Flex 2 vs Microsoft Silverlight - First Round

Microsoft Silverlight has been announced and you can find many posts and articles around the net about this technology.
I was very interested about Silverlight and I tried to go deep to better understand what it offers and how it could differ from Flex 2.
I would like to create a comparing table to

These are notes I wrote so far :

- Starting from the scratch : the Silverlight plugin has about 0% penetration at the moment. Flash player is everywhere
- Silverlight seams to be very .Net dependent. Flex is totally independent to server side technology used
- It does not offer J2EE integration and enterprise messaging. Flex offers  Flex Data Services (now Livecycle Data Services)
- No support for Linux browsers/systems. Flash Player runs on Win, Mac, Liunux, Sun Solaris
- SOA( WebServices and XML) based services only. Flex has three RPC services : HTTP, SOA and Remote Object (with AMF3)
- Low information about Silverlight Mobile. Flex is not mobile (so far) :))

Instead, what impressed me it's the video capabilities of Silverlight. At the moment this is the only feature that could compete with the Flash Player capabilities.

It leverages the VC-1 codec and it supports HD DVD and Blu-ray and the DRM features.

In the next days I'll feel more confident so I'll give you more detailed informations and comparing notes.

Comments

[Sean Moore]

Hi Marco,

Interesting read. Thanks for putting this together. I would definitely like to see your expansion on this comparison (perhaps a chart even?).

Regards.

Sean
http://www.actionscriptcheatsheet.com

[Chase Brammer]

I would love to see a chart with a more in-depth comparison as well. Thanks for the post!

[John Dowdell]

"I was very interested about Silverlight and I tried to go deep to better understand what it offers and how it could differ from Flex 2."

How would you compare the Microsoft browser plugin to the framework, compilers, servers and IDE of Flex 2?

(I could see comparing the alpha and/or betas of Microsoft Silverlight to Adobe Flash Player 9, but am not sure how to compare a runtime engine with a development methodology.)

Comparisons between browser plugins might be interesting, but I'd have to wait until Microsoft finalizes its 1.0 release... the predicted deliverables have changed quite a bit over the past 15 months. For instance, right now they have two different types of logic engine available (browserScript beta & CoreCLR alpha), so it's hard to predict what the 1.0 will be like.

jd/adobe

[pouleriguen]

Hi,
One important advantage for Microsoft is that they have a very long experience in development.
Indeed, with a lot of visual studio, c++, .net ... they really know where to go.
Its why, comparing the 2 technologie, i found the .net framework better made. And they have allready a cool API (.net) that is now mature.
Adobe whas more focus on visual thinks and today i think that the main problem of FLex, is the lack of a real framework.
Coding with .net is easier and the API is strong (more true on big projects).
Adobe regain his power on interface design where he whas better than .net (for now).

In an other hand, silverlight is only for windows and IE ( in its optimal configuration ) and i desagree with this process that close our code for a dedicated platform. Whats about Mac OS or Linux user ? Microsoft may allow to play xaml on others platforms... but with lowess performances...
With flex you dont have this problem( juste a little slower on linux... ).

Silverlight go faster... not a problem on commons applications.

Flex looks better. I don't know why but make good looking application is very easy with flex... not with Silverlight... Adobe experience hey !

Microsoft only work with microsoft (often)... Flex can work many backgrounds (cool !).

To conclude i just whant to say that flex is cool and got is place on the market. But it lack of a real framework.

For me : Flex is better ! (flex + java)

[Michael Kaufman]

"- Silverlight seams to be very .Net dependent. Flex is totally independent to server side technology used"

Flex may be independent of Server side technology but you cannot have a very scalable application without server-side help, right?

Most J2EE developers I know would like an alternative to FDS and feel forced to "roll their own". They want the ease of use and bells and whistles of FDS (web tier compiler, messaging) functionality but don't want to pay the large fee. I hope Adobe makes FDS open source too and concentrate on making Flex Builder and Flash as robust as Visual Studio and .net/Silverlight

I am not a .net developer but I've seen some impressive animated 3d so far. Orcas, the next Visual Stidio, will have Silverlight capabilities built-in and is more comparable to Flex2 I believe - but overall much more powerful of an IDE than Flex builder2. I look forward to seeing what FlexBuilder3 has in store.

IMHO VS and Flex are aiming towards the same end goal...and now Sun threw JavaFX into the ring - which won't be nearly as impressive as either Flex or Silverlight, but because of the sheer number of j2EE developers, like AJAX, it will be often [over]used even though it won't be the most elegant(agile) solution.

As far as the Silverlight "plug-in" on 0% of PCs.. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows has Automatic Updates and they could go from 0 to 80% (of the world) overnight,no? That still leaves all the non-pc devices that would need the plug in. Windows mobile 6 will have this built in.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/05/07/mobile-minute-news-silverlight-on-windows-mobile-skype-on-a-sm/

The next 3-5 years will be very interesting to say the least :)

[Marco Casario]

>>How would you compare the Microsoft >>browser plugin to the framework, >>compilers, servers and IDE of Flex 2?

Hi john,
behind Silverlight there is the power of the entire .Net 3.0 framework, the next Visual Studio, the C# and VB.NET language, the XAML declarative language, the support to Windows Vista based applications ....
So in my opinion you can compare the ecosystem of Microsoft Silverlight to the Flex 2 product line, don't you think ?

Moreover Microsoft is about to release some other tools for supporting Silverlight development :

- Expression Media Encoder for publishing live and on-demand video on the Web that works on Mac and Windows, all using customizable templates for web UX. Oh and guess what- it's going to be pluggable, supporting import of QuickTime, AVI, WMV, and any other well-formed DShow-based video format out of the gate, and publishing with the industry-recognized SMPTE VC-1 (WMV-9) format. (SMPTE is Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers). WMV today provides a single-codec solution that scales and is used from Archive to Mobile in a re-editable format. Expression Media Encoder can also be run on the server.

- Hardware accelerated encoding support with Intel spinoff Tarari's Accelerator boards. Time is money in the encoding world- you can encode significantly more content more cost-effectively, up to 15x faster for HD, and around 8x faster for SD content when dropping one of these boards into your server.

- Expression Blend - A new design tool for creating interactive experiences consistently for the Web and Windows, Blend will also support the creation of templates, "skins", or applications that can be published with Expression Media Encoder.

- Windows Media Streaming - New features to be made available in Windows Server code-name, "Longhorn" can increase scalability by up to 2x over Windows Server 2003. The cost benefits of streaming are well known as well. If you want DVD-like functionality with Fast streaming, ability to jump to any point in your video instantly, a proven system for ad-insertion, and mature support for live streaming, Windows Media Streaming delivers today a reported 3-4 times the scalability of other solutions. And we're going to make that even better. Details on the NAB show floor and here shortly.

- IIS7 Media Pack - For those customers who plan to deliver progressively downloaded applications and media, IIS7 will include bit-rate throttling to more effectively deliver downloaded media.

Read here the entire post :
http://www.seanalexander.com/2007/04/16/IntroducingMicrosoftSilverlight.aspx

[John Dowdell]

You could also compare the Microsoft stack to the more inclusive Adobe stack, true. But in that case would the title be "Flex vs Silverlight"?

jd/adobe

[Scott Barnes]

It's about making informed choices, what the author is doing is presenting what he knows today, and hopefully following up tommorow. Speculation around distribution models (Which admittedly within Microsoft isn't really our weakest skill? given Flash Player owes a lot of it's success to Microsofts distribution models), .NET support only (Have you not seen the DLR?) and other knee-jerk assumptions are at times valid. It's new, it's not been really discussed in depth given it's alpha state and it realise at this point on folks like the author to decompise it further.

I've seen a lot of discussions around the Silverlight vs Flex, and to be honest, folks don't really decompose the product, in that if we have to get into a discussion around "Spiderman vs Superman" style points, then at least use the Silverlight product in more detail instead of "My gut tells me...".

I've used both products in detail, Silverlights weakness right now is lack of "Form/Layout" controls (which are being worked on as I type). That's forgiveable as it's in it's still alpha. Look at what it has on the table today (Tools for Media Encoding, impressive Video Playback quality, DLR/CLR, .ZIP compression in assets over the wire, Free Streaming servers, Developer & Designer Tools etc). All for an alpha? I didn't get more into Mobile suffice to say it's being demo'd around the world today, it's not perfect but it's being worked on.

With millions of .NET developers around the world whom have invested billions of dollars into .NET today, Silverlight isn't about "Killing Flash", it's about offering another channel to folks in which they can deploy their chosen solutions. Software + Service is one of our models, and if you were to instead look at say Silverlight as being an addon to Visual Studio + Expression Suite? what would the conversation be like then? What about Silverlight being an addon to Live.com SDK's? and so on.. Silverlight in isolation is undervalued at times.

This isn't a Zero-Sum Game, you can use both.

-
Scott Barnes
Developer Evangelist
Microsoft.

[Loïc Bar]

Sorry, but Silverlight runs on Win, Mac and Linux too (with LightMoon).

Silverlight can access type of data :
* Webservice : webservices on aspx page, WCF (coming soon) etc.
* Database with the support of DLINQ (coming soon)
* HTTP of course
* XML file

Silverlight it isn't independent of Microsoft technology. You can put a silverlight control in a JSP.

Of course, if you use Silverlight with .NET you must have .NET on your server. But if you use Silverlight with JavaScript? Where is the problem?

[odin]

Microsoft only work with microsoft (often)... Flex can work many backgrounds (cool !).

Yeah very very.

[Fahim Ilyas]

here is the comparison that i ve made.

http://fahimilyas.blogspot.com/2008/05/road-to-silverlight-part-1.html