A few days back, Steven discussed, briefly, Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight. He’s even given the Air Media Player a run. I’ve never been too big on Web 2.0-type stuff, (OK, I think it’s far from the “wave of the future” so many Kool-Aid freaks think it is) so I don’t pay it much attention. As a result, I hadn’t much more than heard the names.

With that, I set out to discover the purpose behind Silverlight and Air, and as a kind of precursor to doing some reviews of Air and Silverlight apps, give a short rundown of why, exactly, you should even give a damn about them.

An example of a desktop app would be Microsoft Word, an example of a full Web 2.0 app would be Google Docs. Adobe Air is a kind of hybrid between desktop based applications and full-blown Web 2.0 browser apps.

Silverlight and Air are known as Cross-Platform Desktop Frameworks. One of the issues that plagues both desktop and Web 2.0 apps is the fact that not everyone uses the same platform. Some use a PC with Windows. Some use Linux. Some use a Mac with OSX. Then you can toss in all the different web browsers. It can test the nerves of a web developer to make a 2.0 app that plays good with all those, even harder, perhaps nigh impossible to make one for the desktop with any remarkable features. Ask Steven. When he was still into dev, I recall many conversations with him trying to get something to run in XP and Vista, said conversation containing language that would make a longshoreman blush.

This hybrid approach gives developers the power to code applications in the languages Flash, Flex, HTML and Ajax, which currently are mainly found on web sites, into applications that can then be deployed as a desktop application. This opens the floodgates for a slew of apps that will work, theoretically, on any computer, with any operating system, with any browser.

As I said, I’ve had my misgivings about Web 2.0, my chief concerns being availability and security. Time will tell, but Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight have hit close enough to the mark to be sure that WinExtra will be keeping a close eye on things.

Conversation Tags: Web 2.0, Adobe, Adobe Air, Silverlight, Flash, HTML, Cross-Platform