So if you have not been living in a cave for some time you must have heard about Silverlight. I have been working with it for some time now and would like to give you my two cents about it. I would call it an initiative by Microsoft to tap into the market for which Adobe Flash has been dominating for almost a decade now. That seems to be the main motive behind Silverlight's launch however there is more to it. Silverlight is a browser plugin which makes it a client end technology. Its a scaled down version of .NET Framework (a humble 4 MB download) with support for programming languages such as C# and VB (traditionally its been all Javascript). Within the plugin it gives the feel of a desktop application however security bar remains the same as it is there for any web application. Now a million dollar question . Would Silverlight be able to replace Adobe Flash or get a big chunk out of AJAX market? I think for now people would go for a hybrid ( pages hosting both AJAX and Silverlight content ) approach and who knows in future it might be the next heartbeat of web.
ciao!
