Creating an online visual designer using silverlight

I'm trying to create an visual designer like Visual Studio, Expression Blend, Dreamweaver etc as an ONLINE APPLICATION (ASP.NET).

Can Silverlight be helpful with this? What are the things i need to be aware of be开发者_JS百科fore starting developing this online app? How good is it dragging, dropping & moving controls around with Silverlight?

Thank you.

It is good at everything you asked for. Draggable, Dockable, etc, all these controls exists in open source and commercial libraries.

Check out telerik controls, they once had a demo that simulated visual studio's IDE. If telerik can build controls like these, then so can you (either from scratch or modifying free controls).

Silverlight could be helpful, as it brings (to a certain extent) the desktop paradigm to web applications.

Silverlight certainly supports drag and drop and with the Canvas element you have the basis for your visual designer's workspace.

This will be a large undertaking and it would be worth breaking it down into smaller pieces that you can develop one at a time.