The New York Times recently launched version 2.0 of their Times Reader for Windows, Mac, and Linux, developed using Adobe’s AIR and Flex. This is available for download from the NY Times’ Time Reader 2.0 site or Adobe’s Marketplace.
The previous version of Times Reader was developed using Microsoft’s Silverlight and Windows Presentation Format (WPF). While this worked well on Windows PCs, its Mac version received poor feedback, as you can see in many of these comments on the NY Times official website . Moreover, there was no Linux version of this Reader available, since Microsoft’s technology doesn’t support the Linux Platform. We believe those reasons could have contributed to NY Times’ decision to select Adobe AIR for their next release.
We are not sure if Siverlight is good enough for development of eLearning. We are researching and experimenting with the use of Silverlight for developing eLearning content; we would soon be sharing our experiences through a blog post.
If you have experience in using Silverlight for eLearning, please do write in to share your thoughts.
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:14 am
I have done just a little sandbox development with Adobe AIR, none with Silverlight. However, as a web consumer — I have used experienced both Adobe AIR and Silverlight web applications and streaming media on both a Mac and Windows Vista PC.
Hands down… MS Silverlight presented problem after problem for me. I could install Silverlight on a Windows PC fine. I, an experienced computer user, had to work hard to get Silverlight installed. I am not impressed with Silverlight. I have uninstalled the plug-ins from my Mac. I have left them on my Vista instal.
However, I run from a webpage as quick as I can if it has Silverlight content.
Just my 2-cents as a web consumer and well, enough programming knowledge to be dangerous.
July 29th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
[...] developers. It helps us create interactive and engaging web-based Learning Solutions. Though Microsoft’s Silverlight is coming up, we don’t see it posing a challenge to Adobe’s Flash anytime [...]