Greg it is really hard to answer this, b/c it really depends on your perspective, the culture of your team, and your existing relationship of your team to any other tools.
I would say that both environments have a bit to go before they are fully baked, but then again so does Java and other mature alternatives. Also, I think you are saying Silverlight when you mean WPF/.NET 3.5. Silverlight is to Flash what AIR is to .NET 3.5 (so to speak) in so far as Silverlight is really about being inside the browser and is a limited subset of functionality than you get with full WPF/.NET 3.5. >From the ground up there is so much in WPF that make it much better as a technology for doing full screen, multi-layered complex applications. But it WPF does create limitations that are not in .NET 3.5 by itself, but w/o WPF you really can't take advantage of the other end of the spectrum that I think you want to consider which is the designer environment: AIR is a developer environment of Flex Builder and a designer environment of either Flash or Flash Catalyst (coming to a theatre near you). .NET 3.5/WPF has Visual Studio for the developer and idealing Expression Studio for the designer (but said designer better have some solid coding chops to really make it useful). I.e. I still have not seen a designer do with Expression what I've seen designers do for a good decade with Flash. That being said, I've seen parity in coding output from both Flex Builder and Visual Studio. If you want to build a desktop operating system that replaces the existing one (man! who wouldn't) and it has to be cross platform, you really have no choice but to use AIR if you want to be outside the browser. I forget, but I'm pretty sure that AIR has many of the same sandbox protocols as Flash even though it is outside of the browser. This may prevent you from easily doing things at the desktop level that you might assume. Java from what I've seen is the only cross-platform distribution that allows you outside the browser give the user the option to allow you the full robust feature set of an installed desktop application. Of course, maybe you don't need that, but if you are trying to emulate an OS you just might. Oy! this just gets really complicated!! And I'm sure I'm butchering it to death and others are going to save me from myself. Good luck Greg! -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=41126 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
