Windows Phone 8.1 Store VS Windows Phone 8.1 Silve

Question

When I create new Windows Phone project I have an option to create a "Windows Phone" or "Windows Phone Silverlight" app. I know that they have different runtimes and different APIs. I was under the impression that Microsoft wants to unify Windows and Windows Phone platforms so why is there even a Silverlight version? What benefits does it bring? Also, if I want to create an app just for Windows Phone and never have plans to bring it to Windows, what should I choose, Silverlight or Windows Phone?

Answer 1

I'd suggest you go with "Windows Phone" (non-Silverlight). It's the new API, which works for both Windows and Windows Phone. At some point you may want to port the app or create a new one for Windows and you'll already know the API (and porting will be way easier). Also, the new API will most likely get more updates and features added, and at some point you may even be forced to update to it (either because the old one is no longer supported, or because it does not have some features that you need).

As it was said in the other answers - the Silverlight option is there only for backward compatibility and is likely to be phased out in time. That is - it's good if you already know the API and have many libraries (yours or others) for WP Silverlight, but if you're just starting - you'd better go for the new technology.

Edit

There is one other thing to consider before choosing between the two types of apps. Some features are only available in a Silverlight app, and others (smaller amount) - only in a Xaml app. Here's an article with some info on the differences: Migrating your Windows Phone 8 app to a Windows Runtime XAML app

Answer 2

Windows RT Xaml is quite new and People have to generate some knowledge first.

Silverlight for phone has been around for years and there's a load of tools available: Phone Toolkit, diverse Controls, etc. Just killing it off would have hurt many developers who built up intellectual property over a long time forcing them to start over.

When starting a project with Silverlight you will have more things around that help you get stuff done.

When starting with WinRT Xaml, you will have better performance, but will have to figure a lot out by yourself.

So the Silverlight option is there to not throw of Silverlight developers.

I recently started a new project on WinRT Xaml and my experience was that I had to recreate a lot of common tools like Caches, etc. But also a lot of things that were in Toolkits previously are now part of the platform itself. Also, when moving over to Windows 8, you get to share a lot of code which is nice.

Answer 3

Unifying the environment(s) would be ideal. In my opinion, it hasn't been very successful. At one point in time, you could only develop under Silverlight, so what you are seeing is just a newer version of the same thing to keep backwards compatibility as well as to keep Silverlight's developers happy. In the future, it will probably be phased out. Plus if you want to support older Phones, Silverlight is basically your only choice (you'll be surprise, how many WP users haven't updated their 8.0 to 8.1)

There really isn't any other real benefit of Silverlight other than maybe the Windows Phone Toolkit which has been tremendously useful (you can see how many SO's answers rely on this simple addon). Once the universal runtime gets fleshed out to the point where the documentation reflects what's actually available -- then I think it would be the default project for developing in Windows going forward.

If you're just starting, I would use Silverlight the knowledge based is much greater. After you get use to the WP environment then switch to runtime.