Monday, April 16, 2007

Swing: Dying between Silverlight & Flash?

So... Now Microsoft has Silverlight and tools like Expressions to create really good looking animations and User Interfaces... and a really small 1Mbyte plugin that works in Windows & Mac OS X...

Adobe has Flash... and Flash CS3 & Flex to create really good looking animations and User Interfaces.... and a really small around 1 Mbyte plugin... that works... well... everywhere (Windows, Mac OS X, and yes, Linux)

And Java... well... has Swing and SWT... neither of them has a a tool too easily create really good looking animations and User Interfaces... (Mattise is not bad, but it doesn't compare with Flash CS3 or Expressions), the JRE is huge, Swing and SWT have better integration with current platform UI than ever before... (but, creating really good looking UIs, like those possible with Flash & Silverlight with just the help of a designer... well.. it is just not possible)

So...the Java vs .NET war.... is now the Silverlight vs Flash war? or now we have 3 powers?

1 comment:

brudinie said...

Java FX has come too late to the game, so has Silverlight.
Flash does a reasonably good job for video but html5 video may catch up in the future.
Anything else RIA related should be done using existing or next gen W3C technologies.
The mobile web market is ramping up with smart phones becoming more and more popular. W3C technology will work on all future smart phones where as java,silverlight and flash will not. The future is standards based apps. The W3C are currently putting a standards definition for mobile apps which has been backed by Nokia.
I can't think of any thing more boring than Silverlight- when will Microsoft quit trying to make the web the Microsoft Web?