My current take on Flash and Silverlight

Like so many other Flash/Flex developers I have been keeping an eye on Microsoft Silverlight. My first experience with it was last year when them launched 1.0 with much fanfare -- and I was stunned how badly Microsoft screwed it up. They demoed apps that didn't work at all and crashed multiple browsers, showed some really lame video samples and even did a prototype of their homepage that worked so badly that a few weeks later they replaced the background with a .jpg and only put a tiny Silverlight widget on top to simulate the effect they originally tried to get. I was able to quickly break every single app they showed. It was a very sad beginning for a product some were saying would be Microsoft's "Flash killer".

Now that a year has passed and Silverlight 2.0 is about to be released, it seems to be maturing and I'm happy that it has added some excitement to the RIA space. But as far as "killing" Flash, it seems to be just too far behind the curve. No doubt it will allow Microsoft developers -- who could not grasp the admittedly difficult Flash development process and never tried Flex -- to build some cool apps primarily in the RIA world. But Silverlight will probably appeal more to developers who by and large are not the most visually-savvy people, whereas Flash appealed first to creative types who wanted to build stuff that looked cool.

Just spend a few minutes at www.thefwa.com. I can't imagine how Silverlight is ever going to break into the rich internet experience world(hmmm, RIE anyone?). This space is largely populated by incredibly creative people who have figured out how to push the boundaries of Flash -- and have been doing it for over 10 years. So while Silverlight developers will make inroads in some areas, Flash/Flex has a huge lead and will keep innovating forward as Silverlight tries to catch up.

Anyway, what got me thinking about all this was a blog post from Doug McCune about Silverlight apps entitled: Where are the dope Silverlight demos?> Check it out!