I’ve had a quick look at Expression Suite and its great to see Microsoft create a web development suite that encourages standards compliance (xhtml, css, etc). The video on Microsoft’s website certainly sells the product for its power in creating cross browser standards compliant code. (Things are sounding good up to this point, eh?)

If Microsoft are so committed to web standards, why would they develop Silverlight? Not only will they fail to provide a Linux plugin, the Silverlight vector graphics use a proprietary XAML format instead of the web-standard SVG which everyone has been crying out for in IE7.

If you are a web developer with a conscience for true cross-platform, standards compliant web technologies, I urge you – please do not develop for Silverlight.

At least Adobe provide a Linux plugin for their proprietary FLASH technology.

Microsoft’s monopoly is bad enough as it is. Every person that develops using their technology (or even worse, works for them) needs to wake up to the moral and ethical questions posed by their monopoly.

It would have been nice if Silverlight was not just another Microsoft attempt at creating a Linux killer.

If Microsoft are so committed to web standards, why would they develop Silverlight? Not only will they fail to provide a Linux plugin, the Silverlight vector graphics use a proprietary XAML format instead of the web-standard SVG which everyone has been crying out for in IE7.

If you are a web developer with a conscience for true cross-platform, standards compliant web technologies, I urge you – please do not develop for Silverlight.

At least Adobe provide a Linux plugin for their proprietary FLASH technology.

Microsoft’s monopoly is bad enough as it is. Every person that develops using their technology (or even worse, works for them) needs to wake up to the moral and ethical questions posed by their monopoly.

It would have been nice if Silverlight was not just another Microsoft attempt at creating a Linux killer.

I think you had a major influence on that paragraph Scott!

Edit: This comment actually got picked up by akismet which I hadn’t realised and so wasn’t visible before Tink posted his comment below, caught by my own spam filter eh? WTF

Scott: Thanks for the response, I’ll certainly be posting more of my experiences and I’ll be very interested in your thoughts on that.
Thanks also for the note on being open minded and agnostic, but do also note that I see yourself as somewhat ‘in the playground’ with the references to side-swiping. Although granted you do stay somewhat more diplomatic than others, I just get the impression you know which buttons to press to invoke a reaction and enjoy doing so . It just makes me cringe a little every time I read both sides propeganda and reactions on EVERY MS vs Adobe post.

If you could post more on your experiences going forward, as it would be interesting to see how you use the new mediums and in what way. I’ve been watching the past 5 days how Flash/Flex Developers use both SilverLight and WPF via Expression Tools and it’s truly amazing to see how fast they not only pick it up but what they do with it. (I call it study @ the developer enclosure).

It’s also great to see you’ve got an open mind and being agnostic! (You’ll be stronger for it trust me heh).

Keep moving forward.

-
Scott Barnes
Developer Evangelist
Microsoft.

If your an evalgelist, concentrate on evangalising about your products instead of putting down the competitors. Then us devs can make a knowledgable choice.