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Technology changes .... and keeping up with the changes is important. The present and future of Silverlight are going to be a huge part of Mix 09 in March. There are already several Silverlight 3 sessions listed on the Mix 09 web site and likely more on their way. If you cannot make it, be sure to check out the online sessions afterward and keep on eye on the Twitter chatter about Silverlight during Mix. It is sure to be a big topic, whether you like Silverlight or not.
When new versions of products (any product) come out there are a few standard responses from different groups ... some of which are (purely generalized)
1) It is the best thing ever!
2) It is the worst thing ever!
3) I like what they did, but it is missing some key elements for me still.
4) I don't care what they did, it is bad.
Let's face it, no product is going to please everyone. Silverlight and Flash are both very solid options in the RIA space. They are both threats to each other and they both motivate each other. This is a good thing. The more that these technologies drive themselves the more we have to work with.
Flash has been around for eons (well, OK, 10 versions really). It is solid. It is the leader in the RIA space. In fact, many people see cool graphics on the web and they often think of Flash at first glance (kind of like calling a photocopy a Xerox). Silverlight is the new kid on the block and it has to find a way to push itself into that space.
Silverlight 2 has been out since October and say what you will about how Silverlight has existed long before that as Silverlight 1, but its apple and oranges. Silverlight 2 is in a completely different (and better) league than Silverlight 1. Forget the tons of new features, simply being able to write code to create a Silverlight application with v2 makes it so much easier to work with. To fully understand the magnitude of differences you really need to have worked with both of them. Silverlight 2 brought now makes it easy for all .NET developers to enter the RIA space. That's a huge move.
Personally, I am very excited to be in the middle of the next evolution of Silverlight and Flash ... the next few years is likely going to blow the doors off of RIA. I think both of these technologies are going to gain a lot of ground amongst the non-RIA groups and put RIA in the forefront of many people's minds.
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You should learn the difference between its and it's.
> Silverlight 2 brought all of the .NET developers into the RIA space.
Do you have a proof or reference for this? In my opinion it is a unsubstantiated claim.
It's (notice the apostrophe :-) ) the same as if I would say: JavaFX is now being used by every single Java developer on earth.
I'm more than happy that not every hardcore Java and .NET developer is now developing browser-based user interfaces.
Thomas:
Do I have proof ... of course not. The intent of my statement was to say all .NET developers can use their .NET skills to get into the RIA space with Silverlight, not that all of them are doing so. I modified my statement in the above post to better reflect this.
John...nice write-up. Thought you and your readers would appreciate Scott Guthrie's recent Channel 9 interview on Silverlight 3 and MIX09: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Scott-Guthrie-On-Silverlight-MIX09-Keynotes-Developers-and-Designers/. Hope to see you at the event!