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Silverlight vs Flash: STOP IT!!!!
I’m 100% sick of these Silverlight vs Flash arguments. They are popping up all over the place and it is annoying. My problem is not people comparing the two to see which one they should use but when people are bickering about which one is better (like Flash vs Ajax).
As a perfect example, the AZGroups mailing list (.NET group) had a post about a “Color Picker Utility in Silverlight” in which Esther Schindler of CIO.com (blog: http://advice.cio.com/blog/esther-schindler) responded. To sum of my frustrations, I’ll merely copy/paste her email then my responses [since it covers all basis of this post]. This isn’t in any way an attempt to “out” Esther. It is just relevant that you see the posts as they occurred.
—— Emails ——
Esther #1
More on Silverlight… this one by Shawn Wildermuth.
I’d be happy to publish more articles on CIO about Microsoft
development technologies, but like any other topic they have to pay
their freight in pageviews. (Ruby articles do better, interestingly
enough) It’s hard to get the word out about ‘em. Any suggestions on
places I — or you — could post this, to get it better notice?
10 Things You Should Know About Microsoft’s Silverlight
Software developers are busy kicking the tires on Silverlight,
Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s Flash. This summary of not-necessarily-
technical information will help IT managers identify what’s important
about the new technology—for the people whose first question about a
Web development project is, “What’s the business case?”
http://www.cio.com/article/128700
Me #1
I just wish more articles about SL were written with no mention of Flash. The community just keeps perpetuating the showdown, that doesn’t exist. :-( I just don’t like the direction this is going (hence, Apple vs PC kinda arguments…no one EVER wins).
Esther #2
I disagree… but that isn’t surprising since I’m the one who
assigned the article to Shawn and who edited his work.
The key term here is positioning. It’s a marketing term, I confess,
but it’s relevant. When you introduce a new item or subject to
people, they usually want to know how to categorize it. What’s this
like?
You do it yourself, I’m sure. Someone will tell you they really
enjoyed a new Malaysian restaurant. You’d say, “I’ve never had that
kind of food. What’s it like? Thai, Chinese?” and so on.
So the positioning is relevant, because it helps the reader
understand the pidgeonhole that it sits next to (if not shares). Just
as Malaysian food is like itself (lots of coconut milk and cilantro),
it’s a lot more “like” Thai than it is “like” Mexican food.
Esther
who thinks Phoenix could use a good Malaysian restaurant
(there was one in Cambridge next to Lotus in the 80s that still makes
me drool in my dreams…)
Me #2 [currently the last one]
Esther, I understand but there could have been one mention of Flash as it relates to SL in the intro. “Microsoft is releasing Silverlight which is similar to Adobe’s Flash.” (or whatever)
The problem is…you’re giving a 10 things they should know about SL. It isn’t, IMO, an article to compare the two head-to-head and if it is there is a huge slant of MSFT on it. All I’m saying is you’re talking to people about why they should use SL. You shouldn’t need/have to mention Flash at all and if you do you need to bring both sides of the fence not just the MSFT slant on “SL can do this, Flash can’t [or isn’t as good]” or “Flash publishes a single file and SL uses many…I like many because of X, Y, and Z.” If you do…supply arguments for both sides. Poll some people and see if they like 1 file vs many, etc.
Bottom line is the article could’ve been written better if this was a comparison/positioning attempt by either leaving Flash out completely or fully letting the two strengths/weaknesses known. Nothing personal here Esther.
Here’s a list of points (the #’d one’s from the article) which are 100% relevant to the article, from my point of view, and one’s that Flash is left out.
Relevant:
2
5
8 (mentions Flash/Flex in a semi-positive light here but it could’ve been nixed as it has no effect after 7 chapters 1, 3, 6 and 7 showed it in an unfavorable light)
9 (good one)
10 (good one)
Flash left out:
1 (easily you could’ve had mention of Flash having done this for years)
3 (point taken unless you’re not in a .NET, Ruby, Python, [insert other DLR languages] environment; I use ColdFusion a lot…I’d have to learn C# [or whatever] to build SL unless I knew JS. I love SL’s approach here…don’t get me wrong…but the title isn’t necessarily true UNLESS you’re speaking to a full .NET/”DLR accepting” [people who accept PHP on .NET, etc] crowd.
4 (XAML is akin to MXML…just markup)
6 (there is an obvious advantage here for the MSFT created workflow but CS3 definitely helped the workflow on Flash’s side as well; not as good as MSFT’s approach but developers and designers are “as” in the dark as before; mentioning this only because Photoshop was mentioned)
7 (pure opinion of desired approach; I personally like deploying 1 file but deploying multiple is not a problem for me. “The separate packages encourage the creation of dynamic server-side content much more easily than is accomplished today using Flash.” Again…where/how?)
I really don’t want this to be a long drawn out SL vs Flash post. I merely wanted to point out the article had a terribly strong slant for SL so it shouldn’t have even mentioned Flash unless it was going to (prepare for kindergarten words) “play fair!” :-D If the desire is to get people to use/know more about SL, you probably want to spend more time on SL and less time show “inferiorities” of the other platform.
Again…nothing personal against your editing/reviewing of his work/your opinion. I’m just getting sick of the SL vs Flash arguments, especially when the party doesn’t know enough to talk about the other side OR they are slanting their view and not giving the other side a fair shake.
Disclaimer:
Understand that I’ve said this more than once to both sides of the fence (as I dev’ in both worlds). I hear TONS of arguments against SL in the Flash world and I defend SL just as tough as I do Flash when SL folks are slighting it.
Thanks for reading/listening.
—— End Emails ——
Hopefully you see my issues. Namely:
* “I’m just getting sick of the SL vs Flash arguments, especially when the party doesn’t know enough to talk about the other side OR they are slanting their view and not giving the other side a fair shake.”
COME ON FOLKS! Let’s either compare for the sake of research (ie - choosing a project platform) or stop all of the adolescent arguments. Mac vs PC is enough for our generation…let’s not add another one.
Posted by John C. Bland II on August 9, 2007 11:47 AM | Permalink
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Comments
Just for the record… Adobe will always be better then M$ and a Mac is far superior to a PC.
Nothing more to argue about :)
Posted by: Michael Hagel | August 9, 2007 12:07 PM
Only Mike would bring such eloquent comments! ;-)
Posted by: John C. Bland II | August 9, 2007 12:12 PM