Good CIO Level article on Silverlight

CIO Magazine posted a good summary on Silverlight. We used the technology in a Proof of Concept to build a kiosk for our donor hall and from a user experience perspective it's a great toolset. CIO is right to point that Version 1.1 is the version you want if you want to target the platform as it supports the .NET framework and includes support for LINQ and web services.

Compared to Flash, the biggest advantage I see is that XAML is true 3D. I remember building things like car configurators for BMW and to try and get Flash to do fake 3D was a huge challenge. Silverlight is real 3D which means that doing animations that include zooming, tiling, sliding, and using 3D models could lead to some very interesting interfaces.

I'm interested to see how this platform evolves - I can see this tool becoming a real hit in the business applications space. Think of all the VB.NET intermediate developers out there who struggle with creating a really nice interface to an otherwise functional application. With a little bit of creative design and some nice tooling, Silverlight could turn a boring non-user friendly database application into something much more intuitive.