Apr 26

SilverLight

AJAX, ClientTechnologies, Flex, RIA, SilverLight, Technology, WPFstefano

I have been reading about SilverLight, the new technology from Microsoft that has been labeled as the Flash-Killer.
What I find interesting is that the positioning of SilverLight on respect to Windows Presentation Foundation (and Vista in general) from Microsoft seems, to me, very similar to the positioning of Flex with respect to Apollo from Adobe..

It is very much another example of a client-side container that replaces the role played by the Browser so far. With this move, not only Microsoft provides container functuionalities inside the Operating System itself (WPF) but, also, provides an “express version” of it (SilverLight), which does not require Vista and that can work on the Mac.

I am still unclear why Microsoft does not also target Linux. But, probably, there will be someone who will do on their behalf….

One Response to “SilverLight”

  1. andyp Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 10:21

    Indeed. Silverlight, and Adobe’s Flex, are about replacing the browser. Cool, but you get into a lot of cross-platform issues and proprietary standards. Technologies like Dojo and other Ajax frameworks have the potential to enable similar interactions within the browser - probably not as rich initially, but at least based on existing and open standards.

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