Microsoft Silverlight

[Clippy]

Is it a competitor to Flash?

http://www.microsoft.com/Silverlight/default_ns.aspx

 

[kirk]

it's hoping to be, yes.

 

[VectraMan]

They seem to be more targetting applications, rather than the animation/ads/video/games that Flash is mainly used for.

Interesting though. It seems to me this is what .NET should have been all along. If MS push it out as an update they'll have almost as good coverage as the Flash player has.

 

[DimPrawn]

Is it a competitor to Flash?

http://www.microsoft.com/Silverlight/default_ns.aspx

That's the plan.

Flash is dead as a dodo.

http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2007/05/03/silverlight-vs-flash-the-developer-story.aspx

 

[Solent]

With XAML, Silverlight can integrate a lot more, in a lot easier way. If you can code in HTML then XAML being a Declarative Markup language makes development / coding simplified, I'm not sure if it will be a lot bigger than Flash but it's a serious competitor

 

[VectraMan]

That's the plan.

Flash is dead as a dodo.

http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2007/05/03/silverlight-vs-flash-the-developer-story.aspx

Can't say I'm convinced. Not such a factor anymore, but Flash was designed to produce small lightweight files for slow connections, XML is a bit of a joke by comparison. And Flash's frame based animation is simple and effective; doing it differently just gets messy.

One of the comments talks about how developers see a timeline and think "what do I do with that", whereas designers say the same if they see code. Silverlight seems to be more the latter, a tool for developers not designers. Maybe Flex is dead, but I don't see youtube videos and all the little Flash animations that clutter up the web being replaced with Silverlight.

 

[Clippy]

Interesting thoughts from those of you in the know. Thanks.

Seems MS are trying alternative methods of pushing Silverlight:

"T5m will be a test-bed for Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, the platform for creating and distributing video online content that is going head-to-head with Adobe’s Flash offering."

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article2980598.ece