I just wanted to throw a Thought I had about Microsoft Silverlight.Net. What I like about this development tool is that it is a cross platform web development tool.
Silverlight.net is a direct competitor of Flash by Adobe. It fills the same space and same needs. The difference really is in the development environment. You can create Silverlight applications using Expression Media and Visual Studio.Net 2008.
Some Pro's are that developers can use there current knowledge to create beautiful and exciting looking web applications using nothing more than your current development skills. You do not need to know how to use or create Flash objects using the Flash Development tool.
Some of the other nice features is the ability to use LINQ to SQL and with the inclusion of Infragistics in the Silverlight realm some really nice full feature controls to make the developers life easier. Lets face it, if it was not for third party or Microsoft controls in the Microsoft development environment there would be no developers left with hair.
On the other hand using Flash is much easier if you are creating flash video's for your web site. you can take a standard movie and/or pictures and make a flash movie with some great transitions in a very short time using the Flash developer and Flash video encoder.
It is important to say that the current version of Silverlight is still in Beta and currently is Beta 2. It is available for all browsers including Linux and MAC OS/X.
If interested check it out at the Microsoft site listed here http://silverlight.net/default.aspx
