Guy Ellis Rocks

I've finally had a chance to do a bit of work on coming up to speed with Silverlight and thought I'd share my findings and get some feedback.

I've created a Calculator site with a couple (so far) of pages written in Silverlight:
Mortgage Calculator
Temperature Converter

I've been trying to compare Silverlight to its alternatives of Javascript and Flex/Flash. A difficult comparison because I've never used Flex/Flash and my Javascript isn't that great.

Findings from my point of view and my skill set:

Advantages of Silverlight

1. Language is C# so zero learning curve on that part.
2. Tools (VS2008 and Blend) are very good - Intellisense made the learning curve less steep for the Silverlight library, architecture and controls.
3. Web resources good - I hit plenty of small problems (like hosting this on Server 2003) but after a bit of searching found answers to all problems.
4. Speed - those 2 pages are fairly responsive for what is going on behind them but it's possible that Javascript/Flex could execute at same or better speed. Anybody care to comment on that?

Disadvantages of Silverlight

1. So far I've only been able to get those pages to work in IE and Chrome and can't get them to work in Firefox.
2. Opera is not supported yet.
3. Not everyone will want to install the Silverlight plugin to view those pages.