Comments on: Silverlight vs. Flash: The Winner is…Consumers!

By: George

George — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:37:43 +0000

As an end-user [notDEV] I was upset to see a dialogue box insisting I download ‘Silverlight.’ When I said ‘no’ I got another dialogue box saying I could be putting my computer at risk! MS has a pretty powerful soapbox to invade everyone who is not wary of their wiles.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:52:59 +0000

BillyK you’re ignoring the huge community of c# developers like myself.

I’ve never really used flash due to the fact I’ve not had time to start learning action script but I’ve been able to pick up silverlight very quickly due to my .Net background.

I think the only issue silverlight has is getting to a wide enough audiance due to the plug-in. At present I’m only using Silverlight for intranet apps but given time MS will have a wide enough pressence to make silverlight a viable alternative to flash obn the web.

I’m an MS developer as stated from classic asp to .net c#. For years I’ve seen Flash as a useful tool to incoporate into websites (with the help of others). It’s about time Flash developers saw Silverlight as a real competitor rather than fearfully dismissing it.

By: BillyK

BillyK — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:53:04 +0000

Silverlight won’t be more then a tiny blip on Flash’s radar. The reason why is easy to see. For the consumers but more importantly the developer / design world to accept a new platform means there needs to be a significant incentive.

Example: Flash became the defacto rich media platform because before it there was none. It was excepted because to have the level of animation, interaction and graphic experience flash was the only real option.

Silverlight is entering too late in the game with too little an incentive. Also don’t forget that flash makes leaps and bounds every few years itself.

[enter the silverlight trolls]

By: RobC

RobC — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:57:32 +0000

I been using AS for about 3 years, and i mainly use it for developing User Interfaces along with PHP (Hail Flex!), so im certainly not against silverlight but i dont see why should i change. I believe, most of the posts lack of an objective viewpoint. Good for the C# developers, but lets remember, flash is also big time a designers tool. Both not only focus on the programming side, so how about compatibility between design tools with Adobe?, should is start using MS Paint???.

I certainly believe that this is just another fight like Win vs Linux. For the sake of compatibility i would stay with Flash, and i will until MS doesnt come with something really astonishing that Flash cant achieve in the short run. After all, we cannot just be bouncing between languages just because of a new version.

Every professional will agree that the learning curve weather is open source or not, short or long, at the end cost us time and therefore money.

So how about some objective points?.

P.S. Give a hammer and a chiesel to an artist and it will build an statue, give it to a construction worker and will take down a building. It all narrows down to what we need to achieve.

By: Link Starbureiy

Link Starbureiy — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:03:14 +0000

@ tom b — listen to this guy, “..most web dev is done on Macs.” Since when? It would be best for Google is they just stop blocking Microsoft in the file format space, and let users upload both Silverlight and .xps applications; they’re superior technologies.

By: Leif

Leif — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:41:29 +0000

OK Mike, I tried your video test and well… Two minutes and 5 seconds worth of buffering later the video resumed. I tested my connection speed with http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and returned 26473 kbps download speed and 1599 kbps upload speed. Have to say, not a problem with my connection. I’m a developer and I’m sticking with Flash

By: Wow...

Wow... — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:50:02 +0000

@KK

I just lol’d..

By: Airvay

Airvay — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:58:44 +0000

Mike, you must be kidding. Yes you can jump to 69, but while the sound is there, the video is still a long way away.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:43:45 +0000

Silverlight will simply own Flash. If you are developer, do yourself a favor:

1. go to http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/KEY01 (install Silverlight ;)
2. jump to 69:00 (notify how fast video buffering gets done)
3. and just hear talk about video in Silverlight 3…

After that, if you like what you hear, watch whole keynote… it’s simply impressive to see what is Microsoft doing lately in-house.

By: KK

KK — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:58:02 +0000

Silverlight will dominate, flash can never match it, actionscript is for script kiddies IMO.
HTML 5 lacks innovation, a video tag, wow, i’m not impressed!
Google has fast javascript engine but yet again, c# is superior language to write programs. Java FX will fail (or has it already?). In the end MS will own the whole web unless someone come up with something very cool.