Outside the enterprise, where design and UX is just as important as development, Silverlight won’t get much traction. Adobe dominates the design world, and interface designers won’t be interested in giving it up. I give Microsoft credit for the improvements they’ve made in their design tools, and innovative things like Sketchflow, but it’s not enough.

A few years from now everyone will know Silverlight as that thing you use at work for the corporate videos HR makes you watch, and Flash will be, as it is today, one of the invisible things in the background that makes the rest of the internet work.

Silverlight applications can be designed in a way to load quickly with limited functionality first, and gradually load additional modules as needed (just like Flash).

Also the spinning thing can be customized if that’s not your thing.

However, Silverlight can be equally useful for enterprise web applications, as evidenced by the fact that Continental is building their call center application using Silverlight.

6. The Push Towards Enterprise: Goldfarb says that Microsoft is making a a significant effort to show businesses that Silverlight can also be used internally to host and support rich media applications. For example, Continental Airlines is using Silverlight as the foundation for their call center application for employees who are taking reservations and supplying information

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