[BNM] Flash vs Sliverlight...

[PJ Cook]

Food for thought from a friend of mine who really is in the know ... ... ...
 
Some interesting thoughts, but I don't think they've been following things closely enough. Silverlight 2.0 was recently annouced, and there's nothing to show they are enabling a new web, they are aiming to replace AJAX for online web apps (literally applications). There's nothing in there that rivals Flash's creative and lateral abilities, focussing instead on Rich Controls for creating web based user interfaces, instead of any new abilities or paradigm shifts per-se. 
 
Of course you can use either tech in much the same ways but their strategy doesn't appear to be to enable new ways of using the web, but instead a much nicer way of doing what we are currently doing in the applications realm. Flash on the other hand is adding new abilities left right and center, it sounds almost crazy (and pointless) that you can play a video and apply a real time blurred twirl on it and have it explode into a cloud of particles but that is possible, it may not have a use directly, but indirectly it's that level of expressiveness that lends itself to creating entirely new types of experience for the future of the web. This is why we have people using it all over the place for things as exotic as real-time medical imaging in surgery.
 
I think Silverlight will see hugely strong adoption by application developers, it makes perfect sense and it will be pretty solid. But as for saying "why use Flash", clearly there's little thought gone into such a statement.



> Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 10:17:47 +0000> From: martin at tomes.org.uk> To: bnmlist at brightonnewmedia.org> Subject: Re: [BNM] Flash vs Sliverlight...> > On Dec 3, 2007 10:04 AM, paul perrin <paul at idltd.com> wrote:> > Current flash is the last gasp of the 'formatted text' stage of the internet> > - Silverlight is part of the first breath of the web as generic data> > transfer mechanism.> > Flash is hardly formatted text! And flash does have data transport> facilities built in. They aren't overly flexible but they are there.> > > These are obviously my own views, the only axes I grind are those foisted on> > my by idiot suppliers, it makes no major difference to me what technology> > dominates, I'll work with what I have to. My own experience is that> > developing in flash is weird, quirky and it is relatively closed; developing> > in visual studio is generally a delight - however both can be fun.> > I think you are comparing the wrong things, try comparing Flex with> Silverlight, that's where the similarities lie. I haven't used either> but have observed them both with interest, I do use Visual Studio and> Eclipse, both are good IDE's and Flex uses Eclipse.> > -- > Martin Tomes> martin at tomes.org.uk> -- > > BNM Subscribe/Unsubscribe:> http://www.brightonnewmedia.org/options/bnmlist> > Archive Search - http://icanhaz.com/bnmarchive> > List jobs for 10 pounds on Sussex Digital. Use promo code bnm10 http://jobs.sussexdigital.com/> > BNM powered by Wessex Networks:> http://www.wessexnetworks.com