Yet another blog post has hit the airwaves and become all atwitter about Flash and Silverlight, the competition, Adobe vs. Silverlight, etc. While this makes for interesting pundit fodder, I just think that the people observing the situation don't really, well, get the situation.
Earlier this year, just after Mix in Las Vegas, I was asked by a client about what Silverlight is, because he read about how it was supposed to be "Microsoft's Flash killer." If I had a dime for every headline like that, right? I told him that there were different perspectives on what its role was, but killer wasn't one of them in my mind. I believe the root of the difference truly comes from the history behind Silverlight and Flash.
Flash began its life as a way to make stuff dance on a Web page. Let's not kid ourselves, it was a cosmetic thing. Over time, it introduced more UI elements and a scripting language to make it more than just a timeline of moving objects. Silverlight, by comparison, set out to be a great many things, rooted in its big brother, WPF, a UI technology intended to (in my view) kill the awful Windows Forms. Remember that Silverlight was once called "WPF/E" for "WPF Everywhere." I think these two technologies started from two different angles, and today can do many of the same things. Yet their origins still largely dictate their dominant use.
Initially, I felt that Silverlight's greatest strength was the ability to build line-of-business apps that didn't suck, and deployment was a snap. If you've ever worked in a corporate environment where dozens of barely maintained Windows Forms apps get passed around on network shares or installed by phantom IT forces, then you know what I'm talking about. Learn a few important concepts about WPF/Silverlight, and you're well on your way to leveraging hoards of .NET code monkeys to make good stuff. This is hardly the goal of Flash.
When you really let go of the punditry, link baiting and scandalous headlines, and God forbid put on your business hat, you see that in the current universe, Flash and Silverlight seem intended for two different things. I'd never put Silverlight on the front page of a marketing site because the penetration rate. But on the other hand, you bet I'm using it today to handle file uploading deeper in a site. Then I added a simple out-of-browser app for my most passionate audience, and guess what my Silverlight 3 penetration rate is now? 20%! Add another 20% for version 2.
With the forthcoming Winter Olympics being broadcast via Silverlight, I suspect we'll see another bump in penetration. But all of the predictions about a winner are silly. Advertising will be Flash for a very long time to come. Silverlight will be the dominant line-of-business platform on corporate networks as soon as skillsets align with it. I'll push my audiences on public sites toward it because they're passionate enough to want the content it brings.
So what has Microsoft truly accomplished? They put browser-based rich UI (and dare I say, animation) in the hands of a bazillion .NET developers, using tools they already know. My prediction is not that there are clear winners here, but a long-term coexistence. The versus debate causes a needless holy war that non-technical management types will read and want a VHS vs. Betamax prediction instead of leaning toward the right tools for the job.
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