Fergal Breen asked to blog about the Dublin Silverlight event, but Stephen Downey beat me to it.

Microsoft Silverlight is a flash competitor; It looks good and is well worth checking out, but I’ve got my reservations if it is truely as portable …

I’m aware of the Mono project (they’re good guys) and what they’re doing in this area, but I don’t think it solves the core issues here

1) There will be a significant time lag until the release. Even then I doubt if it will be a seamless install. Also, due to patent and other issue , Mono is not seeking to do a full rebuild of .Net, although hopefully this will not be one of the missing pieces.
2) Mono only addresses Linux support, doesn’t automatically guarantee Silverlight working on mobile devices in the way the Flash does.

This isn’t just a ‘build a Silverlight player issue’ , it’s the overhead in having a full managed code environment (instead of just Flash of Javascripting).

Don’t get me wrong; I think Silverlight is better than the current efforts in my language of choice (Java). It’s just that we’ve waiting 10 years for Applets et al to give us a rich client. Silverlight is a good step, but not the final destination.

Paul , Technology and People

I hope I’m wrong , as anything that pushes the boundaries of the user experience is good.

Paul