Silverlight vs. Flash: The Developer Story

A few people didn’t like my proclaimation that Flash is dead. This is understandable. It is a bit premature to make such claims, but the Silverlight model is pretty amazing. As someone who works with Flash on an ongoing basis, I thought I'd chime in with a more in depth look at the issues.

First off, let me explain my background for those of you who may not know. Way back in the day, when Flash 4 was the latest and greatest, Macromedia decided to “open up” the Flash file format. They released documentation (which was poor at best) and an SDK (which was horrible at best). I saw the potential here. Finally, the format third party developers could unleash their creativity and usher in all kinds of amazing tools. Unfortunately, the documentation was full of errors and the SDK was so riddled with bugs that you spent more time debugging it than using it.

Nevertheless, debug I did. I came up with quite a list of fixes to the SDK, fixes which would render it near complete and bug free. I signed up for a free hosting account and promptly placed a list of the updates you had to make to the SDK in order for it to be bug free online. Macromedia’s response: cease and decist. Rather than integrating the changes themselves or acknowledging that they solved a serious problem, they told me that it was a violation of the license agreement to be posting that kind of information…. Some definition of “open” they have there.

Not to be dismayed, I determined that the source code license was just far to restrictive then and I would create my own SDK. As familiar with the spec as I had become, it didn’t take long for me to put something together. In a few short weeks, I had an SDK that was far more complete, far less buggy, and far easier to work with than the Macromedia SDK. It wasn’t long before hundreds, then thousands of developers were downloading the SDK and posts to Macromedia’s own open-swf forum turned from questions about the Macromedia SDK to questions about this new alternative SDK. It wasn’t too long before Macromedia completely discontinued their SDK (rumor has it that product teams internal to Macromedia even considered using the SwfSource code for their own projects).

Ever since then, I've been working with the Flash File Format. I've helped put together some award winning tools that are arguably some of the most successful SWF generation tools outside of Macromedia. This gives be a unique perspective on the differences between the two formats and how these formats enable developers to create tools that work with each of them.

Admittedly, my view point isn’t the same as a lot of people, who are perfectly content just buying the Flash IDE and can do everything they will ever need to do from there. I create tools that work with the File Format itself, tools that export their content into the Flash Format. So, if you are a software developer like myself (which is probably a good chance if you are reading this blog), then you would almost assuredly come to the same exact conclusion as myself if you knew the details of the two formats.

Animation

The Flash format itself has no notion of animation other than transformation matrices. You can apply a matrix to an element on a per frame basis to move it around. Want to move something across the screen in 3 seconds? Calculate how many frames 3 seconds will take, then calculate the matrixes required for each frame along the way. Oh, and don’t forget that the player won’t actually maintain any frame rate unless you embed blank audio tracks, so that 3 seconds might turn out to be 2 or 6 or 5, it just depends what kind of mood the machine is in.

Silverlight supports the WPF animation model, which is not only time based instead of frame based, but lets you define the start and end conditions and it will figure out how to get there for you. No need to deal with matrixes. No need to calculate positions on various frames. It just works.

Shapes

Flash stores its shapes using binary shape records. In order to write shape definitions, you will need to either license a 3^rd party Flash file format SDK, or build your own. It isn’t too difficult, but it does require a bit of a learning curve and the ability to manipulate things at the bit level, since shape records don’t align on byte boundaries. Needless to say, it isn’t the kind of thing most people can write and have all debugged in one afternoon.

Silverlight uses XAML. XAML is text based and can be output using a simple XML object. No need to buy special libraries to write files. No need to write your own libraries. Just stream some text to a file and you’re done--easily the type of thing that can be debugged and finished in an afternoon.

Text

Flash stores its fonts glyphs using the same exact shape definitions that are used for any other shape. The player itself does not understand TTF files, so you’ll end up digging deep into the Win32 APIs and the fairly vague definitions in the Flash file format documentation to come up with something that sort of does the trick. You’ll probably spend ages trying to deal with all the intricacies of fonts, because it turns out that typography is actually fairly complex… and you will have to deal with all those complexities yourself.

WPF/E lets you embed true type font information directly into your projects, and download that information with the downloader object. No need to do anything special. No need to handle anything yourself. It just works.

Video / Audio

Flash supports multiple video formats. The latest codec is really high quality and the bandwidth usage is nice. There is one problem though if you are creating a tool that outputs Flash content… the formats it supports aren’t really used by anyone else. The original video codec, Sorenson’s proprietary H.263 implementation is a mutant version of H.263. The compression follows the spec fairly closely, but there are a bunch of features dropped out and you can’t exactly just go find a complete spec on how to build your own encoder. The later codec from On2 puts you in an even worse position. Licensing Sorenson’s codec isn’t that expensive, but On2 will rape you with fees. They are relying on revenue from licensing the codec used by Flash to revive their $2 a share stock price. It is also a completely proprietary format (where at least the Sorenson one was loosely based on a standard). The audio formats Flash supports are all proprietary, except for ADPCM, which no one uses because of its horrible compression, and MP3, which is decent but dated, and still requires licensing fees and 3^rd party conversion libraries.

Compare that to the Silverlight story. Silverlight implements industry standard VC-1 codec for video, as well as offering support for WMV and WMA. Just about everyone already has Windows Movie Maker, but if they don’t it’s not a big deal. Why? Because Microsoft makes available a free Encoder SDK for producing WMA and WMV. So, not only are you using formats that people are more likely to be able to encode themselves, but Microsoft also provides your product with SDKs if you want to do the encoding yourself. The best part about it is that Microsoft doesn’t rely on WMA/WMV licensing revenue to keep themselves alive, so not only is it easier to integrate, but it’s also cheaper.

Scripting

You can reuse C# classes from your tool inside your exported content. There is no development environment out there for creating real desktop applications which is based on ActionScript. If you go the Flash route, this means that all your classes and objects have to be written twice. You need .NET classes to handle the author time experience and Flash classes to handle the run-time. If you have server components, once again you need to switch back to .NET and throw out all the classes that the run time is using. For example, let’s say you are creating a tool that outputs rich media quizzes. With Silverlight / .NET, the same entity classes you use to deal with results in the player could be reused on the server side. With Flash, you’d have to write all that logic 2x and keep it in sync as your tool changes.

Tools

You can create Silverlight content with the same tools you use on a daily basis. Visual Studio.NET is by far the most powerful and most popular IDE. You can potentially have all the code for the server components, the authoring tool components, and the runtime/player components inside the same project. No extra skills required. No needing to hire some special Flash guru to do the graphics junk. Every developer can contribute to every part of your application.

The bottom line: about the only thing Flash has going for it from my perspective is adoption. Adoption isn't hard to achieve, especially for the people that ship the operating system 90% of the world uses. As such, it's just a matter of time till that is no longer part of the equation. Adobe has a lot of work to do in the mean time, and the clock is ticking. Open sourcing Flex is a really good start in the right direction... unfortunately, Flex was built on top of the wrong platform from the start (something I told the Flex team while Flex was still in Alpha), so this last effort, while a good one, still might not be big enough to turn the tide that is coming. Now, this isn't to say that Flash isn't a great format and doesn't enable a lot of scenarios (like I said, my job is working with Flash and I'd be doing something completely different if it wasn't for Flash). So, Flash is great. Silverlight just solves a lot of the major problems that I've run into with Flash.

Filed under: Flash, Microsoft, Adobe, .NET, Silverlight

Comments

# Peter said on May 4, 2007 08:02 AM:

Good article. I know that you were responding to the "Flash is dead" article, but how about you take a 180 and try to put forth Flash's strong points? Is adoption really the only thing in favor or Flash? Is there something you can do in Flash and not in Silverlight? I'm not on either side. I've been reading a lot about SL and FL lately and most of the stuff I read was FUD (from both sides, but mainly Flash). There’s a lot of misinformation out there. Since you have deep knowledge about both I was wondering if you could compare the two from the other angle. Thanks.

# Rodrigo said on May 4, 2007 08:31 AM:

Silverlight has a serious problem.. it doesn't run on Linux and in "old" Windows versions like windows 2000(my case).If Microsoft solves this problem...then it might kill flash.

# Peter said on May 4, 2007 09:46 AM:

Rodrigo,

I'm not too worried about Linux; the Mono guys said they would love the challenge. I hope Microsoft gives them the help they need. Linux may be only X% of the market, but the fact that you have a competitor that runs on that OS and your solution would not makes that X% seem like (X*10)%. This may not be rational, but who said people are?

As far as Windows 2000 I would really like to know the technical reasons behind this. I'd imagine supporting OSX would be a lot harder than Windows 2000.

# Glenn said on May 4, 2007 09:55 AM:

How can I make cool animations without Onion Skinning and other tools if something isn't frame based?

I agree that ActionScript is a mess as a programming model. But I don't see so far how SilverLight can challenge the full functionality of Flash without having some kind of Frame based animation available, and the IDE that goes with that.

# Jonathan said on May 4, 2007 10:44 AM:

I haven't made up my mind on this whole issue, but I think considering Flex and Apollo in a more objetive manner is essential to a discussion of these issues. Java isn't going anywhere, and I think it'll work perfectly as a framework for Flex. Apollo sticks Flex (or Flash, or Ajax) applications right on the desktop, without having to rewrite anything.

I believe a more accurate way of looking at this issue is that this is the first time, at least recently, but maybe in the history of the web, that two companies have been able to innovate back and forth on the same issue to the extent and scale that Adobe and Microsoft are doing right now with RIAs. Browser wars are a joke compared to this. Yahoo and Google occasionally trade shots on an issue, like Maps, or Mail, or whatever, but I don't think the competition is as intense, or as beneficial to developers and users as this Flash/Flex/Apollo vs Silverlight has the potential to be.

I think this is the good thing about Adobe's purchase of Macromedia. Microsoft didn't seem to be entirely concerned about the swf format until Adobe bought it and decided what kind of things they would do with it. And Macromedia didn't have the size and scale that Adobe has in order to get the attention of Microsoft, or Google, or anyone else, and create this kind of competition.

# Jesse Ezell said on May 4, 2007 11:05 AM:

Functionality wise, there isn't much that Flash can do that Silverlight can't. I don't think Silverlight has support for alpha channels on video or low level, socket based communication at this time. Those eliminate a few specific usage scenarios (I know some people interested in gaming are really pushing for socket communication). The big difference IMO is that Silverlight targets application developers from the ground up, where Flash has a legacy of supporting animation. Flash is very much frame and movie clip oriented, which can be a pain when you are trying to do anything other than create a little animation sequence. Defining an application as a series of movie clips and frames is just lame.

Flex and Apollo are interesting. Apollo is a whole different ballgame though... it's like Central 2.0, and Central 1.0 was a complete failure, so I'm not expecting much from 2.0. It also doesn't deal with the creation of content, which is the side of the equation I am interested.

Flex, on the other hand, looks a lot more like Silverlight and does allow you to create SWFs. It is very much about application development. However, it still inherits all the limitations of the Flash file format. Although it has an improved animation model and can generate SWFs, you sill have the video / audio codec issues, the fact that you can only use actionscript, and the fact that you can't use your existing skills or tools. It also requires a Java application server. So if you wanted to create an app that uses it to generate SWF, it's not a lightweight component you can bundle with your application. If an open source .NET port came out as a result of their recent announcements, it would be a lot more compelling, but that remains to be seen.

# Quentin said on May 4, 2007 04:40 PM:

I'd still say you're jumping the gun. Also, I'd say you're making the wrong comparison, in terms of Application Development, Flex is the Adobe product to compare, not Flash.

# Jesse Ezell said on May 4, 2007 05:01 PM:

Quentin, obviously Flash isn't going away any time soon (as much as I'd like it to). I'm just pointing out why, if I had it my way, Silverlight would win in the end. I could be completely wrong, but there I think there are really good reasons to chose Silverlight over Flash (especially for the YouTube's of tomorrow who need things like lower cost video solutions).

See my comments above about Flex:

"Flex, on the other hand, looks a lot more like Silverlight and does allow you to create SWFs. It is very much about application development. However, it still inherits all the limitations of the Flash file format. Although it has an improved animation model and can generate SWFs, you sill have the video / audio codec issues, the fact that you can only use actionscript, and the fact that you can't use your existing skills or tools. It also requires a Java application server. So if you wanted to create an app that uses it to generate SWF, it's not a lightweight component you can bundle with your application. If an open source .NET port came out as a result of their recent announcements, it would be a lot more compelling, but that remains to be seen."

# Vikram said on May 5, 2007 11:12 AM:

What ever happens I am really interested in knowing if silverlight will take the center stage in a year time. But if the microsoft guys do not support windows 2000 atleast, It cant really take the market.

# Daniel Greitens said on May 6, 2007 04:00 AM:

I think doing compairison is not the right way in this matter. There may be things that Apollo can do better an other things that Silverlight or WPF can do better. The problem is, that by dealing with phrases like "Flash is dead", you're doing nothing than supporting the people out there who think Microsoft wants nothing than to dominate the whole world.

I think the better way is to choose one of the tools and be happy that there will be a choice in future.

# qwerty said on May 7, 2007 02:48 AM:

Flash is an graphics/animation tool that developed a programming model. Not the best approach, and it's apparent if you've ever programmed a substantial Flash application. Flex (which I do professionally) is certainly an improvement, but the language and tools are still lacking.

As a .NET developer for 6 years prior to Flex, I'm acutely aware of the gap in languages and tools between Flex and .NET. Silverlight is approaching the problem of RIA development from the ground up. They have stronger, more powerful tools and languages with which millions of developers are familiar with - a solid foundation. This is a better long-term strategy and one that will make significant gains.

# Tim said on May 7, 2007 04:04 AM:

I know that Silverlight can do animation. I have seen a few examples of the programmatic animation. But I haven't found any example of the more "traditional animation" such as those done in the ecards of www.jacquielawson.com or www.ojolie.com. So my question is, can Silverlight do that kind of animation? If so, is there any example out there?

# TrackBack said on May 7, 2007 09:51 AM:

# milan said on May 7, 2007 01:07 PM:

Hi, thanks for your comparison. It's a true developer story. When you see timeline, you don't see nothing, right? Well, I can tell you that for designers it's like: when they see code, they see nothing. They LOVE timeline and when they see timeline, they see interactions, dinamics, and everything else what you see when you look at code. That is the main reason, why designers love flash, and other designer tools (photoshop, etc) and they also prefer macs. I think that in future rich applications design the most important fact will be environment, which will allow developers and designers to collaborate. Even if SL has it's advantages over flash it is far away from replacing (or killing) it. Just my 2 cents :)

Milan

# Matt said on May 7, 2007 02:18 PM:

Hi, just to correct one thing, building a Flex 2 application does not require using a Java application server. You can build a Flex application with the free Flex SDK or you can choose to build with the Eclipse-based Flex Builder IDE. There are plenty of .NET developers trying and liking Flex. We know there are plenty of improvements we can make in the tooling, but fundamentally the move can be made without much difficulty.

Matt

Flex PM

# Jesse Ezell said on May 7, 2007 06:12 PM:

But you do need a Java app server to compile the flex in the first place right? So, you'd still have to take the java dependency if you were creating an application that output SWF via Flex, which is the main problem with that approach (outside of the general file format limitations).

# TrackBack said on May 8, 2007 03:34 PM:

# milan said on May 8, 2007 05:34 PM:

well, wrong again, but never mind :)

# Quentin said on May 11, 2007 11:42 AM:

I think the one thing that a lot of people are missing in the equation is that developers can't design, no more than designers can develop, right now, Adobe has the best environment to allow them to work together best. Microsoft has more than just silverlight to develop in order to create that environment. I know they have Blend, but it's not, in my opinion, as good as Flash/Flex for the designer side of things.

# Fabio Serra said on May 12, 2007 05:59 PM:

You don't need any java application server for Flex/SWF applications. Compile in your own machine, maybe with eclipse, and deploy the swf wherever you want.

# TrackBack said on May 16, 2007 04:22 PM:

# Brooks Andrus » Blog Archive » Flash 9 File Format Still MIA - Flash Should Be More Open said on May 21, 2007 11:39 PM:

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# Tino said on May 22, 2007 06:14 AM:

Flash is dead;)

# WPF Team Bloggers said on May 24, 2007 10:43 AM:

weblogs.asp.net/.../silverlight-vs-flash-the-developer-story.aspx - Interesting

# Chris Cavanagh said on May 24, 2007 03:26 PM:

Yep, Flex 2 doesn't have any dependencies on a Java app server. Just use Flex Builder or the free SDK and you're good :) Issues with fonts still bug me though:

@font-face

{

src:url( "Assets/TradeGothicLTStd-Light.ttf" );

fontFamily: TradeGothicLTStd-Light;

}

All that to embed a font is just nasty ;) Likewise embedding an image is a bit creepy (I generally like attibute-based approaches, but not this one):

[Embed(source="Assets/MyLogo.svg")]

[Bindable]

public var Logo:Class;

The data binding is VERY sweet though, easier and sometimes nicer than WPF... It'll be interesting to see which route Silverlight 1.1 takes with databinding.

# Khurram Aziz said on May 28, 2007 06:06 AM:

I commented to Adnan’s recent post on Cheaper Solutions to Flash Lite post; saying that Flash is not

# TrackBack said on May 30, 2007 12:15 PM:

# TrackBack said on May 30, 2007 12:16 PM:

# Dino Esposito's WebLog said on May 31, 2007 06:33 AM:

Nice wrap-up and perspective from Jesse Ezell on the Flash vs. Silverlight theme. I'm relatively new

# fardoche said on May 31, 2007 11:02 AM:

SL have nice developper attraction (good thing i'm developper) but we are far behind the graphic quality that we could do in flash. We are just starting to make button and control and animation on the control.

btw, i would like the Xaml of this flash site:

http://www.gettheglass.com/

# Staffan said on June 1, 2007 06:17 AM:

There seems to be some sort of misconception amongst certain persons here. I just want to make clear that Silverlight does not mean "not using timeline". For all you graphics artists out there: The Blend tool from Microsoft has Timeline animation possibilities.

# Jesse Ezell said on June 1, 2007 12:55 PM:

Good point. The difference is that with Silverlight, the timeline is actually a timeline. With Flash, it is really a frameline.

# SilverLight vs Flash? | Mysite's Advisor Blogging Spot said on June 2, 2007 10:47 PM:

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# jtadros said on June 7, 2007 03:28 AM:

How about we all discuss if an alpha/beta product beats 10 years of engineering, and market penetration? I'm glad everyone has ideas of where silverlight needs to catch up. Frankly it just makes Microsoft’s job easier. The question I have is if Microsoft adds every little thing that you think Flash can do better (which they are already doing. .i.e. sockets etc. ) then who will win? It’s not about the format if the devs listen...it’s really about adoption both by devs and users, ease of use, and market dominance. Ever hear of Netscape, word perfect, and Apple. No matter how cool and powerful they became in the end they were no more than a bump in the timescales. Microsoft does one thing better than the rest..and that’s re-engineer a product and integrate it so well you in the end you really don't care to buy or use anything else. Microsoft is listening....so keep up the great feature requests...I'm sure in 2 years of Flash's 10 years we'll all miss the good ole WordPerfect..er Adobe days. ;)

# DImi said on June 8, 2007 03:41 PM:

Given Microsoft's track record, even if the technology is better than flash/flex I dont think I would ever switch, microsoft never created anything for the good of us, untill they had too, and even then they sucked at it. Example: Mac started gaining ground with OSX and Microsoft comes out with Vista, we all saw how great that is! So for microsoft coming out and presenting this HOLY new technology that they have called silverlight! when flash has been around for 10 years is just ridiculous, people will see through the marketing propaganda. Just my opinion.

# Jesse Ezell said on June 8, 2007 06:26 PM:

Dimi, Vista kicks ass FYI.

# Keith Elder said on June 10, 2007 10:33 PM:

I saw several people commenting about if Silverlight didn't support Windows 2000 it would never make it. My response is, "Are you kidding me?".

That operating system is 7 years old and isn't used that much at all. I don't know what the percentage is, but it has to be extremely small. To say it is going to kill Silverlight adoption is pretty funny.

# jrush said on June 13, 2007 05:45 PM:

Interesting to hear folks thoughts on this. I've been using flash since beta 0.9 & have always loved it, but since most of my sites leverage .net I've really been looking over SL. Unlike most of you I design & program and my reservations about SL mainly revolve around implementing a given design. Considering that PS & Illustrator are my bread & butter for design work, MS Expression appears too limited to me for applying designs to pages & user controls. I use alpha channels all the time in my designs & sure don't want to give that up. Also I'm puzzled by the perception that timelines should factor in time as opposed to being solely FPS & Layers. By leveraging time it would seem that either frames get dropped, added, or an adjusted in some way. I just don't see how that approach has smooth transitions. I would really like SL to be a hit, but in many ways it seems to have some serious flaws. Especially in terms of what can be done graphically. I admit that actionscripting is a pain, but I've always been able to get it to do what I want. The real problem with flash is that most designers can't write actionscripting & most programmers don't really get how flash movies should be structured. I'm glad to SL on the market & in the future I'd probably use both SL & flash. However to say flash is dead b/c of SL is just absurd. I think both will have a place in the future, but in my opinion SL will always be a bit limiting graphically compared with flash. I say that simply for the fact of how well Photoshop & Illustrator work with flash. Any vector work I do in Illustrator will export as a .swf file & colors, gradients, & layers are maintained. SL looks very promising, but I'll wait to make a more serious evaluation when it's out of beta.

# Flash vs silverlight « Kollaborativ said on June 14, 2007 04:05 AM:

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# jcktej said on June 15, 2007 02:00 AM:

"It also requires a Java application server. So if you wanted to create an app that uses it to generate SWF, it's not a lightweight component you can bundle with your application. If an open source .NET port came out as a result of their recent announcements, it would be a lot more compelling, but that remains to be seen."

Flex DOESN'T requires a Java App server, you can do server side things in .NET, ColdFusion, Java or PHP.

# Alasdair Mackenzie - Such Great Heights » Flash vs Silverlight said on June 16, 2007 07:46 AM:

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# Xadoa Toloit said on June 18, 2007 04:30 AM:

Who says that MS has never done anything good? Who can touch the .NET Framework? - Java can't. Who can touch MS Office? - Everybody else is busy copying. Vista? - Surely Better than OSX - which runs on limited hardware set! And VS.NET – nothing to compare against.

Silverlight will win because it has all developers behind it. VB.NET, C#, J# and even C++ I would guess. Web applications are not about design in the end. They are about functionality. Programmers are the minds behind the designs. What good is a design if it cannot be implemented to deliver a business solution?

# Adam said on June 18, 2007 06:34 AM:

I definitley agree with Xadoa.

I am a .NET developer and have always wanted to acheive things in Flash that couldn't be done in .NET but didnt want to learn Flash.

With Silverlight, i can use all the same programming knowledge for the backend code and just learn a new front end.

I dont know anything much about the technical details of flash but I will personally be jumping aboard the Silverlight bandwagon just because I'm a .NET developer and I know many others will as well.

Something to keep in mind as well is that Silverlight is still in beta and alpha stages (dependant on what version you are working with.)

# Lee said on June 23, 2007 04:23 PM:

thanks for the great comparison, even with all that's great about flash, the programming side definitely sends shutters down my spine.

I got a question though, how would apollo and javafx compare? (dunno anything about central) What would a web app gain from being outside of the browser, any potential development issues/ security issues?

Also, how does the performance of silverlight vs flash compare? which will have the smaller app size for a similar functionality?

# Craig said on June 24, 2007 12:04 AM:

Ultimately, SL vs. Flash/Flex is really a .NET vs. 'something else' discussion. If you are a .NET developer, you will obviously tend to do work in Silverlight. Of course a .NET developer will not feel comfortable doing ActionScript compared to a Java developer, as many describe it as being a mix between Java and JavaScript. IMHO, Flash will not be killed by Silverlight because in order to do that, you really have to move all the developers to .NET. The obvious reality is that there are many developers and organizations that are rooted in languages/frameworks other than .NET (i.e. J2EE) and developers' comfort with either Flex or SL will reflect that.

Based on what I hear and read, I am sure SL will be excellent for .NET and RIA in general (although my organization will be sticking with Flex ;-). I believe that weaknesses in each one will be addressed and the competition will force quick product growth and innovation in both. Adobe will improve Flash video issues, .NET will improve its design tools - you get the picture. The way I see it: .NET has grown tremendously and Java has grown steadily and is still strong in the enterprise. There are still heated discussions about .NET vs. Java/J2EE as there always have been. Similarly, I foresee SL growing tremendously in the .NET community and Flash/Flex growing as well and remaining very strong. It's real easy to see only one side of the story when you only live on the one side of the fence - I say that for both sides.

# Chris said on June 25, 2007 10:17 AM:

Our company develops for Web and CD at the

same time with Flash. One swf can run

through Director off the CD with very little change.

Most of the time no change is needed.

Mac and PC mostly. We've yet

to ever have a client even request Linux.

Can Silverlight run the same body of code

on Web and CD? Without exposed source code?

Flash dead? Yea, right. Have fun with script

kiddies stealing your XAML code.

# Chris said on June 25, 2007 10:26 AM:

Also...

<< Web applications are not about design in the end. << They are about functionality.

And that's why most clients want to see things like

intro animations and graphics above all first.

You know, the "important" stuff.

All the while only giving you temporary materials

to work with while promising finals up to the end.

Clients aren't developers and they don't think

like you do.

Most of the time you're paid to do what THEY want.

Not what YOU want.

Design is VERY important. It is usually what

gets you the job in the first place.

Like I said clients aren't developers.

# Bobby said on June 25, 2007 06:13 PM:

Can anyone confirm that the statements posted on Grant Skinner's blog are true? That Flash really is far better than Silverlight? Check out the arguments:

www.gskinner.com/.../a_flash_of_silv.html

# tom said on June 26, 2007 03:51 AM:

How come no one has realized yet that Silverlight doesn't support the most basic components such as text box.

I know the development workflow in Sliverlight is smother compared to Flash/ Flex but come on. I truly believe that anyone who has actually done some work with Sliverlight, Expression Studio and Visual Studio realizes that this technology is at least another 18 months away from really being a possible competitor to Flash... and I don't think Adobe will be sitting on their hands.

# Burak KALAYCI said on June 26, 2007 09:29 PM:

Hi Jesse,

I don't agree that Flash is dead, on the contrary I believe Silverlight is to be born dead. Anyway, the reason I'm commenting: Macromedia decided to open up the SWF format in May 1998, when Flash 3 public beta was released, there was no SDK, just the specs. I remember that clearly because that was the time I started working with SWF format.

Best,

Burak

# John said on June 27, 2007 01:59 PM:

My biggest issues with WPF and SL is the designer tools. I work in a MS shop and I'm trying to embrace WPF, but Microsofts design tools just blow. I've tried Expression Designer and Expression Blend. MS needs to take additional cues from Adobe and get the design stuff down before they expect me to give up Illustrator,Fireworks,Flash and Flex.

# More about Flash & Silverlight : standing on the shoulder of colossi said on June 28, 2007 04:51 AM:

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# MSDN Up North said on June 29, 2007 06:51 AM:

Helt siden annonseringen av Silverlight på NAB tidligere i år har det gått livlige diskusjoner om hvilket

# Blog'A'Little said on June 29, 2007 07:16 AM:

Read Jesse Ezells blog about the difference between Silverlight and Flash and why you should consider

# ToolmakerSteve said on June 30, 2007 03:12 AM:

Chris Said:

> Can Silverlight run the same body of code on Web and CD? Without exposed source code? ... Have fun with script kiddies stealing your XAML code.

No, this is NOT a problem with Silverlight.

Typically, the XAML for an application gets compiled into an assembly dll, along with all the C# code. No source remains. As for running on a CD, I am going to do that test soon. Might end up compiling two different dlls, one for the CD, one for the web server, but 99% of the XAML and the C# and the media resources (bitmaps, audio, video) will be the same between the two.

# ToolmakerSteve said on June 30, 2007 03:29 AM:

> Tom said:

>> ... Silverlight, Expression Studio and Visual Studio realizes that this technology is at least another 18 months away from really being a possible competitor to Flash... and I don't think Adobe will be sitting on their hands. <<

Could be. But in the long run, Microsoft's underlying technical approach is fundamentally superior. Its not just Silverlight. Its the entire .NET approach to blending media with logic. IMHO, this is like comparing gunpowder to bow and arrow, when gunpowder was first invented and tended to blow up in your face. Yeah, the archers could still win, but not for long. For Adobe to be competitive in the long run, they would have to invent something like .NET -- not going to happen.

Yes, Microsoft's design tools are far, far behind -- and Adobe keeps moving. But given all the technology Microsoft is making available, other companies will be able to rapidly make all kinds of specialized tools, customized to particular usage scenarios, industries, or work processes. Perhaps what we'll see is Adobe hold the deeply trained graphic professionals, while everyone else ends up using .. a wide variety of interesting new tools. Check my website early 2008, and you'll see one example (no relation to the product I've got currently). I'm sure there will be hundreds of other interesting applications from other vendors, applications that would have been too expensive to develop in any previous era.

# ToolmakerSteve said on June 30, 2007 04:06 AM:

Another thought on Adobe vs. Microsoft:

I know the graphic artist I am working with will continue to use Illustrator and Photoshop. And the videographer likewise is unlikely to use any Ms software for editing video. And some of the animations and effects we use will likely come from Flash [the tool]. So any Ms-centric web development solution will need to slurp in all those media formats.

Silverlight, because it fits seamlessly into .NET development, and includes extensible languages (XAML, C# or other .NET language), is a great platform for creating customized media services. Flash [the file format] isn't designed for such a role.

Maybe in the long run, Flash [the tool] would output Silverlight as a file format. That to me would be the best of both worlds. Adobe and Microsoft could then each make money doing what they do best, and all of us would have an overall solution that was superior to either side alone.

# Miroslav said on June 30, 2007 05:29 AM:

I see here a lot of technical comparison between Silverlight and Flash/Flex, but this is wrong way of thinking. Silverlight will end as a tool that some .Net developers use to make their products more visual attractive. Flash doesn’t need to win the battle, because there won’t be any. Flash is a tool for expressing visual creativity and that only matter.

# Headphoneguy said on July 4, 2007 05:22 AM:

From wikipedia: "Silverlight has been criticized for lack of Linux support - or indeed any platform other than Windows and Mac OS X, citing it as a factor that could limit the widespread adoption of Silverlight. However, according to Mike Harsh, a program manager for Silverlight, Microsoft will eventually port Silverlight to Linux after the work has been completed on the Windows and OSX platforms."

en.wikipedia.org/.../Silverlight

# Will Dieterich said on July 5, 2007 09:40 AM:

From a developer standpoint(not doing ads) the talk about features is basicly worthless, for the most part both Flex and Silverlight can do the same things.

What does matter is the cross-platform and cross-browser support and what will happen with it in the future.

As it is Microsoft has a horrid track record for suppling product that are not focused around the latest versions of thier products. They do have a good track record of just dropping support for the product after they have gained market share and driven out most of the competition.

Adobe and Flash have a great track record for supporting a wide range of platforms(although coming in late to Linux) and supporting a huge amount of browsers.

According to O/S statics collected from various web sites as of June 2007 usage Silverlight is not supported on over 10% of users.

So if you are doing a cross-platform/browser web site and need to use Flex/Silverlight cabability, silverlight is not the smart one to use.

# yohami said on July 7, 2007 03:58 PM:

I can understand why Silverlight would appeal to .net engineers since they have less to learn to produce "flash like" applications, but as a flash game developer Im only interested in the results.

What can be done in Silverlight? what are the advantages, what are the weakpoints, etc. How is Silverlight stronger than flash, I dont care about video formats or SDK problems or learning platforms, thats just not the point.

# ChrisL said on July 8, 2007 03:05 PM:

Here are a few:

1. A complete integration of all MS development tools like VS.NET utilizing all of the their backend media and communication technologies for advanced enterprise level applications that many will be using regardless if anyone like it our not.

2. Utilizing the newest VS.NET will Seemless integrate with MS SQL which will give us powerful desktop applications over the web.

3. Even faster RAD deliverables and now with stunning UI designs.

4. Vector based enterprise scale application which flash was unable to achieve will now be fully accepted by larger companies which will drive the next wave in many aspects of internet communications.

5. DirectX for with full 3D hardware support.

6. Programmers may probably build converters and importers to support SWF animations for Silverlight. So die hard flash animators may be used for cool vector effects with in a silverlight applications. Not sure how much will cross over though.

# ChrisL said on July 8, 2007 03:09 PM:

IT and Marketing are no longer in 2 different camps. They are currently engaged and will be getting married shortly. It would be like if Mr. Nerd marries Beautiful Chick and has a family of very intelligent, trendy, well stressed kids.

# Bayar said on July 22, 2007 09:49 AM:

Nice comparison and nice discussion.

I added your link in my Silverlight post.

You can find Silverlight related resources, tutorials and articles from my blog.

www.plentyofcode.com/.../what-is-microsoft-silverlight.html

# NKast said on July 25, 2007 08:56 AM:

Flash is dead...

..and I have found it's dead body!

# Shailesh Mewada said on August 2, 2007 09:35 AM:

If Silverlight is booming in its alpha versions then think what Microsoft can do in the next few releases.

# Yair said on August 5, 2007 01:24 AM:

buy-tramadol--online.info/.../tramadol-online.php

# Patrick.O.Ige said on August 10, 2007 03:06 AM:

Silverlikght Vs Flash

# Microsoft Silverlight ??? A worthy contender to Flash and what the ???Java Applets??? should really have been « TeXpressions said on August 12, 2007 07:46 PM:

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# Venkat said on August 14, 2007 01:10 AM:

The biggest problem I see with Silverlight is: You cannot have “x:code” chunks embed in the XAML file anywhere you want. One can only include in the Top parent Canvas. This fundamentally alters the web and the why many people write web applications. For example, you cannot embed mash-ups, if they contain JavaScript code.

Other limitations are, you cannot dynamically generate JavaScript code or include data for the components inside the Top-canvas..

# Alan said on August 17, 2007 11:14 AM:

The world of technology is littered with the dead bodies of "better" technologies. The simple fact is without adoption a technology is doomed regardless of how much "better" it is.

In order of SL to succeed it has to attract the designers, not the developers. That is how Flash got and has kept its market-share and that is where SL will either succeed or fail.

At the end of the day a designer could give a flying crap if the file format is better. What they care about is if they are able to pick up something easily, make it do something cool, and if they can sell it to other non-developers.

As a developer I see too many other developers who are so out of touch with reality they actually think people care about their opinion. News flash! 90% of the rest of the world either does not understand what you are saying or does not care.

Now I would be the first to say that the adoption by developers would be extremely important if we were talking about a database technology or something that did not need to be sold to the masses... but what we are talking about is something that has to come out of the gate being ultra cool to the average person... and so far all the ultra cool stuff about SL is under the hood.

Without the designer community SL is doomed...

One other thing. You do not need a Java app server to compile Flex. Not sure what you are smoking but Flex is able to be compiled from the Flex Builder IDE.

# zack said on August 17, 2007 03:21 PM:

along with all the good points made here (as well as skinner's) - there are a few more...

While adobe is no better than MS in the corporate world, the flash/flex community ( most notably OpenSourceFlash.org ) is by far stronger and more well established than anything that SL could ever hope to create.

It's funny to hear .NET guys talk about 'standards' and 'open' formats... hmm, and you work with the most closed and non-standard of them all!

Now, you're right, the FLV format is no WMV (thank god) but have you seen any web video lately? All Flash. That'll be a hard one to convert. Like the million of XP users.

But that's all nonsense. Here's the real-

go look at ToolmakerSteve's website

That's why MS, .NET and SL will never kill ANYTHING

(no disrespect Steve, but damn... )

# SpeedDesaster said on August 23, 2007 09:33 AM:

It tooks me 1h to read all the funny stuff you post here( And the links )

Here two fractions:

------------------

- Designers

There are two things i heard from the designer guys here. First "Design is much more important than functonallity", second 'Microsoft Expression ***' suxx".

First, if nobody would care about functionallity why the People go on a Website with such functionallity when they can go to museum or in a cinema( ok it's a long way but... ).

Second, if you don't want to create your graphics in Microsoft Expression '***', import the graphics from Photoshop or Illustrator( I heard you can do this ).

------------------

- Programmers

ActionScript vs. .Net, Features from hell,... :)

ActionScript 3( only 3 ) is a nice Language but the 48 and more .Net languages are nice too( specially C# ).

More Language/Framework Features -> .Net

Better drawing routines -> Flash

After this funny text...

I studied game development, so i have learned to respect both, the designer and the programmer side( I'm Programmer ).

In my job i develop at this time with ActionScript 2/3, and sometimes C#( It's not a game job, but this is changing ), and i think C# is a nice language, much nicer than ActionScript 3( And ActionScript 3 is nice too ). I also work with Photoshop, Illustrator,....

Fact is, Microsoft has much more Money, they have a own OS to spread Silverlight with one update( So over 80% of the Internet users will have it ), and at least, they have much more developers to make a silverlight a sucessfull product, that will not remove Flash from the web( Java exists and havn't got killed by .Net ), but Adobe has much to do if they want Flash alive in 5 Years.

( I hope my English doesn't suxx to much )

SpeedDesaster

# Niel Drummond said on August 24, 2007 04:43 AM:

I agree Flash is probably dead, unless they open up their file format.

Silverlight may seem great, but unless the player is ported to OS X and linux, it will go the way of ActiveX. History teaches more than poetry.

# SpeedDesaster said on August 24, 2007 11:46 AM:

-------------------------------------------

I agree Flash is probably dead, unless they open up their file format.

Silverlight may seem great, but unless the player is ported to OS X and linux, it will go the way of ActiveX. History teaches more than poetry.

-------------------------------------------

Maybe you should read something about MacOSX before you write something about it.

# McFurry said on August 28, 2007 08:14 PM:

Microsofts WRD magnification senario spills magazine bits against all Adobe efforts. See the case where Carvel software guru Michael Mcfurry ate spanish rice and felt sick in the morning. Macromedia made a smart busness move leveraging rich experiences to experienced rich people who own levers. Needless to say I smell trouble for my post.

# Frank said on August 29, 2007 01:17 PM:

You would be crazy to trust Microsoft for anything that involves an open platform like the web.

Flash is great tool for making web applications. Microsoft has a long history of making products that lock in a market subset and forcing others out.

I just can't see anyone in their right mind who wants to make a web app using Silverlight. How could you trust Microsoft given their history... it would be painting a big "I'm stupid" sign on your forhead.

# McGruff said on August 30, 2007 09:44 PM:

Both have pros and cons. Here are my thoughts

Flash / Flex / AIF - pros /cons

- swf / actionscript is fairly hard to decompile in a useful way.

- AS 3.0 is now a strongly typed language, though nothing compared to C#.

- The Adobe Integrated Format (AIF) applications run as desktop applications on both Windows and Mac, with either SWF content, or plain old html / javascript. Perhaps we can run silverlight apps inside the AIF player (anyone have any thoughts here?)

- The latest Flash runtime (I think it's called the Flash Virtual Machine) is 10x faster than the previous flash player (because of strong typing I believe), and is thus quite capable.

- Flash video compression is quite impressive.

- Many designers / developers already know flash (though most complain about it).

- Flash code is often spread throughout many frames, and is not very organized, and is quite difficult to debug.

Silverlight Pros / Cons

-- We can now use C# for silverlight (as a xaml code behind file). C# on server, C# on client.

-- Silverlight will eventually integrate seamlessly into the ASP.NET event model, as well as the ASP.NET AJAX framework.

-- Source code is not protected (AFAIK) -- though this is only a partial issue because many SV "applications" will have client - server interactions and the server code is not accessible.

-- Silverlight is still very new and needs time to grow up. It's just simply not there yet, but it's growing quickly.

-- Frameworks will be developed to make developing RIA applications quite easy. I could see the Acropolis framework ported to Silverlight.

# yloquen said on September 5, 2007 11:27 AM:

Interesting thoughts.

Flash is not dead for certain. It has a lot of momentum, so it will take at least a few years even if Silverlight is strictly better in everything. And Adobe will not exactly wait for that to happen.

Nobody brought up price. With Flash , if you abandon the IDE, you get everything for free ... Is that so with SL?

# conte said on September 5, 2007 01:00 PM:

well, i guess jesse is a microsoft fan boy ("vista kicks ass" - what a crap), but appreciate the comparison anyway. But to my 2 cents:

- I think it´s a stereotype that developers don´t know about design and designers don´t know about dev. - IMHO the real outstandig people out there are both and now about both.

- from a app developers point of view Jesse might have a point, but he totally forgets to mention the streams of tears of agony Microsoft developers shed already about Microsoft products and tools - don´t think that will change with silverlight

# bowlman said on September 5, 2007 10:42 PM:

yloquen... i expect that SL code can be compiled with the .NET compiler that you get when you install .NET Framework or Mono/Moonlight. There are actually heaps of free .NET tools out there and we will see some for SL/Moonlight as well.

# Microsoft Buys Corel | SilverlightFlashKiller said on September 7, 2007 08:44 AM:

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# Microsoft Buys Corel | SilverlightFlashKiller said on September 7, 2007 09:19 AM:

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# Ronald Avendaño said on September 7, 2007 05:40 PM:

Just a question... Microsoft paid u for said that crazy things?

# Jeremy Daley said on September 10, 2007 11:00 AM:

i haven't read all the replies to see if this has been said already, but from what i've seen, Silverlight only embeds through a javascript (no object/embed tags).

i this this would be a problem for myspacer's or bloggers who are restricted from implementing their own javascript.

i may be uninformed on this, so forgive me if i'm wrong...

# KN said on September 10, 2007 11:16 PM:

There are always a couple of things that one tool can do that others can't. Flash/Flex have unprecedented animation capabilities that only artistic people can appreciate and SL is no where near it. Every site that's been defined visually cool for the past decade was most possibly done in Flash; and Flex is growing on that foundation. Likewise, SilverLight has the unprecedented support in .Net framework and it's legion of developers that Flex can't match. It is stupendous to call one technology/community dead rather than cherishing the competition. Where would IBM be if not for Microsoft, and where would Yahoo and MS be if not for Google. It is called FREEDOM of CHOICE. Every living being deserves it.

# DZ said on September 17, 2007 02:39 AM:

I just cant wait for MS plans to integrate Silverlight with XNA Game Studio Express, for all that rich unprecedented graphic and animation capabilities :)).

# Rob said on September 17, 2007 03:59 PM:

I don't think Silverlight should be compared to Flash. Sorry, but whenever I see Flash on a web site, I look for the skip button so that I can get to the real content. While Flash can be used to great effect, its usually used for value-free marketing gloss, and frankly, I find all those 'cool animations' superficial and annoying.

Silverlight (especially from 1.1 onwards) will be used be developers to create cross platform browser based content with genuinely interactive client side functionality that doesn't rely on the 'make do' string and sticky tape of AJAX.

If Silverlight makes Web sites look nice, that's great too, but that's not why it will be successful. Silverlight will finally make it easy for developers to create browser hosted software that matches the user experience of desktop or client/server apps.

# CK said on September 23, 2007 06:05 PM:

see www.microsoft.com/silverlight

Siliver know supports some flavours of linux (i think its also supprted on mac) and the list a list of some popular websites that are now using silverligght, wwe.com, mlb.mlb.com to a few. So SL seems to be gaining adoption slowly.

# Blog de Juan Peláez said on September 24, 2007 09:32 AM:

Extractado del Blog de Jesse Ezell , quien ha tenido una amplia experiencia en desarrollo de herramientas

# Silverlight Vs Flash: Trying to collect different opinions | MCSE Blogs said on September 26, 2007 03:42 AM:

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# Pieter Kersten.com » Blog Archive » Silverlight vs. Flash: The Developer Story said on September 28, 2007 08:20 AM:

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# Kurt (AS Dev) said on October 1, 2007 08:32 PM:

Hey, I love microsoft, but turned away from their products because of lack of open source. Will admit that I sort of like Vista, but think Linux blows it out of the water, plus it's FREE.

A lot of statements made in the main article of this page are logical fallacies in regards to the Flash authoring environment and Flex 2 Flex 3, and adobe's free SDK. I highly recommend this article. www.onflex.org/.../m-silverlight-vs-adobe-flash-player.php

# Silverlight Takes on Flash: A Race to Deliver Rich Interactive Contents on the Web « Television and Interactive Content said on October 2, 2007 04:22 AM:

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# sami said on October 4, 2007 07:16 AM:

can anyone please show me a silverlight application that cannot be done in flash except the 3D stuff.

Can applications like buzzword be built in silverlight?

Can we build a portal based fully on silverlight?

Al the demos I have seen done with silverlight have been on the web since some years.

I recoomend everybody to stop beleiving the hype . Instead believe what you see.

# healthy weight loss diets said on October 8, 2007 10:58 AM:

Thank you. weight-loss-pages.com

# POKE 53280,0: Pete Brown's Blog said on October 10, 2007 01:31 PM:

Vishwas turned me on to this article , by Jesse Ezell, pointing out some of the shortcomings in Flash

# Bogrollben said on October 11, 2007 10:48 AM:

These opinions are still strongly divided into 2 camps:

Flash - Great for animation. For coding though it's taken a VERY long time (and 8 player versions) for anything solid to materialize, like Flex, AS3.0, etc. Debugging still sucks AFAIK.

Silverlight - Great for coding. Animation tools suck.

It's interesting to note that for the last few years, the coolest flash sites are almost always ones that integrate really difficult dynamic coding into flash movies. Now for Microsoft the coin is flipped and the coolest SL sites are going to be ones where they figured out how to do a slick animation.

Conclusion: If Adobe stayed the same and if MS dramatically improved their designer tools, I think MS would win. But Adobe won't stay the same and MS might not improve their tools, so it's definitely good competition at this point.

# Mahesh Ramachandran said on October 12, 2007 02:38 AM:

Silverlight has a big drawback over its network foorprint over Flash. Flash delivers compiled binary vs Silverlight which delivers Text based XAML. Hence the amount of content that is delivered over Flash is much smaller compared to XAML. Try delivering similar UX over the web & access it over a 512 Kbps connection from anywhere in Asia and you'll know what Iam talking about.

Do you really think Flash is dead?

# John A said on October 13, 2007 06:17 PM:

Silverlight also offers the compiled binary option. The XAML is compiled into BAML, which is binary and smaller in size. Actually, Microsoft recommends this.

# Julius said on October 15, 2007 07:40 AM:

It’s the middle of October, and Silverlight is nowhere to be seen... How could it be that Silverlight, such a killer-app is so... ...Dead?

# Steve said on October 15, 2007 03:50 PM:

How is BAML for streaming, as I don't think you would be able to stream in XAML. If BAML can't handle that I would see it as a rather large problem for Silverlight and Vid

# Swiss DPE Team Blog said on October 16, 2007 06:41 AM:

Seit anfangs September ist Silverlight 1.0 ( http://www.silverlight.net ) released, nachdem es im Mai

# Noticias externas said on October 16, 2007 07:44 AM:

Seit anfangs September ist Silverlight 1.0 ( http://www.silverlight.net ) released, nachdem es im Mai

# MSDN Blog Postings » Silverlight vs Flash said on October 16, 2007 09:21 AM:

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# JLM said on October 16, 2007 10:05 AM:

People are taking up ruby because it is nice to work with, designers are not going to take up XAML because it is not nice to work with, I know I am working with it.

Blend is so far behind the flash IDE in terms of creative flow you might as well start creating your own version, and often it is easier to hand code the XAML. No one yet has any idea how to really work well with XAML in large applications.

XML solves everything is a current mistake, panel are good but start trying to animate and jump between code and graphics, and reusing sections of XAML like movieclips instances, na you guys missed the sum of parts aspects of flash.

# SLdoah! said on October 18, 2007 04:18 PM:

Hi – flash developer here

(in addition to C#.net, VB, PHP, AJAX, and every freakin design tool you have ever heard of)

I love all the comments from MS developers who cant/wont learn flash/actionscript. Honestly, imho the best SL can ever become is roughly equivalent to Flex - or as I like to refer to it "canned-flash for the layout challenged".

With effective use of actionscript, it will do anything you tell it to do (with a tiny footprint, and low resource allocation). But it does take a level of graphic talent to handle it all - which I understand is a bit threatening. I am all for frameworks…but I don’t them.

Silverlight will fail because propeller-heads are not art freaks and hippies. Back away from the client code-monkeys, and leave the aesthetic to the eclectic.

Even better, SilverLight will be to Flash what Front Page was to Visual Studio. (I know, that smarts).

The only way it will take off is if "designers" adopt it and produce flash killer UI's with it. (that ain’t happening - from what I have seen so far). People, designer types aren’t leaving Adobe.

Do you really think you can force designers to use SL just b/c it will be easier on you?

Ha! Btw, when is MS coming out with a Photoshop killer? lol. Wouldn’t that be the next logical step? *I am grinning big right now*

Then, one blessed day you wouldn’t need graphic designers at all, and the web will resemble a communist nation or even better, a huge, featureless brick-wall with two colors of bricks, and one color of grout (grey prolly). Won’t it be lovely?

One day when you crank open VS, and bind a control to a datasource in your aspx pages, the UI will automatically created by SL by simply adding another page directive and a single line in web.config:

</appsettings>

Silly...programmers. You can’t do it all yourselves. And if you do, no one wants to look at the result. But you know that already. Sheesh….

Here's a suggestion – instead of bashing flash, and those “special” flash developers you love to hate (like me) I would say to approach them and BEG them to try Silver Light.

I would even suggest giving licenses away to these people, in addition to offering free training. If not, they will never have a reason to switch, and you wont get too far teaching stud MS developers how to use it if they don’t have an eye for it in the first place.

I will be waiting – but not holding my breath.

Good luck, and God speed.

# wow. said on October 21, 2007 09:50 AM:

SLdoah -

Love your comments, but I dont think anyone hates you. 8] (jealous maybe)

You are right though, what Microsoft really needs is to tap into that rare breed of "programming designer" that would be willing to cross over to Silverlight. The easiest way is to give them incentives for bringing thier talent over.

Another way is to demonstrate huge income potential for someone with this skillset - but make no mistake, this type of head count is expensive (but very neccessary) for any employer who cares about the front-end.

I dont think that its a one way or the other propisition btw. Those who will excel at this new technoloy will continue to excel at Flash/Flex/Actionscript.

If you compensate them, they will come.

# Hua said on October 23, 2007 01:51 PM:

Hi,

I am new to silverlight and Flash. Can we create a silverlight application using dynamic data loaded from Database? I am searching for an example, I can not find one.

thanks

# Tdz said on October 24, 2007 12:22 PM:

Wow im speachless. Iv worked with flash for a good 4-5 years now and, well actually Im impressed by what you say. I mean, for example, that you have to put a blank sound to force a regular frame rate is absurd. Why go into so much trouble when you can just use intervals... I mean, im not saying that silverligh dosen't have potential...but its faaar from what flash is doing right now and it will take time before it catches up. Too much time if you ask me, flex has become simpler, air will make everything better, and silverlight will fall into the shadows until MS shows you ppl what we have in stores..

# Jonas said on October 25, 2007 02:46 PM:

I'm surprised one very simple point has NOT been substantially brought up. The Designer vs. Programmer issue. Design vs. Code.

I mean if you take away the fact that a non coder can do some pretty amazing stuff in Flash, well, then Flash AS is just another language. But it never was AS that brought me to it, but rather the SIMPLICITY of being able to animate and create interactivity with ease. What tools can a designer use in conjunction with SL?

Is there a WYSIWYG GUI like Photoshop/Premiere/After Effects/Flash that I can use?

# Todd Anglin's Code Campground said on October 26, 2007 05:15 PM:

In what can only be considered one instance in a series of examples, I saw this story today on TechCrunch

# Edward Apostol said on October 29, 2007 02:35 PM:

Just to clarify for all those M$ - centric folks, You really should be comparing SilverLight to Flex, not Flash. Flash (the "Player") is just the plugin, and the branded name for the authoring tool used for over a decade to make rich internet app-type stuff.

Hey - it looks like everyone on this thread forgot (or were to young to know) that M$ tried to enter into this environment over a decade ago. When Flash was in its infancy, M$ bought a company called Liquid Motion, which had a product called Liquid Motion Pro... the software allowed you to create animations using a timeline based mechanism...If they treat Silverlight like they treated Liquid Motion Pro, than its as good as dead.

# New to the RIA topic said on October 30, 2007 08:16 AM:

I wonder how one could create an app that manages peripherals with Flex/Flash. Is there any kind of integration between action script and Java? I mean not via an app server but simply being able to invoke methods on local java classes. I guess it can be done in SL since it simply integrates with .net languages.

In Flex/Flash world what would be the better way to integrate the presentation layer with business logic and hardware control? Thinking about a kiosk type app?

# NuUzer said on October 31, 2007 05:49 PM:

IMHO the *true* power of flash is on the server, NOT on the client.

I'm referring to FMS (or any other open source equiv. e.g. Red5). Does SilverLight have an associated server engine? If not, it cannot even begin to compete with Flash technology on any serious level for building full-featured, audio/video database-driven, multimedia apps.

# Ducky said on November 1, 2007 03:30 PM:

Flash sucks - it doesn't run on Win 3.1.

# NuUzer said on November 2, 2007 09:07 AM:

Ducky, Win 3.1 has been extinct for a while now...

# me said on November 3, 2007 06:19 AM:

"Does SilverLight have an associated server engine?"

Silverlight content is just plain xml any web scripting language will already allow server integration.

For me the biggest positive about the Silverlight plugin is the smooth hardware accellerated playback at 60fps. It puts the flash player to shame.

However I find the Flash Design tools are far easier to use than Expression Blend.

# 60fps? said on November 4, 2007 08:36 AM:

60fps? Why would you waste processor cycles like that for ....anything?

Do you know the human eye can only detect 32fps -ish. Anything more is just wasted frames for visualy effects.

Why on earth would you ever want anything running that fast? lol.

You need to get out of your cube more often dood. I hear the outdoors around Redmond is fabulous this time of year.

# casey said on November 5, 2007 05:01 PM:

From a nice posting here:

http://www.colettas.org/?p=93

Unlike Flash/Flex it(Silverlight) doesn’t do (as of v1.1):

sound processing

binary data exchange

sockets

per pixel bitmap editing

bitmap filters (convolution, color matrix etc)

bitmap effects (drop shadow, blur, glow)

frame based animation (i.e. hand made)

webcam

microphone

text input

e4x

built in file upload/download

user controls

layout engine

local data storage

linux player

express install (through player)

BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY for 10 years so far! 1.1meg footprint

… these are just a few features.

Id say MS has a long way to go.

# Winturds said on November 6, 2007 03:10 AM:

I knew I read enough after seeing "...vista rocks...". Within 5 minutes of using Vista I (really!!) wanted to take the whole-tower outside and beat it with a baseball bat. Then go out to the street and throw the remnants down the sewer, followed by a molotov cocktail to ensure that "no raccoons were harmed in the destruction of this MicroJunk product".

Fact of the matter is that if you want something crappy, get Microsoft to do it. Even in such case it is probably just (half of) a collection from another company's products twisted for their needs and sold as if tailored to someone else and that might someday become a reliable product. (strong emphasis on might)

casey and SLdoah! sum up the points that were conveniently left off your very lopsided comparison.

Frankly I only use anything MS if it's the last chick on earth type of thing. Adobe on the other hand is like walking into a classy-but-cheap brothel.

# Job said on November 8, 2007 10:36 AM:

"New to the RIA topic", you can integrate Java and Javascript (call Java methods from Javascript and vice-versa).

Sun even has a library that does Java-to-Javascript communication (which you can use to easily implement Javascript-to-Java). But i would recommend flash over java whenever possible, because Java is bulky and it's security implementation usually means you'll have to sign libraries to do some simple stuff.

I would move to Silverlight if it has better scripting capabilities than Flash. I don't really use flash for animation or presentation purposes, i tend to use flash as a faceless engine in a page to perform any tasks unsupported in javascript/ajax. It's usually a pick between Java and Flash.

Ideally SilverLight would be a lighter Java, with the same low-level scripting support without the awkward/buggy behaviors.

# archont said on November 11, 2007 09:58 AM:

A few questions then:

1. What's the execution speed of AS vs Silverlight?

2. Can I make games in silverlight that won't suck?

3. Is the silverlight rendered faster than the flash one?

4. Does it have hardware T&L?

If it's at least a triple yes then bye bye flash. Otherwise, this is some kind of joke.

# venividivici said on November 13, 2007 11:49 AM:

As both, programmer and designer, and as neither of them the full potential and better tool is Notepad. SL is Notepad with a few add-ons, if you don't believe me try it. Tell me you cannot write XAML with it and .NET and such crap-ola.

I mean how much more success and proof do you need to show you that Microsoft products are great:

-Zune (great for concealing really important things http://hideapod.com/)

-ActiveX (without it Explorer was able to use opacity and alphas)

-Vista (such a great box, pretty colors, what can i do with it, though?)

-XBox (Wii used to play it :-))

# Jonathan said on November 16, 2007 11:00 PM:

"he totally forgets to mention the streams of tears of agony Microsoft developers shed already about Microsoft products and tools"

Hmmm.. I happen to be quite fond of some of the Microsoft products and tools. Take Visual Studio for example. It is by far the best IDE I have ever used. That is one of the big reasons that I am a .Net developer today: the tools.

The tools are what makes a software system successful. Sony ignored that with the ps3, while MS offered fabulous development tools. As a result there are many more Xbox360 developers. The programming model behind WPF is really quite nice when you get into it. The current DESIGNER tools for SL may need a lot of enhancements, but they can improve that. The important thing is that they have the big picture view on where to take it.

I'm not saying flash is dead or even dying. Just that SL definitely has a fighting chance.

BTW, MS get socket support & binary formatter WCF support in SL please.

# Jonathan said on November 16, 2007 11:06 PM:

@venividivici,

That hideapod link was hilarious. Let me guess what operating system you use... hmm... OSX? You can really tell the Apple fanboys when you read their posts.

Yes, there are many things about Vista that really suck, but I think that it IS better than XP because of the security. The average user is so stupid. They need a stronger security system to take care of them Something like Ubuntu or Vista work great for that. Haven't had a lot of OSX experience so can't speak for it. Much better than XP though even though the transition is very painful.

# ----SL the Web's appendix---- said on November 19, 2007 08:37 AM:

Developers....

Developers.....

Developers....

Blah Blah Blah...

This is the realm of designers. I cant see how developers would have any say in the matter. God forbid they actually let programmers design something...(eek!!) In the end it boils down to one thing...Flash is eye-candy...that is it's purpose, it is the reason for its existence that is why designers and (most importantly) end-users want it. Why the hell else would you use it? If it were up to developers why not just develop in asp?

The Expression tools are light years behind any Adobe equivelant . The insane amount of bugs partnered with the MS paint like features somehow dont make me wanna pee in my pants.

It took me 2 days to make a basic animated banner.(with all the buggy modification tools and dodgy xaml it generated) It took 10 mins to do the exact same thing in flash. Enough Said...

# David Waggoner said on November 20, 2007 10:46 AM:

Ultimately it comes down to what the companies investing in web marketing want. They are familiar with Flash, and so is most of the industry. They're not interested in risking money by using new technology, even if it is Microsoft. Industry professionals already know Flash, and it's easier to migrate to AS3 then to learn another proprietary language. Truth be told, the major marketing firms will continue to use Flash, and money dictates direction.

# Silverlight/Flash performance comparisons (and a wee bit of fanboyism) « Design | Geek said on November 20, 2007 11:41 AM:

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# Flex: Is Silverlight just a “Me Too” product? « Tales from a Trading Desk said on November 21, 2007 07:38 AM:

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# JOE said on November 21, 2007 09:20 AM:

"Microsoft does one thing better than the rest..and that’s re-engineer a product and integrate it so well you in the end you really don't care to buy or use anything else"

I just have a distrust of MSFT...Cross browser support: They get a reasonable share of the market, then add a "feature" in their next version that doesn't quite work right on other browsers, etc....You do care about using something else. You just can't - if you want things to work correctly. They often work with a standard format, then add a their own twist.

"implements industry standard VC-1 codec for video" - Isn't this a little disingenuous?

It sounds like this battle is just moving applications into what people wanted browser apps to be in the first place before that security sandbox put the handcuffs on desktop access. A mature looking front-end, desktop integration, desired content pushed from the server rather than polled.

# Thomas said on November 21, 2007 03:02 PM:

I think what the designers here are forgetting is that functionality is going to be the new drive on the web. Flashy (pardon the pun) animations that look cool but do nothing are so popular because that's all the designers can do. Now that Silverlight has come along and offers us a sane development model, developers can begin to make useful web apps with streamlined UIs. The Silverlight apps may not have animations firing off in all directions and blinking shapes flying all over the place, but they'll be able to accomplish tasks.

The new web is definitely going to be developer driven, not designer driven. I think people have had enough cartoon sites, and now they'd like to get some work done.

Has anyone noticed how popular Google has been lately? I'm sure you have. Where's Google's slick animations and colorful, bubbly UIs that are hard to navigate? Google's products are perfect examples of how the new web is driven by functionality, not flashiness. Google is just one example. There are websites all of the Internet that are springing up and becoming popular because of their simple and easy-to-navigate UIs.

# Michael said on November 22, 2007 08:04 PM:

Most developers are smart. they know who their target audience is. They know catering to their clients needs pays the bills. Clients want websites which are audience inclusive.. I've never heard a client say "I don't care about Mac or Linux users". Today Flash is an inclusive platform regardless of it's developer features. Silverlake is not. Unless Silverlake can bridge to other platforms it will never be adopted by the client... because it excludes a segment of their audience. The client doesn't care if it's developed in Flash, XHTML or some other paradigm.. as long as their audience can participate.

# Thomas said on November 23, 2007 04:20 PM:

Silverlight is only alpha, but it already works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X. Windows 2000 and Linux support is in the works, and will most likely be released by the time Silverlight 1.1 goes gold.

As far as browser support, Silverlight currently runs on IE6, IE7, FF 1.5+, and Safari.

# alexandre damiron said on December 5, 2007 05:58 AM:

I like Javascript integration, Xaml (yet I would have prefered svg), resusable code.

However, I do not want to be supposed to develop with .NET plateform, which I dislike.

I hope I will be able to get the tools & Ide to separate silverlight development from .NET development

# Santanu Bhattacharjee said on December 8, 2007 05:46 AM:

I use flash for virtually everything since it is "ubiqutious". (animation, web, games, broadcast, films and even print). I am talking about serious professional stuff.

It does have several cool +ve points. But when it comes to taking it to limits we start feeling the limitations.

While most people here compare the programming aspects of flash to silverlight (Since MS is a programming oriented company), I find its limitations in animation compared to Animo / US animation .

I see it limited as a multimedia app compared to certain features of MM Director.

I see it limited compared to JAVA comparing certain math algorithms.

I see it limited in making certain CG for broadcast.

I see limitation in print compared to COREL.

All said and done, poor flash has nevertheless tried to keep all happy to an extent.

Knowing Microsoft's poor sense of creativity (Its logo and the default wallpaper says it all), I wonder how much they must have accomplished them in silverlight?

# L Seels said on December 9, 2007 02:01 PM:

I have a web site that has an animated flash banner at the top. I have 3 computers and my desk top will not open up the banner.

I am a novice at computers and only know what I need to know to do my job. I am a realtor. Is there a suggestion has to what I need to do to get my computer of open the banner. I have downloaded the lates Adobe product.

Thanks

# Miguel Saez said on December 9, 2007 03:20 PM:

Silverlight Probablemente el tema que mas preguntas generó fué Silverlight . Intentaré

# Noticias externas said on December 9, 2007 03:40 PM:

Silverlight Probablemente el tema que mas preguntas generó fué Silverlight . Intentaré

# MSDN Blog Postings » MSDN Briefing Online - Preguntas y Respuestas (Parte 3): Silverlight said on December 9, 2007 04:49 PM:

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# flashengineer said on December 13, 2007 10:42 PM:

this post is bullshit ...

# Got One said on December 15, 2007 09:26 AM:

Is Microsoft like a mac?

# the rasx() context » Blog Archive » Today???s Links to the Client Side said on December 20, 2007 03:30 PM:

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# Thaylin Burns said on January 2, 2008 11:10 AM:

This article seems to me to be rather one sided for M$. Silverlight is gaudy and takes too much hardware to just develop it. I can download eclipse for free, then just grab the flex builder plugin and I'm golden. Since flash has been around for quite some time there's much much more documentation on just about anything you care to do in AS. If SL is anything like any other M$ product I can be assured the API will be nearly impossible to find not to mention ridiculous in it's language (not a big fan of VB or any sibling thereof).

I'm just going to have to call shenanigans to this article and say somebody sounds like they may have a big grudge against Flash for the company wanting to be safe with their code. Get over it.

# Will said on January 4, 2008 07:59 PM:

1.Ruby on Rails (or PHP)

2.Flash (using sendAndLoad();)

Two steps and nearly every 'benefit' of SL has been dealt with. I am yet to run into any problems with this method, and AS3 has been quite nice to me. I'd like an example of a site that uses SL better than Flash (that didn't take 2 years and a team of MS developers) and then maybe I will consider getting back into SL.

I worked in it for one month and was so frustrated! It took 1 week to learn AS3. If Microsoft continues to release Betas that drive REAL developers away... Well, SL will go the way of Vista.

# Danny said on January 5, 2008 08:52 AM:

The only way it will take off is if "designers" adopt it and produce flash killer UI's with it. (that ain’t happening - from what I have seen so far). People, designer types aren’t leaving Adobe.

Here's a suggestion – instead of bashing flash, and those “special” flash developers you love to hate (like me) I would say to approach them and BEG them to try Silver Light.

-------------------------------

Interesting point SLdoah. By proclaiming "flash is dead", MS clearly shows that they are well aware of your point now and were back then when they started thinking about creating SL. They can't really BEG, so by saying "flash is dead" they hope the Flash community will start trying SL -- which will only happen if SL will be able to produce SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER AND NICER EYE-CANDY THAN FLASH. That's the bottomline if you ask me. We will find out.

One reason why I'm personally glad with the existence of SL is that it will hopefully force Mozilla to reconsider their policy of NOT wanting to fix the flash/animation bug in Firefox (they conveniently created a flash-blocker). This I think might pose a greater threat to flash and animation in general. Read www.postforum.com/.../read.php

What do you think?

# DRM-X said on January 6, 2008 09:24 PM:

Which one supports DRM functions? So that the rich media content can be protected?

# BigA said on January 9, 2008 07:25 AM:

"Want to move something across the screen in 3 seconds? Calculate how many frames 3 seconds will take, then calculate the matrixes required for each frame along the way."

The class fl.transitions.Tween allows animating object properties by using seconds. Am I missing something here? You can tween several properties simultaneously.

# pix said on January 11, 2008 09:10 AM:

"..Silverlight supports the WPF animation model, which is not only time based instead of frame based, but lets you define the start and end conditions and it will figure out how to get there for you. .."

Doesn't Flash do the same?!?

# hoodia diet pills said on January 13, 2008 02:26 PM:

13c360cdb9:75 Thank you

# FNF said on January 15, 2008 08:52 AM:

I get it. It's not that you feel that Silverlight is better. You are just a BIG fanboy of Microsoft.

# Jesse Ezell said on June 8, 2007 06:26 PM:

Dimi, Vista kicks ass FYI.

How much is Microsoft paying you to try to fill our heads with there propaganda bull crap. Don't get me wrong I am not a supporter of Microsoft or Adobe. It just seems to me that someone who comes out with a statement like "Vista kicks ass FYI." must be getting paid by that company when everyone knows the product is as about as useful as a sharp stick in the eye.

# FNF said on January 15, 2008 08:56 AM:

BigA Just from experience you do not want to use those transtions.Tween classes all they do is add the image in a new position on a new depth. So if you keep using them you will eventually run out of depth levels. The best possible way is to code you animation using a time based method like intervals. But can be very complicated.

# jol said on January 16, 2008 10:54 PM:

Silverlight cannot do anything that Actionscript can't. Flash has better graphics, and Microsoft tends to put product useability second to product efficiency. First of all, AS3 is much faster than silverlight. Silverlight is trying to catch up to AS2, to be honest. Even if silverlight was faster, it wouldn't be as easy to use.

As far as timeline vs frameline, frameline is much better for animation, and you don't need a timeline in flash for games and interactive material. Most games are made in under 5 frames, and the frameline only really deals with how fast the intervals are called, and can be dynamically controlled, depending on the computer speed.

Silverlight can program in C#, but AS3 is very similar to Java, has an OOP based programming structure, and most functionality can be achieved via smart programming, regardless of what the code lets you do. I planned out a fully functional 3d Engine in about 3 days with flash, using nothing but variables and some mathematical functions. Keep in mind that flash is for games and animation, not desktop APPS.

Flash has a good product and amazing market foothold. Microsoft won't have to worry about distribution (just put it in as an update), but flash is already available on most mobile devices, ipods, cell phones, etc.

Silverlight supports more (microsoft) video formats, but flash has this area too. Almost every video site in existence uses flash and loads up a .swf or .flv file. Flv dominates all other video formats amazingly, can be streamed, and has really good quality and low file size.

Adobe has good tool integration. They have photoshop, illustrator, and the whole macromedia production suite designed to work in tandem. Microsoft's programs aren't as cohesive and are usually designed to perform individually of each other.

And if I had to make an outlandish statement, I'd say that Director is the future. I've heard that they will start offering actionscript support in director, which means that flash games will be backed by Direct 3d (salty for microsoft, because SL can't do that). Eventually though, I think that Flash and Director will merge. Flash will have 3d support, Director will have 2d support, and actionscript will have adapted to fit accordingly. What will matter a lot though is who gets hardware support first. I think Adobe will have this, considering the current state of Silverlight, but that is really not something I can back up.

Vista is a beast to get working, lots of out-of-the-box glitches, but once you get it updated and customized, it is a very comfortable, pleasant OS.

# Perry said on January 20, 2008 04:19 AM:

jol, please do us a favor and don't even begin to compare actionscript to c#. actionscript is a toy compared to vs.net and c#.

as per this whole discussion of developer vs designer debate. we're talking about the future of making web applications become as sophisticated as desktop applications. Please make a distinction between lame little flash "ads" that plague the internet to RIAs which is what SL is intended for. In the app land, the developer is the "ruler" and not the designer. For this reason, SL will win the RIA war. and flash will continu

# Dan said on January 24, 2008 12:04 PM:

"If you have server components, once again you need to switch back to .NET and throw out all the classes that the run time is using."

You can code server side functions in Actionscript.

"text"

You can embed fonts in Flash.

# Bob Wiley said on January 24, 2008 02:53 PM:

Ha ha ha... Vista kicks ass? Or did you mean sucks ass? In my opinion, Microsoft, specifically the Vista department, should be criminally prosecuted for the amount of delay they have added to everyone's lives for all that extra clicking... "Someone is trying to access the printer, Allow or Deny?" WTF do you think I clicked on it for? Yes, that someone is me... DUH... really, what is next... I can see the next operating system after Vista, asking another round of stupid questions, "Someone just clicked Allow! Are you sure you want to allow? Okay, let me see your drivers license and social security card, and then I will present the next stupid question to you"

# 80s team blog » silverlight???Flash???????????????[silverlight vs Flash] said on January 25, 2008 09:39 AM:

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# Sorry said on January 29, 2008 09:16 PM:

I think you need to work on your Flash skills, some of your assertions are dead wrong, way, way wrong. It is nice that you like Silverlight so much though.

# Jot said on January 30, 2008 12:44 PM:

# Sorry > totally agree.

Note: I already use Flash together with c# and .NET.... whats the prob?

(dont get confused, flash does not execute .NET/code but can very well communicate with them in many ways)

# Steve said on February 2, 2008 06:07 AM:

For me it looks like Microsoft and Adobe will have and hold their own technology fans and artists, creating big things. It's not the question: "Silverlight" or "Flash / Flex". Both will stay interesting technologies, and surfers will have to install both; I can't see, that in the end there will be only one hero, having the whole market for himself. They'll split the market, and there's enough potential for Adobe and Microsoft to earn a lot of money.

# Figo Mago said on February 4, 2008 01:02 PM:

Perhaps now we know part of the reasons Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo! If they can force enough people to install Silverlight to access web services they own (incl the big Y), they would gain traction with Silverlight. But somebody please tell me: why - if Silverlight is so wonderful - is the MS website STILL using flash to showcase its products? (see www.microsoft.com/.../everyonegetsit)

# andy said on February 8, 2008 02:38 AM:

I think Silverlight is much better. I love adobe and all, but when it comes to development nothing can get close to microsoft. C#, Vb, and the asp.net framework are far far beyond actionscript, and flash. I agree that a big problem is going to be distribution. All around it seems way better than flash, but it also depends on developers actually implementing one or the other. I am a .net developer, and a flex developer. I honestly find actionscript horrible as far as code, but I use it, cause almost everybody has the flash plugin. But once again I say Silverlight is a much better "tool" for web development. With C# it has the best of back end with its own front end eyecandy.

# Rebus said on February 15, 2008 06:26 AM:

Excellent article. In-depth.

However, you risk undoing all your good work with this uninformed catch-all general statement:

>> Visual Studio.NET is by far the most powerful

>> and most popular IDE

I am a Java developer and manage two C# developers. The power of Eclipse JDT (Java Development Tools) is awesome and includes frequently needed features not included in Visual Studio .NET 2005 Microsoft distribution [1] such as:

a) Open Type Hierarchy

b) Open Call Hierarchy

IN MY OPINION (important qualifier which you did not use), Eclipse is a superior IDE to Visual Studio.

[1] I'm not talking about 3rd party addins.

# palm bay fl florist said on February 17, 2008 10:25 PM:

rebus - spot on eclipse rocks java / php even as3 but we're talking MS here i think. i am beginning some research on SL after working with the new javascript EXT 2.0 libs and being a bit frustrated at the effort.

does anyone have any other useful links to SL evaluations?

# Joe said on February 19, 2008 04:18 PM:

yeah yeah yeah... but why? Was Flash not doing it okay? I forsee Microsoft trying to strong-arm itself into Adobe's marketshare. They will force users to utilize their plug-in and make back room deals that limit the content delivery method to Silverlight. Since Microsoft can preinstall whatever it wants in Windows, it'll appear to be "better" or at least "easier" to the end user.

This is the same company that put out Vista... who's CEO saw no future in the iPod or iPhone. Do we want to look to them for innovation?

They just wanna pull another Netscape.

# Michael Sync said on February 22, 2008 12:12 PM:

amazing article.. thanks..

# Tim Lucas said on February 22, 2008 01:18 PM:

As a web designer, one of my favorite things about flash is being able to produce artwork in other Adobe applications such as Fireworks, Illustrator, and Photoshop and bringing them in fully intact, with transparency intact, and maintaining vector artwork.

How does Silverlight work with other graphics packages?

Also, most designers are on Apple computers and I'm not certain you can develop Silverlight with Mac - correct me if I'm wrong.

# casey stalnaker said on February 22, 2008 03:14 PM:

andy -

"...I love adobe and all, but when it comes to development nothing can get close to microsoft. C#, Vb, and the asp.net framework are far far beyond actionscript, and flash."

Did you really just state the MS server-side technologies are are far far beyond Adobe client-side technologies? Please tell me you understand the difference.....*sigh*.

That’s it dude...get back into your MS developer hole - your blogging privileges are hereby revoked. Your postings are making us all dumber. Disclaimer: I apologize for the personal attack…”I didn’t have to do it; I felt I owed it to him.” lol. 8]

But seriously folks – imho, Steve has it right. I agree that it isnt going to be a "one way or the other" proposition. Things change fast in our line of work. If you have the skills, you may as well learn all you can about both platforms. It remains to be seen if Silverlight will gain popularity (note: popularity doesn’t mean penetration, btw)...but if it does, we should all embrace it. After all, in most cases, it is our clients who will dictate the technology we use, not our personal preference.

I would add that flash is going nowhere by the way – I think most end-users would agree that Flash has become a defacto standard on the internet, much to the dismay of you-know-who. Still, if Silverlight ends up creating a gravy train like Flash has for much of this past decade...I’m on board. But that said... It's still going to be up to creative professionals to create the appeal, and ultimately the demand. I think our friends in Redmond would be wise to remember this. (…in other words….MS : Play nice with ADOBE, and APPLE if you expect to gain market share!)

# Nesaprot.net » Blog Archive » Silverlight vs Flash said on February 26, 2008 04:08 AM:

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# JC said on February 26, 2008 11:24 PM:

Well, I think most of the discussion and comparison made here would not make much sense when Silverlight 2.0 comes out. Seriously cannot compare flash with Silverlight 2.0. You maybe able to compare Flex with it in some way. Flash is not powerful enough for large scale applications, and security issue is also a concern. ActionScript 3.0 apparently does better programming, but still too weak for complex logic. Also, flash is a bit too slow sometimes.

# casey stalnaker said on February 29, 2008 03:10 PM:

Forgive me, but I think some of your blanket statements need to be corrected.

Wrong #1:

"Flash is not powerful enough for large scale applications"

Do you mean you don’t know Actionscript well enough to build large scale applications? Please don’t confuse the limitations of a web browser with the limitations of Actionscript. No, flash is not going to build your next HR/Accounting application on its own (if that’s what you mean), but neither is Silverlight – nor is that the intent of either platform.

Do you mean RIA’s? I would argue that the most “large scale” and widely distributed client applications on the planet are done in Flash/Flex. To be nice, I won’t even mention Adobe Air (who needs a browser anyway? lol).

More to the point, Flash, Flex, etc… need to rely on server side scripting (ASPX/ASP, PHP, PERL, etc.) for the real large scale applications you are probably thinking of. That said, Actionscript can communicate with ANY backend language you want. How many do you think Silverlight will play nice with? *grins*

Wrong #2:

"ActionScript 3.0 apparently does better programming, but still too weak for complex logic"

I have to scoff at this remark as well. What exactly do you consider "complex logic"? You do understand that Actionscript 3 is a strongly typed Object Oriented Programming language right?

Here’s the short list of “complex” features of AS3 (copied from Wikipedia – btw), you obviously aren’t aware of (take particular note of item #9):

• Compile-time and runtime type checking—type information exists at both compile-time and runtime.

• Improved performance from a class-based inheritance system separate from the prototype-based inheritance system.

• Support for packages, namespaces, and regular expressions.

• Compiles to an entirely new type of bytecode, incompatible with ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 bytecode.

• Revised Flash Player API, organized into packages.

• Unified event handling system based on the DOM event handling standard.

• Integration of ECMAScript for XML (E4X) for purposes of XML processing.

• Direct access to the Flash runtime display list for complete control of what gets displayed at runtime.

• Completely conforming implementation of the ECMAScript Fourth Edition Draft specification.

Wrong #3:

"flash is a bit too slow sometimes"

You can kill a machine with poor coding in any language. Please don’t blame the technology, blame the developer. I understand how you have come to this conclusion though, because I have witnessed it myself. Sometimes graphic designer types use it as a medium to get into coding - and good for them! Sometimes…however, this leads to poor results in the public domain, which has given some folks the wrong idea about what the Flash Player is all about. But again, in the right hands Flash/Actionscript can do wonders.

To be fair, I do have some gripes with Flash in general though:

1) Not ideal for text based content. Let’s face it, content is king – not eye candy.

2) Debugging is a bit clunky. I would love to see a robust debugger – similar to Visual Studio (yes…a nod to MS)

3) It’s hard to find good talent out there. Mostly because you need a good programmer who also understands the graphic arts to be effective. This is a rare breed.

In closing…let me ask you this:

What exactly will Silverlight accomplish for the end user by ANY version (2.0 or otherwise) that Flash doesn’t already?

(again, I stress what will it accomplish FOR THE END USER - no one but us MS developers care about CLR integration!)

# Den said on March 6, 2008 12:47 PM:

When I look at a nice flash design, my reaction is

" wow, it looks so good, like a piece of art.."

For silverlight design, all i can

think of is "a nice computer program"

Would it be nice if Adobe considers Flex+C# !

# Cristiano on Tech/Life » My Bookmarks For March 3rd - March 7th said on March 7, 2008 01:04 AM:

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# John said on March 7, 2008 11:49 PM:

Very nice article.... the best part that Microsoft did is integrated silverlight with Visual Studio that fact alone means a lot and a huge + for this product.

# Adeel Ata said on March 10, 2008 01:33 PM:

Hi guys,

i have been listening to this flash and silverlight war thing it is interesting but i was just wondering that if i want to create a small website to run a flash game on that using silverlight can i do that.

I know it may sound stupid but i am new to this flash and silverlight thing

Thanks

# hakuci's Blog said on March 11, 2008 02:02 AM:

在以前的一篇文章中我已经说明了Adobe和Microsoft在presentation layer的竞争关系。根据一些资料总结的功能，我针对Flash以及silverlight做了一个比较的图表，后面我会针对每一个横向对比做出说明。由于国内外对Flash和silverlight的比较文章几乎没有，因此没法作为参考，文章中一些东西我不太确定的，请大家指出。

# hakuci's Blog said on March 11, 2008 02:10 AM:

# Microsoft SilverLight vs Adobe Flash | MundoTech.net said on March 12, 2008 07:30 PM:

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# Ken said on March 13, 2008 01:32 AM:

casey said

What exactly will Silverlight accomplish for the end user by ANY version (2.0 or otherwise) that Flash doesn’t already?

(again, I stress what will it accomplish FOR THE END USER - no one but us MS developers care about CLR integration!)

I'm not a developer, but my huge gripe with Flash is that they apparently have no plans to continue support for Windows Mobile. The latest flash player for WM is FlashPlayer 7. FlashLite 2.1 is based on Flash 7. FlashLite 3 is being released for Nokia phones, but in the Adobe Labs development forum an Adobe rep asked what people wanted to see. When asked about when support for Windows Mobile would come out, he responded that there were no plans for FlashLite3 for WM and wondered why anyone would want that. I want to view flash video (like MLB.tv - WMV in a flashplayer that requires flash 8 or higher) on my ppc but can't because Adobe won't provide that functionality to WM.

MS just announced that SL is coming out for WM. If Adobe is not going to support a platform then I applaud MS for SL.

# Chris said on March 13, 2008 02:28 PM:

I total agree with you. If Flash is not dead now,

It'll be in a year or two. SilverLight has the backing of .NET and Microsoft. It's here to stay and make us developers' lives a lot easier.

# Jr. Developer said on March 13, 2008 10:27 PM:

The problem with AS3 is that it's not ideal for desktop apps that need to communicate with low level drivers. For example, reading a serial port, usb port, writing Bluetooth stack, etc. Flash/AS3 is geared for games and advertising.

# redScorp said on March 17, 2008 06:20 PM:

Silverlight is not about what you can or cannot do with flash. I believe Microsofts thoughts about the Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation (which includes powerful tools when used with Silverlight) are for the developers to easier build rich applications for the web. Beeing a future-optimist about silverlight I don't see any problems running for instance Microsoft office as a web-application..

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# wilbergill said on March 21, 2008 11:40 AM:

i worked with flash and enjoyed my work. In flash 4 i wrote the first tiled based version of pacman and gained plenty of work for other game development. After the .com bang i moved to .Net for information system design. I welcome Silverlight, the .Net IDE is excellent.

This has renewed my interest in rich web application development and i look forward to messing around with Silverlight

# Eugenio Hertz said on March 24, 2008 09:49 AM:

Very premature to state "flash is dead"...

Microsoft releases now the "first competitor"

against swf format, and all of a sudden, for some

techspecs, you come out shouting that... No way.

If i can say so, this is the start of a fight where the

benefits will reach all of us, designers to developers.

Im not even by far stating here on a blind faith

that adobe is the greatest and the flash will be

the greater ever.

But now adobe has reasons to care much more

about its product, to not lose marketshare.

That SL brings some improvements, it is just as

expected, dont you think? Would microsoft release

something crippled or lacking something that coundnt

compete?

Suppose that by a magical snap we can have the

plug-in installed on all computers.. 100%.

Could we say "flash is dead"?

In terms of evolution, its useless to rewrite again

the many features it has implemented since i dealt

with flash 4.

All places have schools teaching it, many

professionals have their carreers made on and

thanks to flash platform.

Many workarounds and solutions have been

achieved, and people got used to flash environment,

action script and all of its stuff.

And not to mention a "very little, insignificant,

worthless" thing, is that many major sites and

thousands of developers and producers are knee

deep on action scripting and animating REAL and

harder things on flash timelines... Lets not forget

the sites like miniclip.com with thousands of mini

games on flash, not to mention others...

Let me be more clear now - THERE ARE THOUSANDS

of programmers intented to learn action script

and developing their games, like me :)

Let me ask again... Suppose that the SL plug-in

was in 100% of the computers, and regarding the

scenario i described above... Could we say that

"flash is dead"?

On other blogs i read people with enthusiasm

saying that ms is pushing SL to cell phones and

BLA BLA BLA... Wouldnt that be obvious?

Im not into stuff on cellphone development, but

im not seeing ms beating Symbian OS...

SO WHAT??? Will ms snap its magical fingers and

make all our phones into silverlight lights?

Just to remember the purists of this blog, most

robotized-minds that calculate every word, that

theres a scrict proclamation (by the author) up here

stating that to him, "flash is dead".

Dead as i know, means dead... OK!! So thats

what im basing some of my args on here.

So yes... If SL brought things that flash fails on deli

vering UNTIL NOW, i think that the best bet is to say

"adobe has its competitor".

Now it has a reason to push harder the development,

implement new stuff in order to remind us that the

swf is the way we should work with.

Even with billions, microsoft cant make miracles.

Lets remember the first 2 years of "no profit" on

xbox stuff, and the many 3 red lights problem

that made users to get their 10, 11, 12 units of

their xbox from the guarantee.

So let the fight begins... People are getting excited

with the new, as they ALWAYS DO, and surely

we will see fan boys from everywhere stating

whatever their minds allow them do see.

One thing i know for sure. Programmers are program

mers. And thats that. Almost never knew any

programmer that has marketing knowledge, so i

always heard that i shouldnt buy a new cell phone

right now because theres a new platform of data

transfer, which is 10 times faster, bla bla bla...

Well theres a BIG DIFFERENCE between "developing

new techs", "releasing new products", and

"success on market and shares".

We need to stay focused.

As for me, im confortable on flash since i started

to animate a square and create buttons on flash 4.

Im not the beast on action scripting, but im getting

used many many more.

As a personal belief, adobe will run now, and

possibly the flash updates will be more frequent.

It has nothing more than close to 8 or 9 years of

knowledge and experience on the run, and that

cant be off just because a worth competitor

stood on war frontlines.

Lets wait and see...

# ChrisG said on March 25, 2008 10:35 AM:

I've read most of this post (a lot of down time at work) and to make a statement like flash is dead is...silly. That in combination with "vista rocks" just makes me feel like this is a Microsoft add. Now that I think of it, this came up tops on my Google search...

# Joe said on March 25, 2008 11:33 AM:

I think it is incorrect of you to compare Flash to Silverlight. If you are gonna compare Silverlight to something you should compare it to Flex.

I am a "Flash Developer" but lately I've started to explore what flex can do for us as a company and I must say it has many advantages over Silverlight. The main one being that it is a finished product not a beta being stuff down peoples throats. We had some .net developers try it out and I can tell you with out a doubt we will not be using Silverlight in its current state.

# Torrance said on March 26, 2008 03:21 AM:

Functionality seems to be the developers resolve for using SL. However we are not in an "only" developer's world. We are in a world that has diversity and variety. We love to go to Art shows, theatre, and the movie industry is booming. Why? Because we humans love vanity. We live for our entertainment and for the weekend.

If it were my choice as a designer, Flash as a eye candy tool, wins out over all. It is foolish to suggest that people want fuctionality now rather than "cool" animations. If this were so-say bye bye to Disney, etc.

Come on people-Flash works. Use it. Microsoft is just getting into the game (smart business). Just another product to choose from. In the long run puchases and usability will be a matter of personality and preference. Much like Xbox/Playstaion/Wii. Which do you prefer. They are all doing well-but are still competitors. Once again, I say MS is just getting into the game. Which will you use.

Maybe I'll use both Flash and Exression. I've played both on an Xbox and a Playstion-but for different effects.

# Riverwind said on March 27, 2008 12:26 AM:

Funtionally Silverlights is better than Flash. But the problem draw back to the gus of Microsoft. The support for silverlight is not acceptable other than using internet explorer. This is the nightmare for web developer as many different browser are available, such as firefox and opera. So Flash still will be the major tools in recent years.

# Sam said on March 28, 2008 03:38 PM:

on the whole Linux subject,

Silverlight is going to have a problem, mostly because Microsoft has Windows, and Linux has Linux. Yes, Linux is open source, but the name is copyrighted.

I personally won't be involved in this, mostly because it is going to become a ordeal (and personally I like Flash way better).

And apart from this, animation is so much better frame based, in the sense of tradition animation, FBF, and tweening.

in conclusion, FLASH WILL RULE!

# BR said on March 30, 2008 03:38 AM:

Is it possible to use silverlight as a standalone app?

Then is it possible to use silverlight with full access to system resources/NOT sandboxed (in an intranet or as a standalone app)?

I know wpf but wpf is too large and windows only.

# antoniobrandao said on March 31, 2008 02:19 PM:

Please correct that information about Flash animation being timeline based. Flash animation IS TIME BASED as long as you use a class like Tweener, Fuse, or many others available. You cannot speak of flash without referencing these.

Timeline animation is for newbies.

I make scripted animation based on time, with the3 Tweener and others.

# noWar said on April 2, 2008 11:49 AM:

first, let me introduce myself as one of those "rare" breeds in a sense that i am both a designer and a developer (somehow). i am a part time digital artist, and fulltime developer, and i get paid for doing both. i also used flash to create hobby apps (i.e. powerpoint-like presentations, tiny web-based app, etc.). now, onto my views..

Silverlight is great. the only thing bad about it is the fact that it is still in beta..wait 'til you get the final product before even jumping to conclusions about its weaknesses.

i agree that Microsoft sucks at building applications that target the designers, but Silverlight's model of development eliminates that developer-designer conflict in a sense that developers stays with Visual Studio and designers stay with Expression (for now, who knows? there could be integrartion with Adobe Photoshop, but there are alternatives out there, and i would even personally recommend Corel as such alternative if ever..).

i read somewhere here that the future of web is through dynamic web sites that gets the job done.. after all, it's what is important. i also liked the fact that google is leading because of it's simplicity. i for one stopped using yahoo ever since they started putting all those fancy stuff on their main website (and i won't even touch Windows Live Search).

Silverlight integrated with .NET? The possibilities are endless here.. and people can even use Ruby or Perl as their code-behind for silverlight... so much for the proprietary ActionScripts...

plus you won't even believe how Silverlight is more cross-platform that Flash.. i was really amazed of seeing a silverlight app on a desktop, on a windows mobile phone, and on a Nokia symbian phone running exactly the same.

today, i still use flash because i really can't treat Silverlight as an alternative... maybe a year from now.

btw, Vista really rocks..all you need is an open mind. (and the reason all that "allow or deny" exists in Vista is because there really are many stupid people out there, you won;t believe how many of them are there. i mean, basically, your computer can be malware free even if u do not have any antivirus.. it's a matter of how you use it and what you allow on it.)

# James Savage said on April 3, 2008 07:54 PM:

I run Linux, and both Apple and Windows (well everyone actually) doesn't support us. So we are usually left to wait or write our own versions of things. Now Microsoft hates Linux so is there any chance they will produce silverlight for Linux. So far only windows is supported. And if they do will they be fair and make sure it A) runs well B) has all the same features. I just don't like any one company to be gatekeeper. Also you say it uses Windows Media... which is still proprietary. I'm not saying use OOG but it would be nice to have a good (at least MP3 quality) open audio/video codec that could be globally used, instead of WMV/WMA. The only thing I hope is that this doesn't turn into ActiveX again. I haven't read much because I don't go into Flash at all, but I do like to read up on stuff. And before people say something, just cuz' I use Linux doesn't mean I hate windows, I just see flaws in leadership and judgment which exist in all aspects of tech, but I find a community as a more fair way to dictate things.

# 1001 » Blog Archive » Silverlight vs Flash said on April 4, 2008 04:18 PM:

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# ana. =) said on April 8, 2008 11:47 AM:

hi..

i think SL gives us good oportunities to develop

in a different and powerful way.

. and wich one is better? or the best?..

. well i just think that we are better in Flash..

it just cuestion of time..!!

Lets learn to light up the web..

saludOos.!!

# seh said on April 11, 2008 05:27 PM:

www.mono-project.com/Moonlight

# DDtMM said on April 16, 2008 02:46 PM:

I've been in the planning stages for a new site that's going to have some multimedia components. I compared Flash and Flex with Silverlight... I was new to both.

At first I thought it was a done deal that I would use Flash since it is pretty standard. But ActionScript really got me down. It took me many hours to make a mp3 player from mostly cut and paste code I got from the web.

I decided to give Silverlight 2 beta a chance and I've been very impressed. It has been much easier to write code that can be used in the long term. I was able to create a copy of my Flash mp3 player pretty quickly sans some of the animation elements. I felt much more comfortable adding more and more elements without the fear of creating a mess like my Flash became.

I've looked into a lot of other aspects, like FlexBuilder on the Eclipse IDE and Expression Blend (which is a pain in the tuckus). In the end, I've decided to go with Silverlight.

Hopefully there will be good cross platform support.

# Greg said on April 16, 2008 08:15 PM:

I've worked with VB.NET and ASP.NET for several years. Writing DLLs and other backend code with VB.NET is fine (though almost any language would do). Desktop apps using VB.NET are considerably slower than similar desktop apps using VB6 -- can someone explain that one? ASP.NET is absolutely ridiculous; the forms designer is awful and having to simulatenously deal with HTML, Javascript, XML, Ajax, and the VB code-behind all in order to produce a business web application is literally painful. On top of this, Microsoft is continually "improving" all of their products and forcing us to buy the latest Visual Studio, .NET framework, 3rd party controls, etc. Now they're touting Silverlight and when you finally manage to put all of the right pieces together just to try it out, you realize you can't even drag controls onto the form designer in VS2008. Add XAML on top of everything else and MS's normal hellish process of compiling and distributing applications, and -- what's the point? Why are you people SO excited about this expensive mess? We gave Flex a try about a year ago and -- ahh! -- it was cheap, it worked immediately, it was easy to compile and distribute and it was inherently cross-platform. Aside from having to learn ActionScript (which wasn't that hard), I can't see any drawbacks. We've spent less than a few grand on licenses and that's ALL we've had to spend (haven't had a need for 3rd party controls and their charting add-on is great). Doing the same thing with MS products from scratch would have cost us a fortune.

# Dale said on April 18, 2008 02:21 AM:

Sweet.

So whilst you're listening to Zune, whilst your partner plays your XBOX, you can log into Windows and boot up Visual Studio - you'll have the portability to develop for Windows Mobile and the power to run apps in Internet Explorer.

One problem - sometimes there are better alternatives to Microsoft products. RIA is just one of those areas where Flash wins. Just ask the world's population.

# dan said on April 20, 2008 06:45 AM:

Silverlight 2.x i think its a beta version - it runs under windows 2000.

People asking earlier abt why win 2k is important - its because the very few who still use it are IT pros and have big voices they like to sound off at Microsoft!

There have been many occasions where microsoft has backed down and then released software with compatability for windows 2000 including for example the remote desktop connection software.

They will however never release anything like IE on win 2k above version 6. Its a way of forcing people to upgrade their OS even though its fine. (think "backports" repositories in Ubuntu - you won't have to upgrade your OS so much because people backport code and elements of the OS can ve independantly upgraded).

My opinion on SilverLight? I have not seen one good example of its use. Enough said except one more thing - Microsoft is on a plan to get into other peoples markets and corrupt them and now it's Flashes turn. Microsofts XML "standard" is another good example of their strategy.

So long as they play these games they can go to hell. The day they release a really good product and have it accepted by merit alone - thats the day I might buy it.

# reza said on May 1, 2008 12:27 PM:

personally , I think silverlight is rubish comparing to flash.

# Fahim Ilyas said on May 3, 2008 08:57 AM:

Silverlight 2.0 seems to be very promising and flex cannot compete it in a longer run.

# Jane Carter said on May 5, 2008 07:18 AM:

So long as users have to restart their browser in order to install Silverlight we won't be using it. Even if we lose 10% of our customers it's not worth any advantages which Silverlight might have over Flash.

# Nolasco said on May 5, 2008 09:52 PM:

The day Microsoft buys Yahoo, I will buy shorting the heck out of Adobe.

Why?

M$ will push silverlight so badly through YahooM$ portal, it'll make Silverlight the standard... or so they say...

# dave said on May 8, 2008 12:42 AM:

silverlight is the worst name ever. it sounds like a weapon in world of warcraft.....long live flash!

# gamian said on May 8, 2008 07:23 AM:

Flash features:

1.) Browser Plug-in available across all browsers latest editions

2.) Streaming Video possible. Video delivery capabilites are available as .flv files which is optimized size.

3.) Handles in XML format data

4.) Both programmatic and timeline animation.

5.) Index by search engine (?)

6.) Runs in Windows/Mac and Linux Support

7.) Silverlight applications are not smooth as Flash's ones.

8.) Flash/Flex supports: sound processing, per pixel bitmap editing, bitmap filters (convolution, color matrix etc), bitmap effects (drop shadow, blur, glow), frame based animation (i.e. hand made), webcam, microphone, text input, built in file upload/download, local data storage, linux player BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY for 10 years so far finally 1.1meg footprint… these are just a few features.

Microsoft Silverlight

1.) Silverlight is compatible with a range of browsers, including Internet Explorer

IE6, IE7 Safari and Firefox.

2.) Silverlight can do programmatic animation.

3.) Needs another ui creation tool Expression Studio from MS

4.) Handles all forms of data and dotnet classes

5.) Search Engine indexing is possible

6.) Silverlight XAML doesn't stream!

7.) Runs in windows only

8.) Alpha release.

# Foeaxe said on May 8, 2008 01:52 PM:

I do think that silverlight has a long way to come. But i see it being a far more plausable road for development once it has been adopted more. I have just completed a microsoft training course in silverlight/wpf and it is actually wonderful to work with. But i still find myself authouring elements with adobe tools then simply porting them over. I do like the way they have made Expression import AI format,

Microsoft will win this fight because they have not yet lost any fight they set out to win, It is targeted at an entire team of developers rather than just the designer and is generally more flexible.

# Mao said on May 8, 2008 02:18 PM:

There's a post from a while back by Quentin that says "developers can't design and designers can't develop". This is such a narrow point of view. I can do both.

But more to the point about this article... The statement "Flash is dead" is closer to reality than one might think. I'm part of a team developing an MMORPG that's supposed to run in a web browser using Flash. ActionScript is supposed to be Flash's native language, right? Well, it lack one of Flash's most fundamental issues: LAYERS!!!

Anyone who has used Flash knows that layers are the very first thing you need to put some order in what you do. In this game we're developing, we're creating a world that uses movieclips, which are imported from independent SWF files. So far so good. Now we import the avatar... another movieclip, no problems here. But if the avatar walks around a tree, for instance, it was to "be seen" in front of it and behind it, depending on where he stands.

The logical solution would be to swap layers or something like that, right? Wrong! ActionScript does NOT include a single class, member or method to use layers. THEY DON'T EXIST. The only thing that "programming language" has is the index of the graphic element. Now suppose you have 20 avatars and the world has yet another number of graphic elements in the scenary. You have to check against every element there on stage. Of course, this kills performance, specially if you include real time communication among the users, movement and every thing that an MMORPG has.

Now, I've been doing some experiments with Silverlight and I've reached a simple opinion: Silverlight is better simply because it uses a REAL language, or better yet, a real developing environment like .NET. Anyone want to compare it against a real poor scripting language like ActionScript? A simple script aganist a framework that compiles your code. Is there anyone who could actually make that comparisson?

Flash is nice for designers, that's it... Silverlight is nice for designers and powerful for developers, especially when you consider something like XAML in the equation. A simple XML-based language that actually helps you understand how to code in C# or VB. I've tried it, it works.

True, Silverlight is in its initial stages. Who can actually say that Flash was perfect from day one? Besides, whether we want or like it or not, Microsoft shows the way things are done. I'm amazed they didn't come up with something to compete against Flash sooner. That only means that they took their time investigating and preparing. That's good thinking from any perspective or point of view.

Oh, I was forgetting. The try-catch block? Doesn't work in ActionScript.

I prefere Silverlight. I hope the next game we create is using Silverlight... or a 3D game.... anything's better than Flash!!

# andy said on May 12, 2008 03:00 AM:

flash is better period. MS always trying hard to extract money from copying other famous application. They wont win over Flash . Hope they'll lose a large penny for doing a trash silverlight .

# andy said on May 12, 2008 03:04 AM:

flash is better period. MS always trying hard to extract money from copying other famous application. They wont win over Flash . Hope they'll lose a large penny for doing a trash silverlight .

# proclaimers this is the story said on May 12, 2008 06:43 AM:

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# gamian said on May 13, 2008 07:02 AM:

Visualization is important in any type of games/apps. The timeline metaphor is best suited for that kind of scenario rather than codetweaking. Flash way of approaching a game/apps has terrific advantage where u have set of inbuilt tools storyboard kind of scenes and visually reusable movieclips. These logically fit into our scheme of things.

# Website Design Melbourne said on May 15, 2008 11:25 AM:

Thanks Jesse. It is a great information on these two formats. This inspired us to write a similar article that We have written on our blog which reference some of the points noted by you, with reference credit note clearly mentioning that these are your findings.

# eque said on May 17, 2008 09:42 PM:

I support flash. I'm a web developer for several years. I'm a creative art director.

The decision Is simple, Microsoft realized that flash played a very serious role in the future of computing across all devices. So they came up with silverlight. Why didn't they think of this before ? Are they just trying to survive knowing that flash will rule television and mobile delivery in the future ? They want IN !!

I support macromedia for bring flash to unbelievable heights and setting a foundation for future applications and content delivery.

# eque said on May 17, 2008 09:46 PM:

oooh man, Mr. Bill Gates....

Nolasco said it best, I swear I knew the same thing.

If M$ buys yahoo, they will use it to push their silverlight product. forcing users to install it or key features will not work. I'm loosing respect for Microsoft because alot of their products are just imitations of other successful ideas.

# Martron Blog said on May 21, 2008 06:20 PM:

Silverlight, Flash... Which one to use?

# Ryan said on May 21, 2008 10:57 PM:

This isn't silverlight vs. flash. This is visual studio/silverlight-expression blend/asp.net/ms-sql vs. flash/flex/eclipse.

Sorry folks, but the former is just a better technology overall. Why? Because Microsoft knows how to write the very best tools for programmers. It has done so for years. That's a plain fact.

Does flash have linq? does flash have a native database? (you probably have to end up with some php/mysql hack). Also can you even begin to compare actionscript with c#? can you debug and put breakpoints in both client side and server side code such as with asp.net + silverlight? Say you want designers and programmers to work together, with

microsoft you have plain text xaml. How are you gonna source control a flash file?? c'mon people... get with it.

I wholeheartedly support Microsoft. Sure, it's easy to "hate" on them. But they sure as hell make the best programmer tools. All you flashers out there you can keep making those little interactive ads. But as far as enterprise applications and RIA's go, step aside.

# Alan said on May 23, 2008 01:35 PM:

From a developer perspective, I don't have any desire to be the last company making buggy whips. At one time they were very useful, then along came automobiles.

# Silverlight vs Flex (or, Why do developers hate flash?) « Justin J. Moses : Blog said on May 24, 2008 09:25 PM:

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# Laurent Duveau said on May 27, 2008 05:40 PM:

Yesterday I was invited by W3Quebec to do a Silverlight presentation . I was asked to introduce Silverlight

# Laurent Duveau said on May 27, 2008 08:54 PM:

Yesterday I was invited by W3Quebec to do a Silverlight presentation . I was asked to introduce Silverlight

# mobbiq blog » Flash Lite vs Silverlight said on May 29, 2008 04:10 AM:

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# stempy said on May 30, 2008 02:56 AM:

Flash <--> Being around what 10 years or so, excellent adoption, however with a programming model that was tacked onto an animation platform.

Result: Excellent animations, Games, intros, some small applications, but not heavy RIA's, many of these have gone to AJAX based beasts.

Silverlight <--> very new, lacked features and controls in Silverlight 1.0, now onto v2.0 which is a dramatic improvement in a short time. Silverlight is built from the ground up with an excellent programming platform (.Net), has top notch IDE integration (Visual Studio), and improving on the Designer Environments (Expression Blend)...Built for real application development, not just animations, or games... The technology is superior to Flash/AS. They built solid foundations upon which to improve.

As to adoption, well who hasnt adopted windows.. , say what you like about XP,VISTA whatever, but they still have the market, Silverlight adoption will be tied into developers using the product, people will install the plugins because they want to see the content, eventually it will become transparent pretty much like how flash has become.

Flash may not be dead, however people have being wanting RIA's for sometime, many have tried with AJAX, which is just too klunky, and flash is cumbersome to say the least. Great for animations and games but as Ryan above said, time to step aside.

# stempy said on May 30, 2008 09:08 PM:

Another Reason why silverlight will take off is developers will lead the way, as silverlight is geared for developers (where flash is geared for designers, though silverlight is improving in those aspects) .

Applications can be made by developers without animations and design, however it is much harder for a designer to design something and provide functionality for it without the developer. Building an app with functionality can be done without design, but design without functionality cant.

Silverlight makes it simpler for .Net Developers to provide rich media interfaces, this could dramatically shorten the development lifecycle between backend business logic and user interface integration.

I've often worked with PHP <--> Flash, ASP.Net <--> Flash because it was the only means of providing a nice interface, however it's not a clean solution and tiresome to debug..... Bring on Silverlight 2.0 and XAML!!

# punk said on June 1, 2008 11:34 AM:

My BACKGROUND(){

I've been programming for over 20 years and I've mastered many languages ranging from raw machine code on a z80 processor to c# on the .net platform.

I write applications/tools/games/build big brand websites and I also do design and special effects for movies.

I started using flash when i was a vb programmer for a big us software company. This debate reminds me of when I was a kid, I had a sinclair ZX spectrum and my bother had a commodore 64, we would argue for hours over which was better. Later I bought a Nintendo and suprise suprise he bought a sega.

As a user of both .net and flash here's my thoughts - and sorry if you get offended although some of you deserve to be.

1. Actionscript is not a bad language why slag somthing off just cos you don't have the skill to use it? some of the best content on the net is written in actionscript . If you can't get stunning results out of this language you don't have any creativity, don't feel bad if you need someone to hold your hand.

2. Flash and Silverlight which is better - neither they both work differently and are both awesome programs, once you get to know either you'll get great results. The question you should ask yourself is not which is better, but which products do you prefer to use adobe products or microsoft products?

As far as which has the better language? who cares I used to write games in pure assembly in the old days and there we're no objects, no variable types or any of the kiddie code we get these day - just numbers and registers and we still made great games and probably pushed the programming boundries alot further to. These days a programmer can pick up a new language in a few weeks since they are all nearly plain english anyway, so stop being so bloody lazy get out of your little square box live a little!

Lastly Flash is dead - if you are thinking of ditchin flash cos it's too hard and going over to silverlight, hurry up and bugger off so I can up my rates for flash work.

cheers

punk

# Rodrigo said on June 1, 2008 06:38 PM:

Silverlight is only in second version,imagine the future potencial...bye Flash

# .net coder said on June 1, 2008 07:46 PM:

good comment Rodrigo

flash 8 was made by macromedia flash 9 was made by adobe, see the difference/improvment/performance between as2 and as3 ... 'this is adobes 1ST version, imagine the future potencial ...bye silverlight' ;)

sounds like the old chestnut - whats better mac or pc - I'm guessing everyone here thinks pc cos it means ms - i'm pc btw and i love visual studio, but i'm not afraid to use other stuff to.

maybe change the title to 'PC is dead' :)

no offence dudes but this post is over a year old and guess what youTube, myspace etc are still using flash christ get over it - the only thing silverlight represents is millions of .net programmers being able to produce interactive web content yeesh can't wait for that ugly stuff :)

# Ben said on June 5, 2008 11:31 AM:

Developers are douche bags. They all think they're some sort of geniuses about every subject. I just had to give one of our designs to a .NET developer instead of one of my Web Designers, and the stuff he is making in Silverlight looks like crap. So now we're going to have to learn Silverlight just so we can go in and fix our design that he has destroyed. Silverlight sucks, Flash sucks, I'm going back to writing on a paper pad. You're all crazy. :)

# Bob.Liu said on June 10, 2008 03:04 AM:

(转载自bbs.blueidea.com/thread-2773212-1-1.html) 在以前的一篇文章中我已经说明了Adobe和Microsoft在presentation...

# jessie said on June 10, 2008 04:53 PM:

actually silverlight is dead, for the same reason zune lost trying to beat ipod for the same reason every Microsoft product lost trying to beat a competitor, except for the OS industry, you only win the lottery once

Silverlight vs. Flash: The Developer Story

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