We first looked at the Silverlight when it was going by it’s codename, WPF/E. Mike Wood and Aaron spent 2 weeks in Redmond evaluating the authoring tools. We walked away generally confused about the immediate opportunities and disappointed that it did not include more of the capabilities of WPF.

One of the unexpected things for me is that version 1.1 (now in alpha) of Silverlight allows for compiled .NET code to be distributed and run within the majority of browsers on Windows and Mac OSs (and some Mobile phones). This gives the platform a huge speed and portability advantage over JavaScript/Ajax and opens RIA development to programmers using a variety of common programming languages (python, ruby, c#, JavaScript 3.0 and others supported by .NET).

Given our current expertise in Flash, I’m still don’t think the platform is a great fit for our current work.  However, this and other news coming out of the launch makes me much more interesting to see where it goes next.

Some links for the interested:
Tech Crunch: Why Silverlight Is Important
Talk Crunch : Interview With Product Manager For Microsoft Silverlight
The Universal Desktop: The scoop on Silverlight for developers
The Official Silverlight Site