Adobe’s Flash software has been around now for over a decade. And, over the course it has established itself as the industry’s standard for delivering vector graphics and video online. However, now with the release of Silverlight 1.0 and its subsequent versions, Flash apparently has a new contender. And, with so many strong arguments from both sides of the aisle choosing between Flash and Silverlight this is causing a lot of conflict.
To read more about Silverlight vs. Flash, please read the following articles:
Silverlight vs. Flash – An Analysis Report
Flash vs. Silverlight: What Suits Your Needs Best?
Developers in particular have a lot riding on Flash, personally I would hate to have to choose. Nevertheless, I would have to say, the most convincing argument I’ve heard is that Silverlight has XAMLbased presentation layer for SEO, which means Textual content created with Silverlight is searchable and indexable by search engines as it is not compiled, but represented as text (XAML).
Take into perspective that developers can continue to provide experiences that were formerly possible only with Adobe Flash technology without the trade-off of a loss in search indexing and that’s a huge plus – Flash, regardless of what they say, just isn’t SEO compatible yet.
To read more about how it may be possible to make Flash SEO friendly, please read the following articles:
Future Proof Your Flash For Google And Enhance Your SWF File’s Potential
Flash Technology Enhances Search Results (I Don’t Think So!)
Top 10 Flash Questions and Answers for Newbies & Wannabies
Top 10 things Flash developers don’t want you to hear
On the other hand, performance wise, while Flash and Silverlight appear to be about the same a practical study on the implementation of components noted that the “size of Silverlight component is approximately 10-20 times larger than Flash component”.
Similarly SL does not support Linux, so anyone using Linux cannot run it on their machine and will have to stick to Windows or MAC OS. No doubt, of course, these are just minor drawbacks and come next version all of these little quirks will be history.
Yet, one might argue, partially due to the age difference and huge popularity of Flash that it would be almost unfathable for SL to ever catch up. Nevertheless, a little competition is always good, and in the end; it’ll be the content publishers, developers, and end users who’ll ultimately benefit.
What is Silverlight 1.0
A Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 project is a collection of website files that use some features of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to create rich interactive applications and media experiences for the web.
You can use Microsoft Expression Blend 2 to quickly design a stunning user interface for your Silverlight 1.0 projects. Silverlight 1.0 projects that are created in Microsoft Expression Blend 2 include a XAML file (Page.xaml), a default HTML file that loads the starting XAML file when it is opened in a browser, together with supporting JavaScript files.
What is XAML?
Extensible Application Markup Language, or XAML (pronounced “zammel”), is an XML-based markup language developed by Microsoft. XAML is the language behind the visual presentation of an application that you develop in Microsoft Expression Blend, just as HTML is the language behind the visual presentation of a Web page. Creating an application in Expression Blend means writing XAML code, either by hand or visually by working in the Design view of Expression Blend.
NOTE: You do not need to understand XAML to create applications in Expression Blend if you work in Design view.