> Its amazing how much of an impact this new technology
> is making in such as short time.

We've just asked around here regarding your statement about how much of an impact Silverlight is making. Of all the people here, none believe Silverlight has made any impact at all. The only examples of Silverlight being used that anyone here knows of, were in situations where Microsoft had to pay site owners to use it eg Democratic National Convention. Other than sites which have been paid to use it, no one here could ever recall coming across a single Silverlight website. Not even a Microsoft website that uses Silverlight. Microsoft don't seem to have been eating their own dog-food so far. I don't doubt they exist. We just haven't come across any by chance.

Contrary to your "such a short time" statement, Silverlight has actually been around for a bit now and we cannot see any impact, let alone the "amazing" impact you talk about.

So far i haven't seen any site using Silverlight.

We all know the phrase about statistics, damn statistics and lies but just to give you some indication about the "impact" Silverlight makes: http://riastats.com/

Like Natasha and Nicola, I really had to search for Silverlight sites. Eventually I found some on the English Wikipedia page but wasn't too impressed by the examples.

oops ... meant to say "lies, damn lies and statistics" :-))

Well it's always useful to say it's an amazing technology and stuff if you want to sell a book :).

Natasha, you must remember that 1.0 and 2.0 are very different beasts. 2.0 only launched 2 weeks ago, prior to that the only site that could have released a Silverlight site would be Javascript experts, rather than programmers. :)

Technologies need time to sink in, there weren't any decent flash sites until version 3 came out.

A lot of Microsoft's web pages now incorporate Silverlight, including the main homepage microsoft.com.

It may take time, but there's an army of .Net coders out there who will relish working with Silverlight. Same can't really be said for Flex, it's almost impossible to hire anyone who can do more than animations in Flash.

I hadn't really been interested in much that was going on with Silverlight, until I read this news today. Netflix has announced its plan to use Silverlight to allow Mac users to watch movies online. I'll be looking forward to watching movies outside of VMWare.

> Natasha, you must remember that 1.0 and 2.0 are very different beasts.
> 2.0 only launched 2 weeks ago, prior to that the only site that could
> have released a Silverlight site would be Javascript experts, rather than
> programmers.

Malakai, the question here was "impact". Nothing you said provides evidence of any impact whatsoever having occurred.

> Technologies need time to sink in, there weren't any decent flash
> sites until version 3 came out.

The current situation in not comparable. When Flash 3 was released, the flash player was already widely installed and Flash 3 had no majorly dominant competitor. Silverlight is facing a very dominant, ubiquitous, highly sophisticated, mature set of technoligies with massive adoption.

On top of that, like it or not, there is massive corporate and public resistance to Microsoft dominating yet another area of the web. This fact alone may trump any other consideration.

> It may take time, but there's an army of .Net coders out there who
> will relish working with Silverlight.

That may well be, but there are an army of businesses out there that will continue to use whatever reaches the most number of people.

> Same can't really be said for Flex,

Really? I think you must be out of the loop. I notice a number of major global news corporations are now using Flex, in addition to a number of huge financial organisations. Flex and AIR adoption is growing rapidly. There are an army of ready-made Java programmers out there who are now integrating Flex with their server-side Java and desktop apps. Their numbers are pretty huge too.

> it's almost impossible to hire anyone who can do more than
> animations in Flash.

If that is the case, it is not because there are no Flash programmers, but because the demand has now become so enormous. One of the good things about Actionscript is that it is similar to Javascript and even Java. Demand for highly successful technologies tends to be filled.

Anyhow. Is Silverlight interesting? Yes. Has it made an "amazing" impact? No. No even slightly. I get the feeling that John Papa is trying to talk up hysteria in order to sell his book and that doesn't help anyone except him and Microsoft.

My perspective on the "amazing impact" is on the Microsoft development community. Formerly, there were few options for those who know .NET to work in RIA and use their existing skills. Silverlight 2 brings RIA to these people as a viable option with very little start up time since they can leverage their skills. Is Flash still an option, heck yeah. Its a good tool.

Is Silverlight 2 pervasive yet? No way. Flash is obviously far more pervasive as its on v10. The goal is not to sell books or to wipe out Flash, its to offer an alternative. And it certainly is an alternative.

Personally, I have been excited about what it can do. If it does not thrill everyone, that's cool too. I never thought that saying Silverlight has an amazing impact in its short time would cause so much anxiety. lol

Have you heard of NBCOlympics.com?

We have found that Silverlight 2 to have a huge impact for one of our applications. We are using it to display real time school bus positions on on a map for our VersaTrans OnScreen application.

We were able replace a really complex mixture of Javascript and DIV tags with a clean and elegant programming model.

While I don't see Silverlight 2 replacing Flash, I think it does bring a needed RIA component to the .NET development environment.

@Jonas said:
> Have you heard of NBCOlympics.com?

Yeah. It was a huge flop. The punters weren't willing to download Silverlight in sufficient numbers. NBC made puny revenues from advertising and they dumped Silverlight as soon as the Olympics ended.

@John Papa said:
> My perspective on the "amazing impact" is on the Microsoft
> development community.

True, though the biggest and most amazing impact of Silverlight has been on the Flash community. We (myself and those in the office looking over my shoulder right now) have found Silverlight to be one of the most transformational things to happen in the RIA world. Nothing beats competition.

Silverlight brought about the merger of Adobe and Macromedia. Silverlight has been the motivation for the huge and relentless spurt of activity from Adobe. It has seen the Flex SDK go from costing several thousand dollars, to being open-sourced given away free. It saw Adobe AIR. H264 video; and a number of other technologies and advances, all of which form a comprehensive and rapidly growing ecosystem.

Before Silverlight came along, the Flash world had stagnated and many of us were becoming disillusioned with both Macromedia and Adobe for a range of reasons.

Natasha ... I so agree about the competition aspect. Its great to have 2 major players in the market (or more). Nothing is worse than stagnant technology. I don't see it as an either or situation though ... I certainly can see room for both Flash and Silverlight.

I would not call the Olympics trial a flop. A flop would pretty much mean it did nothing for them. But I can see where you are coming from. They have to be disappointed in the results not being better. The number of installations and the videos watched were huge though and they got a ton of exposure. The biggest impediment is getting noticed. Silverlight 2 is less than a month old and it will gain traction.

Microsoft is not a competitor... its a monopoly. How in the world this monopoly can continue to grow wider, deeper is disgusting. They will tie it to their OS. They will include it in security patches, they will gain marketshare from Monopoly not from competition. Slime and mold. so hard to stop. Good luck Adobe, I'm praying for you.

@John Papa
> The number of installations and the videos watched were huge
> though and they got a ton of exposure.

The Olympics was one of the biggest on-line events of all time. Getting a "ton of exposure" is relative. NBC is a big business. A ton of exposure to you and me is not the same thing as a ton of exposure to a global news corporation. They weren't in it to get a ton of exposure. They were in it to make a killing and to sell a huge number of advertisements, but they barely scraped a pass in one of the biggest events of all time. If I made 5 point something million dollars, I would be happy. I doubt NBC feel the same way. That seems like a super flop. And they dumped it.

> Silverlight 2 is less than a month old and it will gain traction.

You're using the same argument John McCain used in the presidential debates when he claimed the war was justified because the surge had worked. Obama replied: "you pretend like the war began in 2007". You pretend like Silverlight is less than a month old. It isn't, and still, the only significant businesses using it seem to be the ones paid by Microsoft to use it.

It will gain some traction, but mainly because Microsoft is spending huge amounts of cash to make sure that businesses use it. That strategy will probably succeed to a limited degree, but as a strategy, it is succeeding less and less for Microsoft. Far from jumping deeper into Microsoft technologies, businesses across the world are making deliberate attempts to move further away. Developers are not only moving to technologies that work across platforms, but to cross-platform skills. Silverlight is a cross-platform skills dead end, beholden to a corporation in decline.

Forgive me for being harsh with you. I welcome the competition. Those of us in the Flash community have already won big from the increased competition - and there is room for more than one in the market.

A little evangelism and enthusiasm is not such a bad thing when it comes as part of an informational package. But my colleagues and I felt that your claims defied reality, and we still believe it... in spite of your clarification that your claim related to the developer community.

I defy reality. Cool! :-) Now, if I could just defy gravity too. hmmmm

My name is Rich Tretola and I am the community manager for InsideRIA.com and therefore responsible for the contents of the site.

Since this thread of comments has steered itself towards a battle of Silverlight vs "insert your favorite RIA technology here", I wanted to make a statement as well.

John is a new author for InsideRIA and although his post may have been perceived as being a promotion for Silverlight, I don't believe it was meant to be received that way. John was simply excited about the new opportunity as an InsideRIA author and also excited about a technology that he has spent many many hours with while writing a book on the subject. I have been in John's shoes many times and felt the same sense of excitement and relief after completing a technical book. Anyone who has put in the amount of hours required to work on a technical book knows what I am talking about.

So, rather than continuing this thread down the inevitable road of so many the flame wars that I have witnessed in the past between groups who are passionate about the technologies they are entrenched in. I would appreciate you welcoming John to the InsideRIA community and giving him a chance to offer us some content on a technology that many developers are very interested in learning more about.

Healthy debates are always welcomed at InsideRIA but I expect them to always be civil and offer constructive arguments and not simply focus on attacking a perceived competitive technology.

Agreed with dbmuse .
Unless SL is truly Platform independent [means runs on MAC, LINUX, and other where atleast Flash is supported with out using different development tool for same project]
IT is also not used to even a 1% compare to flash currently.

> I would appreciate you welcoming John to the InsideRIA community

Hey John, welcome. All said and done, congratulations on the publication of your new book.

Welcome John. Congrats on book. Appologies for showing my anti-MS bias. I have avoided Silverlight but have reached a point where I must learn about it to understand where or when it might be the best choice of options or not.

"Javascript experts, rather than programmers."

This comment shows how ignorant some "programmers" are. My guess is that you can't actually program in JavaScript, and are basing your comments on flicking through a textbook about 2001. JS has moved on dramatically since then: it's a powerful language which has worked on the web where Java failed.