Moonlight for the moment has stability issues. I'm using version 1.9.3, which is a preview, and version 1 which is more stable is worthless since I haven't found many clips compatible with it.
What I do like about it is that Microsoft supports it. The first time I installed Moonlight was because of a page that required Silverlight, and on clicking the "Install Silverlight" button, I got redirected to the Moonlight page.
That's pretty neat.
Silverlight has great potential, because you can reverse-engineer it more easily, has support for multiple languages and you only need a text editor to create a Silverlight clip. And in version 3 they are introducing an API for plugable codecs, which is making it possible to stream OGG/Theora and Vorbis files with a Silverlight applet.
Flash is more popular because of inertia, and because many designers use Macs and have invested heavily in Adobe tools. Microsoft Expression only runs on Windows. They would have a lot more to gain if they released a Mac port.
> Flash is more popular because of inertia, and because many designers use Macs and have invested heavily in Adobe tools.
A minor irony, Flash has had a bad reputation peformancewise on the Mac platform for a good decade now... and the migration from PPC to Intel hasn't helped matters much, as is my understanding.
From my experience, Flash has only ever worked optimally in Internet Explorer for Mac OS 9.x. Every other platform sucked hind tit. These days I bet Windows takes priority.
What I do like about it is that Microsoft supports it. The first time I installed Moonlight was because of a page that required Silverlight, and on clicking the "Install Silverlight" button, I got redirected to the Moonlight page. That's pretty neat.
Silverlight has great potential, because you can reverse-engineer it more easily, has support for multiple languages and you only need a text editor to create a Silverlight clip. And in version 3 they are introducing an API for plugable codecs, which is making it possible to stream OGG/Theora and Vorbis files with a Silverlight applet.
Flash is more popular because of inertia, and because many designers use Macs and have invested heavily in Adobe tools. Microsoft Expression only runs on Windows. They would have a lot more to gain if they released a Mac port.