A Silverlight Lining Or A Lightning Flash?

Being first on the block does not always play to one's advantage. No one understands this more than Microsoft Corp. Back in 2003 when Microsoft's Avalon runtime was in its infancy and no one really knew what Rich Internet Applications meant, a small open-source project called Lazlo set the trend for the entire RIA industry.

It didn't take long for Macromedia Inc., now part of Adobe Systems Inc., to see the light and follow up with Flex. Macromedia executives admitted to the Test Center sometime in 2004 that Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation engine, formerly code-named Avalon, could easily be extended to the Web. They were right, in spades. Two years later, Microsoft launched Silverlight and began a new phase in its battle for the hearts and minds of Web developers.

Silverlight Vs. Flash And Flex
Like Adobe Flex, Silverlight is a combination of XML markup and server-side procedural languages. The language is quite intricate and not intuitive, but it plays well to the sensibilities of corporate developers because it is declarative in nature. Likewise, Flex uses XML tag language to generate graphical files. In Flex's case it is Flash. Silverlight uses HTML-like constructs to generate models and their rendering over Web browsers. Like Flash, Silverlight works on multiple browsers. Microsoft has done a good job of simplifying the dynamics involved in animating objects.

However, if you take Microsoft productivity tools out of the equation, developers immediately can see that Silverlight is just as complex as the Adobe Flex language. Both languages can mix XML-based declarative and procedural statements to generate client-side graphics and server-side logic. Fortunately for Microsoft, it can bank on its .Net development processes to acclimate developers to this paradigm.

While Silverlight's XML language makes graphical programming more intuitive for corporate developers, it becomes an unwieldy environment for creating complex graphics. Like a spiraling tower with multiple peaks, code written in Silverlight twists and embeds itself until a complex coil of XML is formed. While developers must find balance between the code and complexity, Microsoft has made the development steps quite easy.

Beyond Silverlight
To design and create graphics, Microsoft's Expression suite is more than adequate. Expression helps developers step through the stages of designing and binding. The suite mixes graphics and code much like the Flex development environment. The steps involved in getting graphics to work with C# are a bit awkward. We feel that RIA markup languages are still plagued with the same tension developers had to live with when working with ASP and PHP.

There's something to be said about sophistication, though. Because Silverlight is a new arrival to the RIA market, it does not yet have the sophisticated SDK that Flash developers have been enjoying for quite some time. The Flash engine can produce richer graphics and better effects at this point. Microsoft is trying to compensate by steering developers to use large graphical elements that break the traditional Windows user interface design patterns.

Silverlight, Novell And Open Source
Even though the Silverlight community is still quite small and the examples produced by Microsoft developers are sparse, there's a sense that Silverlight can win over designers and corporate .Net developers, more so than Adobe's Flex has been able to do.

Novell is even extending the technology with Moonlight to run on Linux. Moonlight is Novell's take on Silverlight for Linux technologies. With the help of Mono, a Novell tool, developers can run Silverlight applications on Linux.