In the RIA World, there is a new “Silverlight” on the Horizon

A prospective client recently asked what Molecular’s opinion was on Microsoft’s Silverlight technology.  Specifically, they were curious if they should seriously consider using Silverlight (over Adobe’s Flash/Flex platform) for building their future rich Internet applications.   This is a question that is bound to be asked more and more by our clients in the near future.  At that time Silverlight was (and still is) in beta and lacked the necessary RIA capabilities the client required.   However, the latest version of Silverlight is getting very close to an official release.  When this happens, it will provide application designers and developers the rich Internet features that are necessary to build the next generation of sophisticated web applications.

Silverlight: Media-centric “and” rich Internet applications

Unless you are an avid .NET developer, you may have only heard of Silverlight in passing.  Silverlight is Microsoft’s latest technology platform for delivering both media-centric and rich Internet applications.  Similar to the Flash, Silverlight is a browser plug-in that will be supported on all major browsers and operating systems.  Silverlight applications then run client-side within the context of this plug-in.

Silverlight 1.0 was first released in the fall of 2007 and was primarily focused on streaming media.  SL1.0 provided another alternative for delivering media but severely lacked in its rich Internet capabilities.  Since then Microsoft has been working feverishly on Silverlight 2, which incorporates all of the media aspects of SL1 in addition to adding new rich Internet capabilities.  Silverlight 2 Beta 2 was released recently and supports a go-live license for commercial applications.  No official release date of SL2 has been given but it is expected to be sometime in the early fall.

In the meantime Microsoft is revving up the marketing engine on Silverlight as it prepares to showcase the technology both at the Summer Olympics and the Democratic National Convention.  (Note: both of these applications will be based off of SL2 Beta 2).

Microsoft’s Silverlight Strategy

It is fairly obvious that Microsoft aims for Silverlight to be a direct competitor with Adobe’s Flash/Flex.  However in order for Silverlight to succeed as a viable RIA development platform, it must meet the needs of 3 distinct user groups.

End Users

Microsoft’s first major obstacle will be getting users to install the Silverlight plug-in.  This may sound trivial but it could be a potential deterrent to novice web users.  Users must first install the Silverlight plug-in and then restart their browser (another potential deterrent).  Additionally, the size of the plug-in (~4.6MB) could also be an issue for those with slower connection speeds.

Another major obstacle will be overcoming Flash’s dominance within existing web browsers.  According to Adobe, over 98% of all current web browsers are able to view Flash content.  In contrast all Silverlight applications today are using either the SL1 or SL2 beta plug-in.  Users will be required to download the SL 2.0 “release” plug-in once it becomes available.  So if you are keeping score at home: Flash plug-in penetration 98%, Silverlight2 “release” 0%.

Of course Microsoft anticipates this will change.  In my opinion, Microsoft believes end users will be indifferent as to which plug-in is delivering the rich Internet application as long as the installation experience is as painless as possible.  With that said, Microsoft is focusing on courting the two other user groups; application designers and developers.

Silverlight Developers

Developers by and large can be broken down into two subgroups, those who develop with Microsoft technologies, and those who do not.    In my opinion Microsoft is looking to spark up interest in the former by targeting existing ASP.NET developers.  This group is the most likely to embrace the Silverlight platform since development is performed in Visual Studio, the IDE used in traditional ASP.NET programming.  Without going into any details, Silverlight offers many of the development capabilities of ASP.NET since a subset of the .NET common language runtime (CLR), is embedded within the Silverlight plug-in.  Thus, Silverlight programming will be a natural progression for developers already familiar with ASP.NET.

Silverlight Designers

Winning over designers may prove to be much more difficult.  Unlike ASP.NET developers who program in the familiar confines of Visual Studio, Silverlight designers will be forced to use Microsoft’s own designer product, Expression Blend.  Blend incorporates various aspects of existing design products on the market today including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and Dreamweaver.  However while Silverlight applications can run cross-platform, Expression Blend forces designers to perform their creative work on Windows-based systems.  Microsoft understands this designer challenge and is investing huge amounts of capital to make Expression Blend a top-notch product.  However it remains to be seen whether or not they can ultimately entice designers to give up their current tools and start using Blend.

The Road Ahead

When Silverlight 2 is officially released this fall, companies that build rich Internet applications will have another technology choice to consider.  Regardless of your initial perception of Silverlight, it is a technology developed by Microsoft and is most likely here to stay.

In my opinion Microsoft’s entrance into RIA development will be good for the industry.  Competition is always healthy.  With the pending release of Silverlight 2 Microsoft is looking to raise the bar on rich Internet development and as a result Adobe (and other competitors) will be forced to continually improve their products and offerings.  In the end this will provide more choices for application developers which in turn will ultimately benefit the end users of rich Internet applications.

For those of you who are new to Silverlight you may want to check out the Microsoft Silverlight 101 posting on the wiki.