Flex Vs. Silverlight

Aviram Eisenberg, CEO, Ignite

RIA

RIA Stands for Rich Internet Applications

RIA Adoption 1

“For custom-developed applications, which development platforms does your company use?” 59%

48%

41%

37%

25%

16%

14%

4%

Microsoft .NET

Java, Java EE, or J2EE

Mainframe or midrange platforms

Rich interface in a browser

Proprietary 4GLs

Open source frameworks like spring or hibernate

Others

Don't know

RIA Adoption 2

“For what purposes is your organization using your primary IDE?

RIA “Magic Quadrant”

Infrequent and Occasional Users

Power UsersClie

nt

Ser

ver

Imperative

Declarative

JSF Based (MyFaces,

ICEFaces, etc)

Struts, Tiles

GWTWicket

Dojo

jQuery

ExtYUI

XAPNexaweb

Isomorphic

Curl

JavaFX

Flex

Silverlight

Infrequent and Occasional Users

Power Users

Flex History

Introduced at March 2004

Adobe released the SDK for free and charged for the Flex Builder and connectors

WYSIWYG RIA

Introduced Adobe AIR at

Currently at version 4

Silverlight History

Introduced on December 2006

Beginning was hard:No Firefox support

Large footprint

Almost no controls

Currently Silverlight is a key player snd is here to stay

Currently at version 4

Flex Architecture

Silverlight Architecture

Flex Vs. Silverlight 1

RIA FlexibilityBoth technologies are very powerful

Cross-PlatformFlex support all major OS

Silverlight lacks native support for Linux

Flex lacks the mobile support for Symbian

Cross-TechnologySilverlight will work seamlessly with .NET applocations

Silverlight will not work well with Java

Player PopularityFlex is installed in 98% of the browsers

Flex Vs. Silverlight 2

Supported browsers:

Flex – All Majors

Desktop versionBoth technologies have a sandbox version

PerformanceIn most cases Silverlight is faster

Availability of controlsFlex still leads in variety of controls

CommunityFlex provides thriving Open Source community

Number of developersSilverlight has critical mass of developers

Flex Vs. Silverlight 3

Learning curveSilverlight is usually easier to learn

Flex is not that hard as well

Ability to customize controlFlex provide the ultimate experience using Flash

Animation capabilitiesFlex is better though Silverlight is catching up

Easiness of developmentIn most cases Flex development is significantly faster

Debugging options

Memory allocation

Player Popularity

Threading model

Player footprint

Flex Vs. Silverlight 3

Learning curveSilverlight is usually easier to learn

Flex is not that hard as well

Ability to customize controlFlex provide the ultimate experience using Flash

Animation capabilitiesFlex is better though Silverlight is catching up

Easiness of developmentIn most cases Flex development is significantly faster

Flex Vs. Silverlight 4

Debugging options

Flex allows to debug the MXML

Memory management

Detecting memory leaks in Flex is a nightmare…

Threading modelFlex is single-threaded, Silverlight is multi-threaded

Player footprintBoth technologies download a plugin which is less than 5 MB

Application footprintSilverlight is usually smaller

Market Trends 1

Market Trends 2

My Conclusions

All Inclusive

Waterfall oriented

Commercial (not expensive)

Customizable

Resources

Inside RIA http://www.insideria.com/

Shine Draw: http://www.shinedraw.com/flash-vs-silverlight-gallery/

One of the earliest debates: http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/634/1076.aspx

Google Trends:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22adobe+flex%22%2C+%22silverlight%22%2C+%22javafx%22

Job Trends: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22adobe+flex%22%2C+silverlight%2C+javafx