What is Silverlight - Silverlight vs Flash
Well this is bound to be a tad bit biased, but if you are curious about the lowdown of Silverlight and Flash, read on.
Silverlight is essentially Microsoft’s answer to the Flash platform. They took a different approach which makes sense to me. Instead of using Action Script, or some platform-specific programing language - Silverlight can be coded in almost any .net language - such as VB or C#. That means if you’re a .net developer, coding Silverlight won’t be a huge leap.
Additionally the format is a tad smarter where instead of creating some closed swf file - the silverlight content is actually an archive and animation is specified in XAML which is just like an XML-based description of all of the elements behaviors… so this is pretty cool too.
But those are the PROs… let’s talk about the downfalls of Silverlight i.e. the CONs.
First off, as much as Silverlight is accessible to developers, traditionally Microsoft draws a huge line in the sand between developers and designers. So using their own model, Silverlight is too technical for designers, but too entrenched in design for developers. Flash, on the other hand, is something I believe anybody pick up. I have children of all ages building Flash content at WAM.
Second, and equally terrible - is that there’s an invasive install for the silverlight plugin. Whereas Flash is often bundled or installed via on click - it’s usually something people don’t need to worry about. As a web designer we know flash should “just work” for mostly everyone. Silverlight, on the otherhand, there are far less copies of installed. Most people DO NOT have the Silverlight plugin, whereas many have Flash.
To make matters worse, the installation is if-y. Best case scenario it’s a one or two click ordeal in IE under Windows. But even then does Microsoft have big differences between version 1 and version 2 silverlight content. And in the ever-lasting hatred of Apple that MS seems to provide - the mac silverlight installation is a long download, a installer process, password verification, and maybe a restart. Mac users are used to dragging an icon to their hard drive to install… not some clunky process. Heck, even firefox plugins go easier!
Now granted the number of people using something should not be an indicator of which product is better. But I will say that if some person off the internet has to go through some lengthy install process just to see something briefly on your site - the odds are he won’t stick around.
At distant third is the fact that flash runs on so many other devices such as phones, whereas Silverlight… not so much.
There are other nitpicks too, but essentially if Microsoft wants to see Silverlight in more use, they need to either bundle it (if they can, legally) with IE or build a better designer to build Silverlight content - as easy as Flash is.
Of course, Flash is in-danger of becoming stale, which might also be in Microsoft’s favor - but as of today, Silverlight is no contender to Flash in my mac-fanboyish opinion.