Silverlight : the Pro's and Con's

Tim Anderson from The Register has posted one of the best Silverlight overviews to date. In "Microsoft Silverlight: 10 reasons to love it, 10 reasons to hate it" he provides a clear, factual and common sense approach to assessing the value of Silverlight.

There is also an older post "Adobe AIR: 10 reasons to love it, 10 reasons to hate it" that you might want to take a look at while you are there.

Silverlight vs Flex : the hype and the search trends

There has been no shortage of hype about Microsoft's Silverlight during 2007. But I was playing around with Google Trends the other day and started wondering how well the hype translated into user interest. The graph shows the relative number of Google searches on the terms Flex and Silverlight. The most interesting things was that although Silverlight wasn't far behind in terms of news reference it was a very different story when you looked at actual searches, even when there were news spikes for Silverlight. Obviously search trends aren't the ultimate indicator for market interest but they are still help to give some idea of whats really happening among developers. These results can also be skewed when a search is done on terms that may have alternative contexts. For example, my original search included AJAX and it seemed that The Netherlands were obsessed with AJAX. This seemed odd until I looked at the news items and realised there was a soccer team named AJAX.

Position Vacant : Adobe Competitor Required

It's taken a while to sink in. But the biggest disappointment for me post ReMIX is that Expression and Silverlight are light years away from offering any serious competition to Adobe's Dreamweaver/Flash/Flex ( see Expression : Dreamweaver Cloned and ReMIX : Silverlight Surprises) . I guess I didn't really expect Microsoft to offer a genuine challenge in this arena. It's not something they have ever been good at. But I think it's very important that someone does offer an alternative. It's not that I don't love what Adobe has been doing. But monopolies are always bad. Adobe don't quite have a monopoly and it is hard to use that term when Microsoft is the competition.

I find myself thinking over Chafic Kazoum's perspective ; that Microsoft isn't really interested in competing with Adobe. They are just offering their developers an alternative to discourage wandering eyes. In other words the semblance of competition will be enough to satisfy most Microsoft developers. I was sceptical when I first read this view. But my experience at ReMIX suggests it has merit.

But that doesn't help us. We need competition. Competition fosters innovation and competition keeps software prices down. There are options out there (i.e OpenLaszlo) but they are too dispersed and too small to have a real impact. Perhaps what we need is for someone to start buying up all the Adobe competitors to harness their combined potential.

ReMIX : Silverlight surprises

After the Day 1 keynote at ReMIX we moved into the real business : the presentations. During the day there were two real areas of surprise that emerged for me. The first relating to Silverlight and the second was relating to Expression Web and Visual Studio 2008 (I'll talk about this in a seperate post).

After MIX there was a lot of blog traffic about Silverlight. Following along it was clear that Silverlight was a genuine challenger for Flash's crown. But what got a bit lost in all the hype was how much of the excitement was about what Silverlight might offer. Today I realised how limited a platform Silverlight currently is. The original beta release doesn't provide many common controls that are essential for any RIA. For example, they hadn't considered providing a text input control. The upcoming version 1 release will fix this oversight. But many important controls will still be missing and are not going to be part of a version 1.1 release slated for early 2008. Examples of missing controls are a Tree view, Accordian and dataGrid. Equally surprising for someone with a Flex background is the abscence of a styling mechanism and the very restrictive layout engine (both are being 'considered' for v 1.1).

One of the questions I had been asking myself is how to approach this new technology. It seems clear that both Flex and Silverlight will offer advantages in different areas. Should I attempt to have a similar level of knowledge across both technologies or should I aim for expertise in one and maintain a good overview of the other. Certainly the developer experience in Flex and Silverlight is very similar. Both use XML for visually laying out the application and code to manage user interaction. But there is still a lot for new comers to learn in the detail of the differences. From what I saw today it is clear that I can put off my decision at least for the next year.

Silverlight is a long way from being ready. I already mentioned the lack of many necessary controls. But presentations demonstrated that Silverlight requires a lot of unnecessary complication to perform simple operations. This isn't surprising. Earlier versions of Flex were quite confusing compared to the current version with most of the refinements occurring during the Flex 2 beta. All of this, in my mind, suggests it's too early to jump in and try to gain any sort of detailed understanding of Silverlight. As the Silverlight framework finds it's feet there will be regular developer tremors as the ground shifts around them. I recommend we meet back here one year hence to re-assess Silverlight's readiness.

Silverlight vs Flash : Mixed Emotions

The number of commentators posting about Silverlight has naturally fallen off since it's announcement. But the quality of the comments has improved a lot since the heady days of MIX. Chris Duckett posted a commentary today that has some quotes that really hit home for me:

"Even though you can view Silverlight on OS X, you will have no chance of being able to author Silverlight content without a Windows licence. This is a conscious decision. On one hand, Microsoft wants to get designers using their Expression toolset yet designers will have to come across to the Windows platform in order to do it. It may not be such a large hurdle but it is a hurdle nevertheless. Ever tried to force an OS X user onto Windows? They cry, they scream and they want their (at times) consistent GUI back."

"Therefore what is left? We have a video platform held back by a lack of distribution issues, an enforced lock-in for the tools and a lack of true cross-platformness. When it is put that way, it begins to sound an awful lot like Microsoft's previous video strategy with Windows Media."

For those interested I am still adding to the Silverlight vs Flash post list I started a while back. So if you want to catch up or review the comments so far that may be a good place to start.

Silverlight Developer Reference

For those of us trying to get past the Silverlight FUD this chart may provide a starting point. It illustrates the elements of the Silverlight platform.

Silverlight reveals Adobe developers insecurity

For the last fortnight the Adobe developer community has been very busy blogging and commenting on Microsoft's announcements around Silverlight. Some of this traffic has been intelligent, balanced and considered (Grant Skinner, Dave Wolf) but unfortunately most of it hasn't. Of particular note is Michael Arrington's review post Mix and the bizarre range of comments it attracted (apologies to the small group of considered commentors). What interests me here isn't Silverlight vs Flash (though that's obviously of interest to anyone involved with RIA development) but rather what the responses within the Adobe developer community reveal about that community. Considering the market penetration of the Flash player it is surprising to realise just how insecure Flash developers are. Of course, Microsoft is the market behemoth and once they have you within their sights then you should worry. But Microsoft doesn't have Flash developers in their sights. They have Adobe and Flash within their sights. Sure if Microsoft has their way we will all need to go and learn a new technology. But surely we weren't attracted to web development because of it's stability.

I can only speak for myself and certainly part of the attraction of Flash for me was that it offered the fastest path to an exciting arena without all the fuss and bother of getting a degree in Computer Science. So I do harbour some insecurities about my qualifications. But at the same time I know that one of my strengths is that I understand and appreciate the importance of design within RIA development (without harbouring any delusions about my skills as a designer) while also understanding the IT side of the equation. My experience suggests that there aren't many developers emerging from CompSci with a balanced development perspective. Obviously this doesn't fully explain the scale of the Flash communities insecurities and I'm also sure there are plenty of exceptions to my generalisation (I'm keen to hear any other theories people have). But what is beyond question is that the Silverlight announcement has served to highlight the insecurities of the Flash community ( insercurities that aren't evident in Adobe's own development strategies) and that we as a community need to take a close look at what this reveals about us.

Data Loading Benchmark

James Ward has created a Flex application for benchmarking data loading for RIA's. Thinking about the results from this tool there was something I thought worth mentioning. Firstly, what is clear from the results is how much faster Flex is for parsing and rendering data sets. It's ability to parse XML using E4X is extraordinary compared to AJAX. Therefore Flex is ideally suited to anything that requires repeated and regular data requests. But one thing that isn't immediately evident from the benchmark is that the applications file size also needs to be taken into consideration. Flex applications can quickly become quite large. While most AJAX frameworks are comparatively small. Consequently an application with fewer data requests might be better suited to AJAX. You also need to consider how often users will use the application because caching will reduce the impact of file size if the application is accessed frequently. So the more often an application is used the more appropriate Flex will be.

I will be very interested to see Silverlight included in these tests so that we can start to filter out the FUD from the facts.

Silverlight Vs Flash

There is a lot of discussion emerging comparing MS's Silverlight and Adobe's Flash. I will use this post to keep track of this discussion:

• JD on EP : RIA degradation 16-04-07
• Ted Patrick : M$ Silverlight vs. Adobe Flash Player: "Begun the clone war has..." 16-04-07
• basement.org Flash, Silverlight & The In-Between OS 16-04-07
• ZDNet Mary Jo Foley : Microsoft seeks to redefine RIA with Silverlight 16-04-07
• Rags to Riches : Microsoft SilverLight (aka WPF/e): for RIAs?? … I don’t think so. 17-04-07
• Flexed :Silverlight, Sparkle and Flex 17-04-07
• arulprasad : "RIA degradation"? whats all that fuzz about? 17-04-07
• BIT 101 : Obligatory Silverlight Post 18-04-07
• Dave Wolf : Wake up and see the Silverlight 19-04-07
• Dave Carbetta : Why Silverlight Is A Phenomenally Important Announcement For Adobe Flex 19-04-07
• Tim O'Hare : Another Silverlight Rant! 19-04-07
• Ryan Stewart : The Register Hates Silverlight, But Gets Some Facts Wrong 23-04-07
• Kurt Shintaku : INFO: Top 10 reasons why "Microsoft Silverlight" can succeed 23-04-07
• FlashComGuru : Silverlight? Flash? They are both as bad as each other... 24-04-07
• Charles Freedman : Flash and Silverlight, maybe 2 strangers passing in the crowd 1-05-07
  
• Vincent Maher : Microsoft Silverlight a serious challenger to Adobe Flash? 1-05-07
• WebOrb : Thoughts on Silverlight, Adobe, Flex and us 1-05-07
• Michael Arrington : Why Silverlight Is Important 01-05-07
• Flex Blog : Microsoft hits hard in the RIA space 01-05-07
• Ed Burnette : Dissecting Silverlight 01-05-07
  
• midnightmuse : My Flash is bigger than your Silverlight 03-05-07
• Jesse Ezell : Silverlight vs. Flash: The Developer Story 03-05-07
• Grant Skinner : A Flash of Silverlight 04-05-07
• These Days Labs : My thoughts on Silverlight (it’s a toy) 04-05-07
• JD on EP : Silverwatch 07-05-07
• Chafic Kazoun : My thoughts on why Silverlight isn’t for Flash Developers, and what does it really mean for Microsoft 08-05-07
• David Coletta : Apollo is Adobe’s edge over Silverlight 21/05/07
• Ryan Stewart : Adobe and Microsoft’s Different Approaches to the Development Platform 22/05/07
• tombray : Silverlight & Apollo: Why history won’t repeat itself 22/05/07
• Team Tech : A perspective on Apollo vs Silverlight vs JavaFX vs Flash/Flex 22/05/07
  
• Chris Duckett : Mixed Emotions : 25/05/07
• Scott-Bradley Pearce : Flash In the Pan 07/06/07
• Chris Duckett : Lights out for Silverlight 07/06/07