Silverlight is better than Flash. Microsoft Silverlight is better than Flash. It causes me great pain to say something so positive about a Microsoft product. For close to a decade I’ve made it a point to avoid MS products when at all possible. Yes I’ve used Windows (and I still use it to this day) and then of course I was the one-time owner of an XBox, but any chance to bag Microsoft is always seized with the highest level of enthusiasm. So while I’m aware the opening statement of this entry is bound to provoke involuntary cursing and other unspeakables please understand that I’ve undergone (and it continues) my own round of inner turmoil over this subject. Now that I’ve gotten that out, let me explain why I believe Silverlight has the potential to eclipse Adobe’s industry-leading Flash player and accompanying tools:

1. It’s all about enterprise-level solutions. Silverlight (for brevity I’ll refer to Silverlight as SL from now on) has the advantage of being built on a subset of the .NET framework, which has gained a large following over the past several years. SL applications run on an ultra-light Common Language Runtime (CLR) derived from the standard .NET CLR which means that SL applications can be written in such MS staples as C# and VB, allowing development groups to author media-rich UIs using the same languages (and supporting IDEs, etc) as server-side components. This may not appeal to the embattled Flash designer, but any IT executive can attest to the costs associated with supporting multiple technologies during application development. Sure Adobe has ColdFusion, but that technology doesn’t enjoy the market support that .NET does.

2. Silverlight Is More Portable. I’m not talking about cross-platform and cross-browser consideration, although SL claims to be both. I’m talking about the ability to port code from the desktop to the web (and back again). Because SL apps have access to a subset of the .NET Framework there is the potential for applications that have the ability to operate on desktop environments with a .NET-compliant framework and in the web browser within the SL CLR-lite.

3. Silverlight is fast, feature-rich, and keeps developers in mind. SL does very well in benchmarks - much faster than current versions of the Flash player and any browser’s JavaScript interpreter. Silverlight has access to a multitude of presentation features such as tweening, video support, web services, and it maintains all this functionality without alienating traditional developers with a confusing IDE. Traditional developers can write VB or C# from Visual Studio while front-end folks can use a separate tool known as Expression. The technology that brings these two perspectives together is XAML (pronounced zammel), a markup language designed to convey presentation logic including (but not limited to) vector-based graphics and video.

It’s true that Silverlight is in very early stages, and there are many obstacles to be reckoned with before it can take the crown from Flash, but I’m very impressed with what I see right now. If you love to hate Microsoft, don’t let contempt blind you from this exciting and promising technology.