Flash vs. Silverlight:: which one is better?

Today for any Web 2.0 standard web application client side scripting is very important.Now the web application development has got several changes.Today developer wants to write code quickly and with ease.To fulfill this requirement tends to develop Integrated Development Environment to write code easily and IDEs also provide several functionality.

If we compare Flash and Silverlight on the basis of there performance, ease to develop applications,Compatibilities with different platforms,Online support. Then we  can easily compare both of them.

1. Performance:-     Today Flash plugins can be found for any OS and web browser.These plugins are of about 1 to 2 MB for windows , Mac and Linux. These Flash applications works well on all of these platforms.Adobe software engineers worked well on this technology. This is the reason that Adobe has been on top for more than 10 years.Sometimes it is noticed that sometimes it makes a website heavy.On the other hand if we talk about Microsoft Silerlight then we find that it also provide an interactive feel for any application also loads faster than Adobe Flash.But still Microsoft Silverlight sdk4 is a new technology. These days not every computer has got silverlight plugin to play silverlight application. And size of silverlight runtime environment is about 4 Mb for windows , for Mac it is about 8 Mb. In Linux there is a substitute for silverlight named Moonlight. But this size does not matter too much.
2. Ease to develop applications:-   Ease of application development is a big matter of concern. Adobe Flash is an open source technology.Adobe has given it a new dimension by introducing Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR. But it is well known that Microsoft has been the best in the development of application development tools.Microsoft visual Studio has been the best developer tool and it provides support for silverlight development. Microsoft provides a huge amount of support and help for its tools.Hence its make easy to develop silverlight applications.

Online Support:-  Microsoft provide huge amount of  online help and tutorials which makes it easy to learn application development. Adobe Flex mainly works on action script and silverlight support .net languages like c#. C# has got several capabilities to work .Hence application development is more flexible on silverlight sdk.
   
                                 In this way we see that Microsoft silverlight is much more superior than Adobe Flash.