Flash/SilverLight

[john_aa]

Hey Guys, I am interested in know, if any of you have used Silverlight and how will it compare to Flash. Will like to know, when should one use Silverlight and when should one use Flash

[Splitter]

I havent used silverlight and actually don't know about it, So there is not much on my part to say, but you can always use flash where some dynamism is to be shown

[ryanhellyer]

I haven't tried Silverlight and don't intend to. The concept of letting Microsoft control the way websites are built is scary. We're still in the IE rut, although slowly coming out of it and another proprietry web technology for the masses would be disastrous IMO.

[Stephen Lowe]

I like Flash.
But Silverlight's got two big advantages for me, even though I already know Actionscript.

1. There are a lot more people around here who know C# and VB.Net (a lot of the web development projects I work with are hosted on ASP.NET) than know Actionscript. Since you code Silverlight apps with (pretty much any) .Net language, this is pretty helpful when the alternative is learning Actionscript or hiring more staff.

2. Both content and Metadata in Silverlight are stored in XAML. XAML is searchable, so seach engines crawlers are (will be?) able to search Silverlight content. Flash, on the other hand, is opaque to web spiders and crawlers.

Another advantage I'm starting to see is that Silverlight is WPF light, so there's a high degree of portability between a desktop app and a Silverlight web page. Since the programming model is strictly event driven (no need to deal with postbacks), Silverlight development can be done by developers with a desktop background and next to no web experience.

Stephen Lowe
(disclaimer: though I work for Microsoft as an Architect Evangelist, my opinions (and occasional errors) are my own.

[ryanhellyer]

Welcome to the forum Stephen

Hmm, interesting view on the topic. You certainly seem to know a lot more about such things that I do. I truly hate the concept of a single company having some sort of control over the internet. Adobe already has that with Flash, but at this stage at least they are simply providing a service which happens to be very popular. Microsoft on the other hand has the power to force feed such services down users throats (IE) and consequently can seriously negatively affect the quality of the internet (IE) as a whole.