Dave Glover, an always delightful presenter, spoke on two topics this weekend. Saturday morning he spoke about Silverlight and the related Popfly, and Sunday morning he repeated his Windows Mobile 6.0 presentations from Code Camp Oz for those who missed it.
I have been reading many things about Silverlight over the past month or so but have been too overwhelmed to really look into it. Dave's coverage was just what I was looking for. Ultimately, Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to flash, and in version 1.0 with the JavaScript backend it is especially so. However, version 1.1 will be the real winner, combining the existing XAML/WPF based visual layer with .NET code behind.
The range of Microsoft Expression tools make drawing and animations look easy, even with Dave wrestling with a notebook touchpad. Microsoft are tackling portability of the Silverlight engine properly too with plugins for both IE and Firefox on Windows and even an implementation for Mac OS. The Linux community have stepped up to the plate too with their own complete implementation called Moonlight, developed in a stunning 21 days.
Popfly is a neat system for combining multiple "Web 2.0" applications into a clever mashup. Examples, like plotting Twitter messages onto Virtual Earth or building bar charts from custom web services are just the beginning.