@Jansen – Yes I did watch the Olympics – on the BBC (flash). Silverlight has brought nothing new to video, h264 was on flash a year before, and popularised web video many years before that. I actually always liked windows media server and I guess now silverlight cures one of its failings (not being able to brand or redesign the embedded video player). It’s a catch-up feature though, it’s not setting any new ground.

Google’s announcement of their new ‘native client’ technology into this space is interesting though from what I gather it’s a huge download.

But it’s just a matter of time. SL 2 is like a month old. Hopefully MS will work these issues out. And doesn’t ignore them due to being none MS software. If MS does that then SL is dead. Even the .Net won’t use it if it doesn’t run on Firefox well. (which is why I think SL will be bug free very soon).

Look, Adobe worse nightmare has come true. Finally. MS has noticed them. And is responding. Hopefully this will push Adobe into releasing product that do what their users want. Not what Adobe thinks you should want. Sometime Adobe is infamous for.

But yes, I agree with you on this matter: I would like Adobe to release a scripting language for Flash that has the python syntax and python’s robustness. ( I personally don’t like ruby because it’s really difficult to do elaborate things in it and it’s very slow. You can do in python what ruby has to offer with the right packages. I like ruby on rails, that’s an awesome platform for getting things done quickly but for day to day scripting, I use python )

Adobe should’ve done better.

stevewebdev2005 Says:

As for all this talk of superiority of the languages available to silverlight, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So MS fans, where is it. Show me the money.

I’ve yet to see any silverlight stuff like what is posted _every day_ on thefwa.com (amazing the sites that can be done with such a ‘terrible’ language). Maybe it’s hiding somewhere, like video.msn.com, microsofts showcase video site .. which is using ..erm…ah.

Please check this out. This is a sample application which demonstrate what Silverlight can do as a RIA.

http://www.mscui.net/PatientJourneyDemonstrator/

What MS is doing with silverlight is very good for RIA business because it forces Adobe to make better platforms. But they’re not the same. SL attempts to transform a browser into what it is supposed to be it’s application client, while Adobe gives you AIR which is a true application, not a wanna be. I think we should start thinking about RIAs that are not run in a web browser, but rather are standalone applications with a very powerful backend internet connectivity.

If we are to compare Flash vs SL i guess flash wins because it looks a lot better and is very friendly for designers(who mostly use it). Flex vs Silverlight, probably Silverlight because it integrates very well with .NET and that helps deploying good browser based RIAs.
AIR/Flex vs Silverlight…well it’s not a fair comparison…MS doesn’t have a way to deploy desktop RIAs.

Their marketing people have been all over the enterprise market. They just sent me a beta of Nitro, Curl’s new IDE.

Anyway, the 3 we are considering to use is Flex/AIR. Silverlight or Curl. All have pro’s and cons.

For Flex it’s the learning curve. No one here knows AS. No one here wants to learn it either. ;) Also security + support are huge issues for Flex.

Silverlight – having to install the plugin on every browser in the company is an issue. Not huge but adds to the overall cost of the project. And we’ve seen bugs in the Silverlight plugin on Firefox and on Mac (in general). Silverlight has some maturing to do. But the dev tools are excellent. But Windows only. We all have Mac noteboks and windows desktops. We want something for both.

Curl. Runs well. Not cheap compared to Silverlight and Flex (the devs tools are, the runtime is another matter). Little to no Mac tools. And gui looks like an old Foxpro app from 1996. But Nitro is suppose to deal with this.

Frankly I believe the whole RIA market has some maturing to do. Flash included. Flash mobile is a joke. And while I want to see good looking apps running on the company servers, function, security, stability and support are most important for us. We are willing to give up the look-n-feel for them. But why can’t we have both?