Silverlight Vs Flash: Trying to collect different opinions

This post was inspired by the post on Jesse Ezell Blog: Silverlight vs. Flash: The Developer Story

“A few people didn’t like my proclamation that Flash is dead. This is understandable. It is a bit premature to make such claims, but the Silverlight model is pretty amazing. As someone who works with Flash on an ongoing basis, I thought I’d chime in with a more in depth look at the issues.

First off, let me explain my background for those of you who may not know. Way back in the day, when Flash 4 was the latest and greatest, Macromedia decided to “open up” the Flash file format. They released documentation (which was poor at best) and an SDK (which was horrible at best). I saw the potential here. Finally, the format third party developers could unleash their creativity and usher in all kinds of amazing tools. Unfortunately, the documentation was full of errors and the SDK was so riddled with bugs that you spent more time debugging it than using it…”

 It is very interesting reading + some very interesting comments. You can read the full Silverlight vs. Flash: The Developer Story post by clicking on the link above.

 And here are some other related articles just to support all kind of view point: (thanx to geekglue for compiling this list)

And here is a response form an Macromedia employee:

“Dueling arguments at ZDNet. The pro-SL position: Fewer know ActionScript than .NET and the potential DLR languages; Silverlight has Microsoft behind it. The pro-Flash position: Silverlight is currently non-Linux; no tooling available if you’re not on an MS-branded OS; currently has 0% viewability. I’m not sure either argument is strong. The pro-SL author seems to not realize that ECMAScript is used daily by millions, and that the difference in object models between JavaScript and ActionScript is likely less than the object-model learning gap required for Ruby/Silverlight… there’s also a greater range of tooling available for Flash. The pro-Flash author has true points, but those may not be as significant as consumer inertia, client inertia, and the continual pressure from other MS business units to support the organization’s overall goals. Microsoft has hired many of the top Flash developers to create showcase pieces in their environment… Microsoft and Real have moved their video clients into a more Flash-like space… Microsoft has announced that their main hope for returning growth to the company is advertising, and personalization databases. We’ll see how these trends play out. I think Flash is now in an even stronger position than before, myself.”

So, is Flash dead? We’ll about to see. At least we’ll see a healthy competition :)

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MSDN, Silverlight, Windows Live
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