Silverlight and Multimedia

Hey,

Ok I'm looking for a bit of a discussion here so feel free to throw some input in!

Something that’s always interested me is delivering rich graphics and multiplayer communication via the web browser. We are now starting to see this happen with the release of Silverlight and WPF etc.

There are 2 different technologies used on 2 different sites which achieve this really well.

Runescape - Java Applet Based MMPORG
Habba Hotel - Flash Based

It seems to be, that in its current state Silverlight is way behind on this front. WPF I’m not yet convinced by because of its lack of platform support.

I've done allot of reading on this topic over the last few days and am interested to see what the rest of you guys think about Silverlights current potential and also maybe I'm underestimating its abilitys.

Pino

Ok as the resident WPF evangelist let me throw my two cents in....

On WPF:
I agree with the idea in principle but I feel that a lot of work still needs to be done to get this technology up to spec. For instance take Xaml. I understand the principal behind it but I do not know if a markup language was the best idea here. I would have liked to see a mix between VB and C# maybe CBscript. I do love the fact that all controls are now lookless and can be fashioned into anything possible. So my verdict on WPF. I think its still young but I see the potential in it and thats why I am an evangelist.

On Silverlight:
....... This is a tough one. One the one hand you have yet another flash clone some people will say, but on the other hand if done correctly silverlight may just be the best platform to hit the web. Ive been reading up a lot about silverlight 3 and from what I can gather Microsoft is trying to keep very much away from "flash" style websites. Lets face it, HTML is terribly outdated and no amount of CSS will ever change that. Flash on the other hand is a funky technology with obscure dev tools and ugh... actionscript. Silverlight on the other hand is poised to set a happy medium between the too. In fact silverlight is what the web should have had many moons ago. The only issue here is some suit in redmond may change course and go down the flash road. If this happens silverlight will dive like the titanic so it will be interesting to watch.

Microsoft really need to work on cross platform functionality. Because WPF is lookless their is very little stoping them having "Skins" for different OS's in fact this was one of the things that should have been WPF's crowning glory. Many of the reasons for non cross platform apps was the reliance on winforms which is deeply baked into windows. WPF removes all that. It will be interesting to see what happens. Its a shame that the .FAT framework hasn't been trimmed down in 4.0 but then again theres always .FAT 5.0

Thanks for the reply. I've just looked and I got that slightly wrong above, Habba Hotel was writen in Shockwave which seems to be pretty impressive!

Ive never looked much into shockwave but I belive it was meant for processing heavy graphical elements like complex charting that updated in realtime? I could be wrong though!