[thelist] MS Silverlight

[Fred Jones]

MS Silverlight:

"Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering
the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich
interactive applications for the Web." [1]

I am working with two possible vendors to build for me both a web
application and a kiosk (native PC) application for a digital printer.
We need a feature-rich image editing module and one vendor has
proposed to use Java (cross-platform and fairly commonly available
AFAIK) and the other wants to use Silverlight. Silverlight presently
seems to have little or no market penetration and would thus involve a
download and install for most users. It's not available for Linux,
although given what I know of the demographics of our particular
customer base, this is a very small issue. The other issue is that
it's only available for Windows XP SP2 and Vista. I myself use Win 2K
still and can't even install the thing on my main workstation.

Any thoughts about this Silverlight tool? I am a bit dubious if it
makes sense to invest a lot of money in a new app based on a brand new
tool--not only the issues above, but also potential bugs in
Silverlight itself--it's not yet even past Beta it seems.

Thanks,
Fred

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/help.aspx?errorID=1603