and I for one am glad there is a viable alternative to flash.... and silverlight does offer one very big thing over flash (and the reason many of the big name companies/events are using it). that is the microsoft support behind the product.
and it really does off alot more stuff beyond that.... flash really needs to overhaul alot of things these days.
plus the less adobe in the world the better... adobe actually makes ms look good in comparison.
I can update Silverlight from WSUS, roll out the updates to all my managed desktops with no problems.
Flash is a PAIN to update on a large scale (seriously, Adobe.. Local admin required to update flash?) I wish we didn't have a need to install and support it.
Silverligth doesn't seem to be nearly as resource intensive as flash either and it often often better video quality. Flash needs something to whip it into shape.
The problem with "Microsoft support behind the product" is what that entails. It means a constantly moving target, minimal cross-platform support, DRM lock-in, and Windows server dependency if you want to deliver protected content and plenty more besides. Moonlight is and will continue to be a joke for cross-platform support - always 1 step behind, bereft of DRM support and dependent on Microsoft for its video codecs.
Silverlight isn't actually a bad development platform. If you know WPF and C# you'll get Silverlight although its not strictly .NET. In some ways it is superior to Flex, in some ways it is worse. For example MXML and ActionScript are okay but its a very verbose language compared to C# and lacks multithreading (meaning lots of stupid hacks involving timers). Conversely, the Flex tools are better and it has decent offline support via AIR. The same goes by comparison to JavaFX. On the one hand, the Silverlight tools are better that NetBeans' JavaFX support and it has a UI description language, but then again I could reuse an existing Java code relatively easily since JavaFX extends J2SE 6.0 rather than being some look-a-like subset. Speedwise Flex & Silverlight seem pretty similar to me. I suspect JavaFX might be faster for compiled Java classes but slower for .fx script files.
At the end of the day all these runtimes have strengths and weaknesses, but I don't believe for a second that Microsoft or Silverlight has an interest in protecting platform or browser neutrality.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
aaron @ Apr 20th 2009 2:35PM
and I for one am glad there is a viable alternative to flash.... and silverlight does offer one very big thing over flash (and the reason many of the big name companies/events are using it). that is the microsoft support behind the product.
and it really does off alot more stuff beyond that.... flash really needs to overhaul alot of things these days.
plus the less adobe in the world the better... adobe actually makes ms look good in comparison.
Ordeith @ Apr 20th 2009 5:31PM
No kidding.
I can update Silverlight from WSUS, roll out the updates to all my managed desktops with no problems.
Flash is a PAIN to update on a large scale (seriously, Adobe.. Local admin required to update flash?) I wish we didn't have a need to install and support it.
THizzle7XU @ Apr 21st 2009 1:25AM
Silverligth doesn't seem to be nearly as resource intensive as flash either and it often often better video quality. Flash needs something to whip it into shape.
DrXym @ Apr 21st 2009 8:47AM
The problem with "Microsoft support behind the product" is what that entails. It means a constantly moving target, minimal cross-platform support, DRM lock-in, and Windows server dependency if you want to deliver protected content and plenty more besides. Moonlight is and will continue to be a joke for cross-platform support - always 1 step behind, bereft of DRM support and dependent on Microsoft for its video codecs.
Silverlight isn't actually a bad development platform. If you know WPF and C# you'll get Silverlight although its not strictly .NET. In some ways it is superior to Flex, in some ways it is worse. For example MXML and ActionScript are okay but its a very verbose language compared to C# and lacks multithreading (meaning lots of stupid hacks involving timers). Conversely, the Flex tools are better and it has decent offline support via AIR. The same goes by comparison to JavaFX. On the one hand, the Silverlight tools are better that NetBeans' JavaFX support and it has a UI description language, but then again I could reuse an existing Java code relatively easily since JavaFX extends J2SE 6.0 rather than being some look-a-like subset. Speedwise Flex & Silverlight seem pretty similar to me. I suspect JavaFX might be faster for compiled Java classes but slower for .fx script files.
At the end of the day all these runtimes have strengths and weaknesses, but I don't believe for a second that Microsoft or Silverlight has an interest in protecting platform or browser neutrality.