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A while back, there was a technobabble article discussing the pros and cons of flash and silverlight. Times-they-are-a-changin’ and the battle ground between these technologies has completely changed. So here’s where we’re at today…

Let’s start of will a quick recap of these technologies. Basically all of this stems from the limitations html has previously suffered from. In order for webpages to have this level of interactivity and presentation, you’d need a plugin to get your browser to do it. So this is where flash is coming from. It’s meant to address the limitations of html.

Microsoft, as per usual, identifies a money-making technology and makes their own version. That’s silverlight. Like flash, it’s a plugin that lets your browser do video, animation, and higher interaction experience.

Now, HTML is a standard and the folks on W3C and other standards committees have identified that most web sites want this functionality standard and available. And I agree, you shouldn’t need to install plugins just to watch videos, see animations, etc.

To summarize the pros and cons in the previous technobabble article, flash is the big fish in the pond. It has full support in windows, mac, and linux - along with several other platforms - even the Wii. However, it’s proprietary and uses its own language (ActionScript) Silverlight, although less-supported, offers a more open solution. It’s XML-based and uses regular languages that most .NET web developers are familiar with. Also, you don’t have to build content in an expensive Flash studio environment.

What’s interesting about the current climate is that flash and silverlight are actually becoming obsolete. As more browsers support HTML5 (which, by the way, is robust enough to play Quake) Flash, in particular is not useless as it is being used in development outside of strictly webpage multimedia, one example was its ability to build mobile apps. Which brings us to…

Apple! There’s a strange history between Apple and Adobe (who purchased Flash from Macromedia a few years back) When Apple was in dire straits in the late 90s Adobe bailed on them and made Windows their primary development platform, as opposed to Macintosh which was known for it’s desktop publishing and graphics strong points. So rumor goes, Steve Jobs got pissed about this and now has this vendetta against Adobe. Apple has definitely grown big, especially in the cell phone space. For Apple to not support Flash and even go so far as to restrict development of apps via flash is a real low blow, if you think about it. But the official stance is simply that Flash is too closed, slugish, and proprietary - and the shift is towards HTML5.

In my humble opinion I do see HTML5 as an attractive future for a lot of web interactivity and presentation. Having said that Flash is far from dead, and is constantly evolving. With leaps forward like Adobe Air, it’s hard to just dismiss Flash as obsolete and irrelevant. There are still things HTML can’t do - all this geo-spacial stuff on mobile devices and ipads, as one example. If Flash is smart they will stay ahead of the curve.

So what’s next? Who knows! I’m sure HTML5 will be embraced, ESPECIALLY since IE9 will support it! Flash will probably still be used because quite honestly it’s easy, and so pervasive. Apple won’t support it in the iPhone OS, and hopefully Adobe doesn’t strike back with Photoshop and Creative Suite not being ported to the Mac. (Probably not because that’d hurt everyone) But it’s a real interesting game being played right now, so stay tuned because it’s far from over!

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.