I am looking at new tools offered by Sun, Microsoft and Adobe for site animation. JavaFX and SilverLight two alternatives to Flex. Anyone tried SilverLight? What are your thoughts?

Q...

Originally Posted by QiSoftware

I am looking at new tools offered by Sun, Microsoft and Adobe for site animation. JavaFX and SilverLight two alternatives to Flex. Anyone tried SilverLight? What are your thoughts?

Q...

I've been using SL for nearly a year now. I've implemented several line of business applications with it and found it to be a far superior platform than any HTML generator or alternative RIA platform on the market.

The purity of the framework makes it truly simple to work on. Every visual element is accessible through code no matter whether it is declared in XAML or in C#. Ramping up new developers is a breeze to since C# skills will directly apply. XAML has a bigger learning curve but most of that is getting familiar with the class library.

I developed an application using Flex at a previous job, and now I'm starting a project using Silverlight at my current job. I have to say so far I'm really sold on Silverlight. Silverlight has much better support for calling web services, and localization. I'm also a big fan of C# especially over Action Script. I definately prefer the .NET libraries that are offered in Silverlight to what Adobe offers in their Flex environment. I also just love how Silverlight is built on MS's current stack of technologies. The skills you'll learn to develope in Silverlight, such as WPF, and WCF are all transferable to other types of projects.