23 May 2007

Silverlight

The best thing about Silverlight is its icon. For regular users it's a web-browser plugin that allows you to view and use Silverlight content. What Silverlight content is there? Media and stuff. Have you ever seen a website done completely in Flash? Well, now you can do that but with Silverlight. From my perspective this is fundamentally about competing with Flash. There are some cool things going on under the covers to make this happen and as a developer, I understand the geek factor there. By the same token, as a developer, my ability to develop amazing software is directly related to the toolset available to me. So I ask myself, "Which toolset gives me the greatest ability to develop amazing software?" Flash or Silverlight? PHP or Ruby on Rails? Cocoa and Core Animation or XAML and .NET? I don't think I can compare any of these with much authority, but I have a hard time believing that the next killer app, web or otherwise is going to show up as a Silverlight application. Still, I love the icon.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow. far more objective than the mac mojo post on silverlight ;)

Torrance Miller said...

Check out this WPF app... http://select.nytimes.com/gst/timesreader.html

Popfly is coming --- http://www.popfly.ms/Overview/

It is all about the Xaml!

Anonymous said...

A designer's opinion of this logo here. "Blobby Ball of Nubulousness." Heh.

Some of the commenters had strong opinions:
"Microsoft Jellyfish 2.0"
"Adult diapers for hip seniors"
"Part smoke, part lava lamp"
"Blue alien jellyfish"
"Like Rick Moranis' helmet in Spaceballs"
"A reject from a glass-blowing class"
"Soap bubble popping and deflating"
"Blue toilet bowl water"
"Space-age croissant"

John C. Welch said...

xaml schmaml. Nice choice...if you want decent xaml tools, you have to go windows, if you want to debug you HAVE to go windows.

wait...that's not actually a choice.

Anonymous said...

I am creating my first silverlight app and walking people through my experiences.

I strongly believe that a silverlight app will be the next killer app.

Check out my project (iTunes as a silverlight application). It's opened my eyes to the possiblities that expression and silverlight will bring!
iTunes as a silverlight app