SilverLight

[rlbailey]

What does everyone think about the new Microsoft SilverLight ? Can they cut it as a Flash replacement? Or just annoy all the hard-core internet surfers?

[bgwinkel]

I can't say it was unexpected. It will integrate well with .NET, but I think that that's its only niche. It's certainly not going to come close to supplanting Flash.

[dcv]

I'd put my money on Adobe's Apollo fueling the next generation of web apps - Adobe claims that most web devs' Flash skills will transfer, and I think that will give it the edge, as I think (and anybody feel free to correct me as I do VERY little web programming besides occasionally dabbling in Actionscript and PHP - nothing for production work), on the whole, web programmers will be more familiar with working with Flash/Actionscript than .NET.

That said:
1) Neither will supplant Flash anytime soon - WAY too ubiquitous. Web 3.0 is probably a few years away yet.
2) I'll be gunning for whoever has the best cross-platform support (which NEITHER company have been all that good about). I really hate to beat a dead horse, but as of right now, neither Apollo or Silverlight support Linux (though Silverlight will first, probably, as the Mono project is already working on it).

EDIT: I guess Adobe Apollo is now called Adobe AIR. Huh.

[nlopez]

Well, if they're trying to replace Flash, they already trying to make a new way to annoy internet surfers.

[emurphy1]

I'm not sure if Silverlight will replace Flash but it is already cross platform, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070905-microsoft-releases-silverlight-1-0-announces-linux-support.html) has an article today about how Microsoft is opening up Silverlight, giving Novell unprecedented access to it. In turn, Novell is going to make Silverlight RPM and DEB packages for non-Novell distros...pretty cool. This will put some pressure on Adobe to open up Flash/Air a bit.

Also, it should be pointed out that there are plenty of developers doing web development in .NET these days. You just have to get off campus and look at what the corporate world is doing...lots of .NET web dev jobs out there.

[dcv]

http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/07/09/05/1442254.shtml

According to /., Silverlight isn't running yet on Linux, but will be soon (called Moonlight and brought to you by the awesome folks at the Mono project).

Like I said, if Moonlight is up and running (and stable) before AIR on Linux, then I think I know which one I'll be supporting (though, really, if you look at the Silverlight demos up at the moment, at least for now, I've seen little that can't currently be done with Flash).