There has been quite a few posts on Prism on many blogs and some comparing it against AIR and Silverlight. Thought will give it a shot to see what this new hype is about and to me it looks more to like an application that allows you to create a shortcut to a webpage on your desktop (the only difference being that you need not open a new window for yourself but Prism does it for you when you click on the link :) ). It looks to me like an XUL application which provides you a way to run a webpage "like" a application on your desktop and I don't think it qualifies "yet" to be called as a Web Platform or even any closer to that.

I think there is nothing to seriously look into this at least at this moment or when probably it supports offline synchronization of some of the most popular apps.

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, if you thought I am going to be advocate the use of Silverlight by this post then you are wrong. This post is with reference to this article which I read in ZDNet India today morning.

Tony Patton, the author of this article starts it this way - "Web developers often frown on the use of technologies like Macromedia Flash or Adobe Shockwave to spice up Web interfaces. Since these technologies are not Web standards, they may not properly work in all browsers. Even so, some developers continue to use these technologies." - I don't know where he got these statistics from and all over the article he just advocates the use of Silverlight by comparing it with Flash and Shockwave - well, there was not a single point which I could buy.

And for his impressions, he goes - "I have never been a big advocate of Flash or Shockwave when building Web interfaces. One problem with a technology like Flash is learning a whole new development environment, as well as a language with ActionScript. One positive aspect of Silverlight is its usage of existing Microsoft technologies and a tool like Visual Studio 2005 -- technologies and tools that I use every day." - I assume one has to learn MS technologies afresh when getting started new, too. Just because one uses VS everyday doesn't make it easier for a non programmer to create great rich interfaces with it nor does it make a new kid in the block (Silverlight) better than the all time Rockstars of the web (ofcourse Flash and Shockwave).

"For example, a Flash application may need to communicate with a back end Web service to get data, but Silverlight can include the code to handle server communications and data loading." - Comments??

"Silverlight requires a browser plug-in just like competing technologies, so the paradigm hasn't shifted that much." - Yes except for the few browser crashes and stupid error messages.

All in all the whole article's focus seems to be more on portraying Flash and Shockwave as negative more than speaking about the strengths of Silverlight. Is this what they call as negative marketing?

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)