email: ceberhardt@scottlogic.co.uk
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When meeting current and prospective clients the subject of web technology choice often arises. There has been a great deal of confusion and uncertainty out there, even before Microsoft’s perceived change of stance with respect to Silverlight emerged.
This white paper is intended to help technology decision makers come to an informed choice when faced with this difficult decision. You can view the paper below, or download it in PDF format: Flex-Silverlight-HTML5.pdf (1.3 MBytes)
Thoughts? comments? leave them below …
Regards, Colin E.
Tags: flex, HTML5, silverlight, white paper
[...] A whitepaper comparing Flex, Silverlight and HTML5 http://www.scottlogic.co.uk/blog/colin/2011/05/… [...]
It’s great.
Colin, I’d love to hear what you think now in the light of recent announcements made by Adobe.
http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/
Great paper
-Luis
Hi Luis,
I have written bout the recent Adobe announcements here:
http://www.scottlogic.co.uk/blog/colin/2011/11/the-untimely-demise-of-the-plugin-and-how-lob-developments-will-suffer/
I can totally understand that they have dropped mobile Flash plugin development to concentrate on their won HTML5 tooling. Adobe could do really well in this space.
Also, Adobe’s mobile AIR looks like it could be a great technology for cross-platform mobile development.
However, what I do not understand is why they dropped Flex. For the desktop (which is still a massive market), Flex still makes a lot of sense.
Colin E.
They didn’t “drop Flex”, they’re following the same model as IBM’s Eclipse development.
Hi,
Excellent Paper.
Regards,
KNayak
An important technology you missed is GWT and similar. Layers over JavaScript that address some browser issues, but may introduce others.
Also, there is Echo2 and ZK, driving rich applications from the server. Developing over multiple tiers is expensive.
I think we can drop Silverlight off the list. Many issues, and not supported on Linux, Android etc.
Anthony
Hi Colin, I enjoyed very much reading your paper. It gives a clear summary of the context and the options. The Pros and Cons tables are straight forward.
Thanks for posted it!
Iván
Nice summary, it is very useful when talking to “HTML obliviates the need for any further plug-ins” type of people. I had the same issue on Win 7 32 bit IE9 with the pages failing to render. It does work in FF4. Kind of an ironic issue that points out some of the HTML pitfalls regardless of version.
[...] White Paper: Flex, Silverlight or HTML5? Time to decide… – Colin Eberhardt shares a whitepaper discussing the various options for Rich Internet Application Development, outlining the background of the different options, the deployed base of required plugins / browsers, and the various features of these technologies. [...]
Ok, I just looked at it in FF4, and it looks great, but why?
Which brings me to another rant. Why in the world did Microsoft make me use FF4 when I’m in Windows XP? Do they intentionally want to lose browser marketshare in the new HTML5 world?
Every else has backwards compatibility, but I guess MS doesn’t care about that… go figure.
FYI, I’m using IE9 on Windows 7(64bit), and I don’t believe I can see your slides properly.
I had to download the PDF. I just see a bunch of little boxes that look like the images are missing.
[...] White Paper: Flex, Silverlight or HTML5? Time to decide… (Colin Eberhardt) [...]
Hi Colin,
Probably the most clear and consise document on the HTML5/plug-in discussion I’ve read so far, including from within Microsoft itself. I think the diagram you have from static to application pretty much sums it up and could also be applied to the mobile area as well. If you require a really full featured complex app then you will need to go native (iPad/Android/WP7) but if you think you can get away with HTML5 then that would be a more natural choice.
Developers are panicking as it would be great to have a one choice fits all scenario that we could drive all our efforts into. Silverlight seemed to fit this for me for a while but then it’s reachability over OS’s (even with Moonlight) and mobile devices obviosuly causes a problem. As a small company we face the problem of not having cash/resources to devlop the best experience for all cases with HTML5/Silverlight and native mobile/tablet apps, so we will most probably have to bet on Silverlight for browser and a tablet of choice depending on how this pans out, and just hope that our clients go for it.
I’d love for HTML5 to be the big winner as it will soon run everywhere but then I lose my dev environment for .NET/C# and am faced yet again with browser incompatible tag soup and that shrewd, forgiving little tart Javascript. What annoys me most at the moment is that any HTML5 app for some time forward must cater for a raft of browser incompatilibties, plus graceful downgrading which does not seem like a forward step at all with the onus once again on the developer to hack his/her way to provide a facade of standards compliancy, which is why plug-ins became usefull in the first place! We actually seem to be at the same place we have been for some time now, just with HTML 5 providing a better experience than HTML4.
As a final rant, it really does bug me when a so called global web standard is shown to run really well on one OS/Browser and absolutely lousy on others. I’m refering to Microsoft showcasing HTML5 on IE9/10. As a developer in this space it just depresses me that it runs great on one browser but crap in FF/Chrome and possibly vice versa in other cases when it comes to Javascript perf etc. What I want to see is my HTML5 code running equally well everywhere it runs including mobiles, sound like a plug-in anyone?
best
Marshall
White Paper: Flex, Silverlight or HTML5? Time to decide… | Colin Eberhardt’s Adventures in WPF…
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Colin, this is a very clear and fair representation of the current state of affairs for internet applications, and to a lesser extent intranet applications.
Mobile platforms are a bit more difficult.
The two major mobile platforms, I should probably say the two main mobile form factors, are Phones and Tablets.
Phones are the odd animal, and is driven strictly from a consumer standpoint. With Tablets, there is a completely different opportunity, and if done right, Tablets will be personal computers with a multitouch interface.
If Tablets evolve that way(i.e. Windows 8), that partially impacts the argument(which to use) because all choices should be available in any operating system(IMO).
A good enough tablet, coupled with the Cloud, is a serious threat to laptops(as currently configured), and even the desktops market share.
While most of your analysis still stands, this is an exotic mix that is explosive, but in a good way for developers.
This type of confusion tends to lead to more opportunities, and I like it!
Hi Colin, this paper was an interesting read and I quite enjoyed it. I think you’ve made a mistake on page 12, or maybe you meant something else ? You say JavaScript is not an object oriented language. It is, and some people actually prefer its prototypal inheritance model to the class based version.
Hi Anuj,
Thanks for the feedback. I see your point regarding JavaScript – what I mean is that JavaScript does not enforce the object oriented paradigm in the same way that C# and Java does. On one hand this is a strength, for example when using JavaScript for scripting tasks within a HTML page it gives brevity; on the other, it is a weakness, the relative difficultly of achieving encapsulation, global scope and other JavaScript gotchas make it more challenging when using this language to build larger application.
So yes, JavaScript supports OO constructs and you can certainly use it to implement the various Gang of Four patterns and other OO designs, however, it requires a little more care and understanding to achieve this when compared to C# / Java.
Regards, Colin E.