Silverlight makes Flash/Flex look like “an absolute toy” says Michael Arrington
I’m a little disappointed to read on TechCrunch that Michael Arrington says Silverlight makes Flash/Flex look like an absolute toy. First of all, Silverlight is still in beta. Since few developers have much hands on experience with it yet, it’s all too easy to focus on its claimed strengths, and neglect the real-world problems that developers will no doubt discover when they dig deeper. Like any new software, it allows us to project all our best hopes, expectations, and assumptions onto it. The reality check will come later.
New platforms happen. You spend most of your career working in C++ and then Java and C# come along. You build your site with PHP and then Ruby on Rails comes out. CSS evolves but browsers take a long time to catch up. The challenge is to try to let the hype blow past, and focus on the same old important questions that developers always have to ask in this situation: are the benefits worth the costs?
Say you’ve been building a large application in Flex because it was the only possible choice that combined rich with reach. And say Silverlight comes along. Here are the questions you have to answer.
- Does Silverlight get my app in front of more users (more reach)?
- Does Silverlight allow my app to do more, or be smaller, or be faster (more rich)?
- What are the business ramifications of aligning with Microsoft’s platform?
- What is the growth path for Silverlight?
I don’t have enough information to even guess at the answers yet.
Technorati Tags: Flash, Flex, Silverlight
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I posted this comment over there, I hope it doesn’t get removed….
I’ve been using Flash for several years, and Silverlight (WPF/e) for as long as it has been around. I am amazed at how people who obviously lack experience in using these tools feel justified in commenting on how one is better than the other, including Mr Arrington.
Silverlight doesn’t even come close to where Flash and Flex is up to, and I will of course justify this. But I don’t blame it, it’s only a 1.1 product. Nor is it as easy or rapid to develop in, and yes realistically you do need to use Visual Studio/Expression and of course Windows to develop in it. I tried using my existing Eclipse + ANT + Subversion workflow, it quite simply doesn’t play fair.
This next comment is not subjective… At present there is nothing offered by Silverlight that Flash doesn’t do equal or better (you can’t exactly count WMV because that’s just the sole supported video format, as is FLV for Flash). This includes alpha video, HD video, data loading, skinning or object oriented programming. Not to mention the install process has crashed most peoples computers that have tried so far, and 1.1 is not even backwards compatible with 1.0 content.
Unlike Flash/Flex it doesn’t do: 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! finally 1.1meg footprint… these are just a few features.
So far it’s a valiant effort, but let’s not kid ourselves here. Sometimes the level of not-knowing-anything-outside-the-MSFT-world is jaw-dropping. The video posted in these comments is great, Metaliq are obscenely good at Silverlight/WPF and Flash/Flex, but you can gaurentee they have done much better work using the latter, have a look at their website if you don’t want to wander too far or prefer to be drip-fed.
Thanks, people. I was surprised to see that Michael could write such words as well.
I’ll be waiting a few days to see how this settles out, let people get home from Vegas and relax, get the Koolade and foie gras flushed out of their system, and then pursue this conversation.
Truth does out eventually, overturning the folly of crowds.
jd/adobe
I’ve hazarded a few answers to the questions over here: http://www.rachaelandtom.info/node/1449
I think the most basic rudimentary way to answer this, is simply put, does the thing even work. Ive tried countless times on numerous computers to run the demos for silverlight but on firefox i don’t even get prompted for a download, and on IE the plugin fails everytime.
The installer says “Microsoft Silverlight could not be installed on your computer” with this “more information” message.
So to use this “Browser” Plugin i have to stop whatever im doing, shut down and restart and then use it… not very discrete and effectively for content on demand, this fails miserably.
Error 3010
Installation has completed successfully. However, a restart is required to complete the install. Please save your work and restart your computer to finish installation.
as a user, in the middle of my day, working… no i wont restart, not for a simple plugin, and the fact that i cant even use it on my default browser of choice is even more pathetic then the errored, error message.
You cant compare a product that doesnt work to a product that does work and even worse you cant say the product that doesnt work is better or going to ever compete with the working product. IMHO