Microsoft's Answer to Adobe Flash

Microsoft has developed its own Flash a few months ago. Silverlight was Microsoft's answer to the ever popular Adobe Flash, providing a new foundation for web content.


Silverlight versus Flash

Adobe's Flash has been around for years, and many of the popular websites enrich their content and experience by adding Flash. Not only does it provide a way to create animation, it also provides interactivity and unique interface. But it looks like Microsoft's entry into the industry will shake things up. Adobe's Flash may have a serious rival on the business.

Microsoft's Silverlight is, according to Wikipedia, "a runtime for browser-based Rich Internet Applications, providing a subset of the animation, vector graphics, and video playback capabilities of Windows Presentation Foundation". The fact that it can be written in any language using the .NET framework means it inherits the robustness and flexibility of the framework.

To be fair, Adobe's Flash is currently used by the majority of web developers. For one thing, all modern operating systems support it, and has been the de facto for web interactive controls. Developers know how to create interactive content using Flash's own scripting language, and are confident to know they only have to write the code once for different platforms.

Silverlight's entry should shake things up, with its promising feature - the ability to program it using the .NET language. Developers who are skilled in .NET programming language could easily code interactive content for Silverlight. In effect, they can create localized version and a web version of their application using the same code. The flexibility and power of the .NET framework should draw more developers into writing Silverlight applications.

Microsoft's entry into the business is late, and will take a lot of effort to race ahead of Adobe's Flash. However, Adobe has to do its own part as well.

"The biggest thing Adobe needs to bring FlexBuilder up to date with modern developer tools," said Greg DeMichillie, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft. "I would say they are two years behind Visual Studio."

"The other thing not to underestimate is the value of Microsoft's programming languages," he added. "C# and VB -- they are real programming languages," he said. "[Adobe's] ActionScript has certainly grown up in the last year or two, but you won't find people building industrial-strength applications with it."

While a wealth of smaller companies and startups have crowded the RIA platform space, DeMichillie said he expects only Adobe and Microsoft will emerge as true players.

"When you build a platform you need so many pieces," he said. "The other player trying to do this is Sun [with its JavaFX platform], but I don't think they have all the pieces."