Silverlight vs Flash – Point/Counterpoint

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ZDNet Australia is running a point/counterpoint post for the question of whether Silverlight is a Flash killer. While both of the articles tend towards the extreme, I think they’re worth reading.

Now the question of Silverlight killing Flash is crazy. Flash has an install base of 98% and a very, very active community. Is it perfect? Not by a longshot, but we’re always looking for ways to improve it and I think Silverlight jump started that a little bit, which means everyone in the community wins. On the Silverlight side, being able to write RIAs with .NET is very significant. The developer side is something we’re focusing on because Adobe comes from the design side. We won’t be able to roll out something like MSDN tomorrow, but we’re working pretty hard. We’re also focusing a lot of energy on web developers, which is a pretty big and growing group. ActionScript and JavaScript are very similar and our platform is very web-centric, so I think a lot of web developers will be excited about what they can do with their current skills. We support developing on a Mac, we support deploying to Linux, and we’re becoming more open by the day. That resonates with the web.

Silverlight is cool, so I don’t want to take anything away from it. The video story with Silverlight is very compelling and it’s bringing a lot of heavy developers into the RIA fold. One of the strengths of the .NET platform is that you can develop for it with multiple languages. They did a lot of things right and version 1.1 is far along. In the end, neither one of these technologies is going away. Both are here to stay and offer similar functionality from two different angles. Competition and platform choice is always good. After being “inside” for two weeks, I’m really excited about our stuff and I hope Adobe and Microsoft keep pushing each other. That way we get better apps.

[tags]Adobe, Microsoft, Silverlight, Flash[/tags]

Related posts:

  1. Lee Brimelow on Silverlight
  2. RIA and Flash/Silverlight Debate Spills onto Facebook
  3. My Interview with the Silverlight Team
  4. Telerik Selling Controls for Silverlight
  5. Silverlight at MIX and the BlogZone

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  • http://www.brockett.net Kurt Brockett

    I think you have the key here which is neither of these is going away anytime soon and the competition is a positive for the end user and both technologies. The space is growing so as far as market share goes the 98% needel in the pie may move a little but the number of developers and sites using RIA technologies is going to continue to grow exponentially.

  • http://www.bobjim.com Ryan Campbell

    Anyone who thinks Silverlight is going kill flash are the same people who think the Zune is going to kill the iPod. Just because they are Microsoft doesn’t mean they will dominate any market they enter.

    I do think though that choice and competition (causing rapid innovation) is a great thing!

  • http://www.brandonellis.org/ Brandon Ellis

    Hey Ryan,
    This has been said this before but I think its coming true – Where are the Silverlight converts and why aren’t they making the move to MS Silverlight?

    The folks that I have seen show a more than curious interest in Silverlight were devs who had negative feelings for Flash in the first place or devs that want to ‘get into it’. I still haven’t seen a single Silverlight powered app that made me stop in my tracks and think, “Wow. I wish I could do that in Flash!”.

    The incentive to switch to or utilize Silverlight just isn’t there. Not to mention with Ted Patrick’s amazing list of Flex/Flash/Apollo enhancements hitting the streets soon, I hope MS has something really really big up their sleeve.

    And while I’m ranting – developers who’s reasoning is something like, “Microsoft shops will be happy to jump on board because it ties into their current software partnership..” (not a real quote but something read/overheard more than a couple times), even those shops have the common sense to use the technology that will get the widest audience (which is not Silverlight).

  • http://www.bobjim.com Ryan Campbell

    Anyone remember Microsoft Liquid Motion? It was their previous attempt to compete with Flash. It was scrapped not long after released.

    http://www.microsoft.com/mind/1198/liquid/liquid.asp

  • http://www.brandonellis.org/ Brandon Ellis

    @Ryan Campbell – yeah I posted about that a few months back – http://www.brandonellis.org/?p=35

    I can say from experience – that was a real POS even back-in-the-day.

  • http://www.numenwebdesign.com/ NUMEN

    Hello everyone, were looking for a link to a side by side comparison of silverlight & Adobe Flash?

    We’re in the final stages of preparing a proposal for a fairly large project ($65,000 to $80,000) and up against a competitor that is looking to use silverlight with .NET.

    All reply’s are appreciated.

  • http://mobosplash.blogspot.com John Nicholas

    “Microsoft shops will be happy to jump on board because it ties into their current software partnership..” (not a real quote but something read/overheard more than a couple times), even those shops have the common sense to use the technology that will get the widest audience.

    I’m not sure this is true at all. I meet a lot of MS developers who basically ignore anything outside of MS. These guys often have never developed in an outside language and sometimes don’t even know what Ruby or Python is. Sometimes they complain bitterly about even having to mess with javascript or even alternative .NET approaches like Castle or Spring.

    I think there are a lot of guys who will start using Silverlight that never would have touched Flash or Flex. I think one huge advantage for the flash side will be that many flash devs are coming from the art/design direction and most silverlight devs will be coders. So the end products for a long time on flash will be much better aesthetically.

  • http://www.brandonellis.org/ Brandon Ellis

    @John Nicholas -
    so you think that some MS shops will look at statics of user penetration and based on MS having 0% penetration of Silverlight plugin vs. 95% penetration of Flash Player and they will develop web based apps for public use with successful adoption? Doesn’t seem likely. At the end of the day they want users. Flash Player 95%, Silverlight 0%.

    I think Silverlight is poised to take over all controlled MS environs like an intranet where IT can marshal ever aspect to ensure successful deployment. Outside of that kind of ‘forced adoption’, I don’t see Silverlight, Expression, Visual Studio being a successful RIA development platform.

  • http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog Scott Barnes

    I met Chris(ZDNet Australia) at MIX07, and I was suprised by his approach to the articles in question.

    Personally I think both ZDNet posts are offkey and a little more focused on gaining reaction from the developer community to help drive some ad sales / pay-per-read revenue then actually making some points that haven’t already been said on blogs.

    Secondly, Flash 6 is 98% and Flash 8 is 85% (statistics are based off of 18+ folks sampled around the world).

    This isn’t a Zero Sum Game, it’s about choice and long term vision going forward. There are other factors that need to be weighed up in choosing a worthy path in delivering a solution. Here’s a scarey thought that may rock peoples religion, “You can use both” :P

    *shrug*

    Microsoft haven’t once stated they will “own flash market” or “kill flash”, as from memory Michael@Techcrunch asked that question from Scott Guthrie and his response was “this isn’t a zero sum game”.

    Just the facts folks, just the facts.

    -
    Scott Barnes
    Developer Evangelist
    Microsoft.

  • http://blogs.microsoft.com/msmossyblog Scott Barnes

    oops Flash 9 is 85% (sorry had 8 on the brain)

  • http://www.brandonellis.org/ Brandon Ellis

    Hey Scott,
    with Flash Player penetration numbers that high, is there really much of a difference between 98/85?

    I totally agree in the ability to use both tool sets. I’ve been a (paid).net (C#) dev since 2002 and I think the framework is a great Success for the development commnunity. And while I have made a good living off of MS technologies I have do so without the buy in to MS methodologies. I’m happy to know that if Silverlight is ever the best tool for the job I’ll be able to easily leverage my .net skillset.

    With all of Ted Patricks releases this week though, I’m interested in seeing what MS’s next move is. ;)

  • http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog Scott Barnes

    Brandon,

    Yup I agree, once it gets past the 70% mark it’s pretty much considered majority. Point I’m trying to make is that facts, if you’re going to preech gospel according to Adobe could it at least be based on facts at the very least :P

    In that has anyone in the commentry bothered to read the http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/methodology/ and how the results are tallied?

    I think its still quite early days on Silverlight, there is much still being worked on and whilst it’s easy to throw rocks at the MSFT banner, coming into this job for the past 6 months from the Adobe/Macromedia space, I’ve seen a lot of accomplishments in a short space of time. I was first shown WPF/e in February via internal builds and I wasn’t exactly thrilled (still had more work). When I was shown 1.0 and 1.1, I was shocked at how far they had come in such a shot timespan.

    It’s easy to beat up on Silverlight as you have a product that is in alpha/beta state and comparing it to a version 9? Yet, the comparison is still compelling as when you take into account the tools / eco-system surounding Silverlight (at this early stage) it’s an amazing first round ?

    Adobe play their game, Microsoft plays it’s own (we have bets on what we think will work, and we focus on making that happen). If there is overlap its because of a universal problem being solved by two or more entities at the same time (competition on small problems is a good thing, it cultivates innovation). If you isolate onto that, then you get into a Red vs Blue team debate and you end up losing sight of the bigger picture.

    Adobe just don’t support .NET, it’s a fact and their answer is “buy coldfusion 8″. Microsoft does support .NET (obviously) point: each has their own pro’s and con’s associated to the brands and its a much smarter approach to look at the wider picture and put the “I LUV Adobe/Microsoft” t-shirts away and focus on selling to your customers customer through optimal solutions that compliment your development teams and long-term vision.

    Leave the fights to Slashdot scenarios. ZDNet at times come off strong as being luke warm to Microsoft and pre-Microsoft I even thought they should just lighten up on the brand a bit. It’s why I preferred to read Ryans commentry, as he was one of few authors that understood the overall picture (even if he had a 60/40 split in favour of Adobe/Macromedia hehe).

    No1 person can one thing. I am Liberal about Open Source, but I’m also against exposing IP in favour of Open Source. Find your rythmn on what works for you is all.

    As for “Ted” releases (again is it Adobe Releases or Ted – see my Geek Celebrity posts) they are great? but how does this affect Microsoft? I can’t see how or where we would suddenly run out and announce x feature in reply to y feature found in Flex 3. The only thing that stood out for me in Adobe’s releases that I personally thought “it’s about time” was Class Reflection in FB3 (as in the years gone by finding properties/methods in classes was a painful exercise of traversing the source code or home grown debug profillers) (wooohoo! is what i’d say!)

    That being said, I’m used to this approach now in Visual Studio 2005, so for me it’s more of an expectation now going forward.

    -
    Scott Barnes
    Developer Evangelist
    Microsoft.