve that with a more targeted API). One area to call out specifically for scenarios is requests for WPF and Silverlight compatibility. In general, if you want a WPF feature in Silverlight, call that out as a Silverlight feature request vs. a compatibility request (e.g. want triggers in Silverlight). If you have a need to share resources between Silverlight and WPF, call that out as compatibility and let us know what you’re doing that requires shared resources (to better help us determine how to focus our work in this area).
| Feature | Count | Comments |
| Web camera and/or microphone input | 33 | Includes requests for just microphone as well |
| Bitmap APIs | 26 | Support get/set pixels and/or rendering a XAML scene to a bitmap. |
| Full 3D | 24 | Full 3D support (full 3D models) |
| Printing | 20 | Printing APIs |
| Offline and/or out of browser support | 16 | Support running Silverlight when not online (or completely out of the browser) |
| Bi-directional text and/or complex script | 9 | |
| UDP/P2P | 9 | UDP APIs generally for Peer to Peer support |
| Rich text support | 8 | Editing and display |
| Right mouse button | 8 | Ability to configure the right click |
| Text quality | 8 | Improved text quality |
| HTML Integration | 7 | Support HTML hosting (live HTML documents) and/or HTML translation |
| Interactive designer | 7 | Support an interactive designer in Visual Studio |
| Support more than BasicHttpBinding | 7 | Most common request is for WSHttpBinding |
| Improve Silverlight/WPF compatibility | 6 | Mostly feature requests for either Silverlight and/or WPF |
| More controls | 6 | Random/general requests |
| SaveFileDialog | 6 | |
| Data and/or property triggers | 5 | |
| Reporting services | 5 | |
| Synchronous web service calls | 5 | |
| ADO.NET DataSet/DataTable | 4 | |
| Alpha video | 4 | Chroma key support |
| Clipboard support | 4 | |
| Drawing APIs (immediate mode) | 4 | |
| Element name binding | 4 | |
| Improved DataGrid | 4 | Several different requests |
| Local relational database (SQL) | 4 | |
| Modal dialog | 4 | |
| Mouse wheel | 4 | API and support in existing controls |
| Selectable text | 4 | |
| Assembly caching | 3 | Want a framework for downloading/managing assemblies |
| Credentials/auth | 3 | Requests for networking stack and ASP.NET type integration |
| Custom markup extensions | 3 | |
| Multi-target DLLs for .NET/SL | 3 | Build a business object DLL once for both .NET and Silverlight |
| Multi-touch support | 3 | |
| Path Animation | 3 | |
| Speech and better audio decoder | 3 | |
| VisualBrush | 3 | |
| 9 Grid | 2 | |
| Better keyboard APIs | 2 | Platform independent keycode |
| Better SEO | 2 | |
| Binding support to anonymous types | 2 | |
| Direct database access | 2 | OLEDB/ODBC equivalent |
| Flow panel | 2 | |
| GIF support | 2 | |
| Global/dynamic styles (skinning) | 2 | |
| Integrated CTRL+F (in page search) | 2 | |
| Sound APIs (equalizer) | 2 | Includes looping |
| TileBrush (Image Tiling) | 2 | |
| XPS Support | 2 | |
| 64-bit platform support | 1 | |
| Android support | 1 | |
| Better N-tier support | 1 | Improved data access |
| Better SharePoint integration | 1 | |
| Block style text | 1 | Bulleted lists, paragraphs |
| Cell based animation | 1 | |
| CollectionView | 1 | |
| Color management | 1 | |
| Digital/XAP signing | 1 | |
| Double Click event | 1 | |
| Drag and Drop | 1 | Between the desktop and Silverlight |
| Full 5.1 sound | 1 | Currently fold down to stereo |
| IDataErrorInfo | 1 | |
| Inverse kinematics (bones) | 1 | Flash 10 feature |
| MediaTimeline | 1 | |
| Multi-binding | 1 | |
| Navigation model | 1 | Includes browser history integration |
| Validation controls | 1 | |
| XPATH support for data binding | 1 |
Comments
Anonymous
December 23, 2008
Fantastic! I'm glad someone decided to do this... Thanks.Anonymous
December 23, 2008
I would add a couple of things that I'm hoping make it into WPF and Silverlight in the near future. On the 3D front, I would like to see more than the basic DX/XNA like API. I would like to see support for Patch based models so that 3D GUIs become more virtual and scale better. I would also like to see some good 3D Layout Panels, and support for those panels in ItemsControl (maybe an ItemsPanel3DTemplate property). Silverlight should support hardware accel if the support is there. 3D should become an integrated part of the UI. On the non-GUI stuff I would like to see better support for threading and MVVM. Maybe something like INotifyXXX supported LINQ queries that would provide a thread safe alternative to the CollectionView class. The I/O model in Silverlight forces the use of worker threads (which is a good thing) - but the support isn't there to build good, thread safe, observable collections and 'live' in model queries. Silverlight also needs real support for markup extensions and better databinding support to better address the incompatibilities with WPF. Key driver here is cost in maintaining the differences. I would also love to see a browser implementation (Trident engine rewrite) as a object model translation from HTML to XAML, JavaScript to .NET. This active translation layer would allow full, same level interop between the SL/.NET world and a hosted or hosting HTML document. The scenario here is cost - the HTML investment/skills and resources would become part of the XAML implementation.Anonymous
December 23, 2008
  Joe Stegman, group program manager из команды Silverlight, достаточно известен пониманием ситуацииAnonymous
December 23, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 23, 2008
Need support:
- IO disk operations (for signed assembles)
- Asymmetric Cryptography (access to RSA and non-RSA cryptoproviders)
Anonymous
December 23, 2008
I think a rich text editor (probably with HTML support) is one of the most needed features.Anonymous
December 23, 2008
My requests are:
- Bitmap APIs
- Printing
- Clipboard support
- MultiHandleSlider (like ASP.NET AJAX)
Anonymous
December 24, 2008
I would like to see support for the workflowruntime to run WF workflows or at a minimum support for the rule engine. Our apps typically have complex validations field to field that would benefit from having xaml-based rules to run on the client as opposed to going back to the server every time.Anonymous
December 24, 2008
Joe Stegman, group program manager из команды Silverlight, достаточно известен пониманием ситуации внутриAnonymous
December 24, 2008
Need support: WSHttpBinding - Session support GZipStream DataGrid - virual mode like WPF - EnableRowVirtualization="True" AND ScrollViewer.IsDeferredScrollingEnabled="True" FlowDocument (Rich text support)Anonymous
December 24, 2008
A bit unusual request Could you make public Silverlight's CLR hosting api?Anonymous
December 24, 2008
keyboard support in full-screen modeAnonymous
December 24, 2008
Please add support for TIFF (bi-tonal and color) images to your list. There's a LOT of scanned business documents that live in TIFF format out there.Anonymous
December 24, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 24, 2008
I vote for: Better text quality, so that it feels more like a normal web page Selectable textblock, and copy to clipboard Better right click integration (copy, paste, open in new tab, custom hooks, etc) Back/Forward integration (XBAP's model is good) - the web is broken without a back button right? Deep linking support, and ties into back/forward integration In summary I'd like silverlight to handle the back to basics functionality better. You may say you have html/css etc for that, but I think there are a ton of developers out there that stay away from that and prefer a much better and simpler layout model. If silverlight can solve these basic points, I think that will boost its market share a lot more than the advanced stuff (3D etc). So back to basics for me - I think the web would be a better place if everything was in silverlight, including basic text sites. I think from a web design point of view, I find expression blend far more intuitive than expression web. The only real negative to this is for search engines not picking it up. I really hope that changes soon, even for basic static sites.Anonymous
December 24, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 24, 2008
I vote for:
- Mouse wheel, API and support in existing controls
- Selectable text
- Binding support to anonymous types
- Faster DataGrid. It is rendering to slow.
- Bether text quality
- VS Interactive designer. Please fix the small details before adding advanced features like 3D.
Anonymous
December 25, 2008
I have made a post on my blog to help people identify any area's that they feel need adding in Silverlight. I think the idea to have a 'central' list is a great idea. Link: http://silverlightblog.com/post/2008/12/25/Silverlight-Features-List.aspxAnonymous
December 25, 2008
The Text features are all absolutly essential. Selectable text of course is the most critical, rich text formatting is also very much necessary. Multi column layout/text continuation would be desireable, too. There's a lot of reading going on on the web aside from the Times Reader ;) Cheers FlorianAnonymous
December 25, 2008
In this issue: Jim Lynn, Silverlight Girl, Microsoft Natal, Damon Payne, Lutz Gerhard, Tamir Khason,Anonymous
December 25, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 25, 2008
Right click and native Mouse wheel support ! PLEASE!!! (and don't hide behind that security excuse again. I know several ppl on the silverlight dev team who thinks this is totally possible in a secure manner)Anonymous
December 25, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 27, 2008
Binding to DependencyObjects like in WPF MUST be supported. The limitation is currently only allowing us to do it on FrameworkElements, which makes absolutely no sense. You can't for instance bind the rotation angle on a RotateTransform. GrrrAnonymous
December 28, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 29, 2008
Thank you for this post. []´sAnonymous
January 03, 2009
Selectable text is a very important feature to the project I am working on. I need to be able to select text from an uneditable source and then be able to capture and use the highlighted text. I prototyped the project in WPF with RichTextBox, but it isn't part of Silverlight. There may be other aspects of RichTextBox that I need as well. So my requests are selectable text and RichTextBox. Thanks.Anonymous
January 06, 2009
I am not sure if this is a thing you are looking for, but I would very much like integrated unit testing of SL in VS (like the current MSTest works, using key shortcuts and no reason to leave VS) and in msbuild (so the build server can also do the unittests) I know and use the current unit testing framework, but I don't like that it opens a browser for unittests and isn't integrated in VS and I can't run the tests on the buildserver. I also realize that a first version probably only will/can work with class libraries and non-visual stuff, but that would be a very nice first step! Thanks for taking time to read this.Anonymous
January 06, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 28, 2009
We intend to use Silverlight for our next-generation corporate thin client. The things we need first priority: -Improved Grid with filtering, sorting, progrssive loading and item grouping -Right mouse button -Selectable text Other good things: -Offline and/or out of browser support -Printing -Synchronous web service callsAnonymous
February 04, 2009
I'd like to see 3D in 3rd version with Viewport2DVisual3D, like in WPF. I really need to create 3D interactive controls! Also I vote for more controls and more events.Anonymous
March 02, 2009
-SaveFileDialog -Full 5.1 sound (I assume MS wants people using the XBox 360 as a media extender for SL. Netflix anyone?) -Dynamic assembly caching -Synchronous web service calls -Right mouse btn -More sophisticated WCF serialization a la .NET 3.5 SP1.Anonymous
March 25, 2009
- Localization like in asp.net with a fallback language
- SaveFileDialog
- Printing Support
- Right mouse button
Anonymous
November 26, 2010
text with format text html and multibindingAnonymous
November 26, 2010
textbox with format text html and multibinding