Overheard at a MS developer blog… “Why Silverlight is Nailing Flex”

Filed under Flex, Industry by Chad | 5 comments

TheWayIThink and sebastien-arbogast.com have been going at a little blog fight back and forth on the state of the battle between Flex and Silverlight. I wouldn’t be willing to speculate on who is winning, but I do know this… all this attention on RIAs from both Adobe and MS is good for business on both sides of the developer camp.

I also do know that my post “Why Microsoft Silverlight Will Fail” is still #1 on Google when you search for “Silverlight IDE” (There are some great comments on that thread, BTW). Not sure if that’s related, but it does speak volumes about the development landscape for Silverlight. You have VisualStudio and that’s about it.

TheWayIThink does certainly seem to be a MS biased blog (kinda like how I lean towards Adobe tools, here, I suppose), but his post on “Why am I so IphonePhobic? made me nearly spit out my coffee. That was a good laugh.

Anyway… Sebastien’s post on what makes a good RIA is a pretty insightful list of things to keep in mind. I do suggest reading it. It does seem that based on thsoe criteria that Flex is currently leading in maturity/features, but with MS’s recent MIX08, Silverlight does look to be coming on strong. Overall this sort of discussion means little to the audience’s that consume the apps we produce, but certainly illustrate that devs are passionate about what they build.

I am watching this space closely. I think 2008 will be shape up to be a very interesting year for all developers and tool vendors. Flex 3 is ready, and Silverlight 2 and Flash Player 10 are just around the corner, AIR and Google Gears, Mozilla Offline, Silverlight Offline… wow. Lots of new tools.

So, is “Silverlight nailing Flex”? Doubtful… But I’m not ready to claim any sort of victory by Flex either. Unlike a VHS/Beta or HD-DVD/Blu-Ray battle there isn’t a loser on the consumer end by drawing out the battle due to incorrect purchases, etc. Granted, the developers need to allocate more training hours to familiarize themselves with the new tech, but if you are really into this stuff, like I’m sure most of you view this stuff as playing with new toys. Speaking of toys… I gotta go play some Smash Bros.

Posted on March 16, 2008

5 comments

1. l nelson Mar 16

   After spending several months working with Silverlight 1.0 I can very definitively say Silverlight (at least the 1.0 version) should not even be considered a valid product. Microsoft’s lack of communication to developers about critical issues with Silverlight should be a major red-flag to any development at this point.

2. Faisla Abid Mar 16

   Flex > 4 years old
   Silverlight about 1 year old or more but Silverlight for now….

   Maybe Silverlight will one day be on the same level as Flex, but as of now March 16 2008 , it doesn’t look it its happening

3. Faisla Abid Mar 16

   Flex > 4 years old
   Silverlight about 1 year old or more but Silverlight for now….
   Maybe Silverlight will one day be on the same level as Flex, but as of now March 16 2008 , it doesn’t look it its happening
   ps. for some reason the middle part of the comment got cut off

4. John Dowdell Mar 16

   “I think 2008 will be shape up to be a very interesting year for all developers and tool vendors. Flex 3 is ready, and Silverlight 2 and Flash Player 10 are just around the corner, AIR and Google Gears, Mozilla Offline, Silverlight Offline… wow. Lots of new tools.”

   Lots of initiatives, true, but there’s lots of different “When can I use it?” equations too.

   Something like Mozilla Prism has immediate usability… you can wrap up webpages with their own desktop icons now, immediately, and don’t have to wait for anything else to change.

   To get things to happen on other peoples’ machines takes longer though… Player 9 took nine months until less than 20% of the public would be asked to either install something new or go away. When Google Gears comes out of beta, some types of projects may be immediately possible, and others may need to wait until there’s further popular adoption. Tricky.

   (I laughed when I read Martin Beeby’s title… not sure he even knows what “Flex” is, or on what basis he might compare it with a beta of yet another browser plugin. Wacky.

   jd/adobe

5. Peter Witham Mar 16

   I have to say that I recently did some training on SilverLight and I think it is interesting, it’s not going to make me switch from Flex or Flash anytime soon but it’s always good to cover the bases in technology these days….never know when ya need to switch skills to keep the career going

Leave a reply