Just today I saw Microsoft’s new browser plugin silverlight. Silverlight is something like a flash/swf format by microsoft. So, what is Silverlight all about and why is the industry praising Microsoft for it? Eweek says it is more than a flash and If you goole a little bit for more articles, you will see things like this sentence on zdnet: “but lets not make it a religious war”, as this is what also comes into my mind when I hear microsoft.

A conclusion for me at the moment is that silverlight is an interesting alternative to flash and its dominant position on the market (98% officially). I especially enjoy the video features of silverlight. The streaming capabilities (can you say HD DRM video) and resulting costs on server side should be better. Will silverlight be the alternative for the combination of flash, flex and Adobe’s new apollo… I don’t know. In my opinion it is an alternative for flash and is the best thing for customers to happen at the moment, as there might be two big wide spread players/plugins and not only one, so prices will go down. The main benefit flash has going for it is the install base figures. Also flash works in almost all browsers, even linux. Microsoft is Mac and Windows ready so this should be a really good competition. I have not jumped into development with silverlight yet but I defiantly will be in the next few days.