Silverlight vs. AIR

Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) are RIA platforms that are usually compared to the capabilities of Ajax. Although this is a little bit unfair for these platforms because Ajax is a collection of web language and not a proprietary platform, Ajax has been heavily identified with Google especially with their release of Gears. Although Google Gears have been used by many and supported by most developers because of its open source persona, there are developers who have found Silverlight or AIR as their platform of choice.

These two platforms (Silverlight and AIR) are constantly being compared especially on user experience. These platforms could provide RIA experience that’s almost unrivaled. The aesthetic experience of Microsoft and AIR is even better when you compare to most plug-ins powered by Google Gears.

There is no difference when you compare Silverlight and AIR based on user experience. But under the hood is a completely different story.  Though it is difficult to admit which one is better, there are significant differences between these platforms. Every developer has a leaning towards specific features and Silverlight and AIR provides significant difference that will make you like one and hate the other.

Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) was introduced to the public in 2007 through a series of beta versions. It was immediately received not only by small developers around the world but by some of the well known websites. As a show of its strength, eBay was able to develop a desktop application that uses AIR. With this application users can virtually look into their account in eBay and even complete transactions using this application only.

AIR was able to integrate the efficiency of data fetching of JavaScript and the beauty of Flash to build a very powerful platform. Some will say it is a little bit inconvenient since you have do download Flash to run AIR. But who does not have Flash in their computers? The number of Flash related websites right now (YouTube.com) are by the millions that you practically NEED Flash.

On the developers’ side, the SDK of AIR will make you start from the scratch in integrated AIR and JavaScript. If you are not familiar with Ajax, you will find it really hard to use this function.

Silverlight is Microsoft’s answer to Ajax, Google Gears, and AIR. The look and feel of applications that comes with Silverlight rivals AIR and could even outrun most Gears. Users can enjoy this application as a plug-in to their browsers. Do not think that it is less superior to AIR because of the browser requirement. It just uses the platform so it could easily launch its applications faster by using bandwidth as well as the computers hardware capability.

Developers on the other hand will find Silverlight restricting. But this restriction comes with a great advantage. Silverlight’s affinity to .Net and Visual Studio has made development of the application easier. It is also aggressive in streaming different media types especially in music and videos. It’s only downside? No Linux yet.

If you are looking to build an application that could rival Ajax without the browser, AIR could be your best bet. On the other hand, Silverlight’s browser plug-in feature is worth the second look as it is easier to build through different development tools.