Microsoft’s Silverlight
Posted on August 15, 2007 by C Lin
Tech
Silverlight is a Microsoft software program that strives to compete with Adobe Flash and the presentation components of Ajax. The program is reported to offer a more consistent experience cross-browser and cross-platform. Silverlight also includes a version of the .Net Framework and will supposedly provide an even greater scalability with Windows servers.
Some supporters say the program works better than Flex a Flash technology because it supports WPF animation model which is time-based rather than frame based. It allows developers to define the start and end conditions without having to deal with matrices and calculations of positions on specific frames. Silverlight also uses XAML, which eliminates the need to buy special libraries to write files. And developers can stream text to a file rather than writing their own library. WPF/E also lets you embed true type font information directly. Since Silverlight is in the .NET Framework, developers can reuse classes on the server side for applications without having to rewrite the author time experience they normally would using ActionScript. Silverlight also reportedly rivals Flash in video capability.
So far two major criticisms are that the current version does not support Linux and also ignores existing international standards of using SVG to implement vector graphics. Here’s one criticism from a blog post called Mixed Emotions that says it all: “Even though you can view Silverlight on OS X, you will have no chance of being able to author Silverlight content without a Windows license. This is a conscious decision. On one hand, Microsoft wants to get designers using their Expression toolset yet designers will have to come across to the Windows platform in order to do it. It may not be such a large hurdle but it is a hurdle nevertheless. Ever tried to force an OS X user onto Windows? They cry, they scream and they want their (at times) consistent GUI back.” – Chris Duckett
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“What’s better – Flash or Silverlight?” Enough people have asked me that I felt I should post my opinion on the question.
Designers will prefer Flash. Programmers will prefer Silverlight. There. I said it.
Having used both tools I can still confidently say that Microsoft’s design tools and design workflow are still generations behind the sophistication of Adobe’s tools. Adobe has had a better track record of satisfying the needs of the design community for more than a decade. A Flash workflow with Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and Flex Builder is still far easier, more powerful and flexible for designing user interfaces than Microsoft Expression Studio. Expression Design has the capabilities Illustrator had four generations ago. Expression Blend has nice integration into the development workflow (though Adobe CS3 finally has similar integration) but Blend is not, and will never be, the powerhouse Photoshop is.
On the other side of the coin, programmers have always felt like they were working in an alien environment with Flash. While Actionscript 3.0 and MXML make magnificent strides toward creating a workflow that programmers can understand, the Flash and Flex frameworks don’t even compare to the sophistication and maturity of the .NET framework. On top of the framework itself, there’s also the massive advantage Silverlight has that it works with any language that supports the Common Language Runtime. I can’t stress enough how valuable this is to the viability of the platform. There are thousands of Actionscript developers in the world. There are literally MILLIONS of developers that use C++, C#, Visual Basic, Ruby, Python, Javascript, JScript and the other languages Silverlight supports. Instantly, Silverlight has a larger potential developer base than Flash.
All this said, I feel that Silverlight and Flash will continue to coexist for a long, long time because of the simple fact that they are really made for different types of developers. I can’t imagine designers ever preferring Microsoft’s toolset and I can’t imaging programmers coming from other languages being satisfied with developing exclusively in Actionscript. As for me, being both a designer and a developer, I intend to master both.
- Jason Cook