Adobe AIR vs Microsoft Silverlight

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe AIR is well-suited for a developer who is already familiar with Flash and AS3. It is well-suited for 2D app development using Starling or another third-party graphics library. However, to be used appropriately and avoid errors and poor performance, a basic understanding of programming principles is needed, so it's not great for a designer who hasn't studied a lot of coding.

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Verified User

Employee in Other

Higher Education Company, 1001-5000 employees

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We use it for almost all kinds of applications. It's not important if the app is small or big. It's good for DB connections, SOA architecture, office files transformations. The good thing is that it's client side, so we don't have to waste our server resources but can use the client's computer for business and visualization layer.

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Mateusz Michałek

Ekspert

Orange PolskaTelecommunications, 10,001+ employees

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Pros

Easy to develop for, skills for programs such as Adobe Animate and basic backend translate well to the program.
Stable across multiple different platforms.
Can get a working prototype really quickly

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Chris Cookson

Junior Animator

MediaMonksAnimation, 201-500 employees

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Easy to implement
No need for additional frameworks on client side
Out of browser capabilities

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Mateusz Michałek

Ekspert

Orange PolskaTelecommunications, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

Adobe Air applications are taxing on a user's CPU, especially considering how simple a lot of the apps are.
Updating and installing Air based applications is very user unfriendly, often asks for updates that are aggressively pushed to the front of the user.
As HTML 5 has gotten more and more sophisticated, for basic things a lot of times browser-based apps make a lot more sense.

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Chris Cookson

Junior Animator

MediaMonksAnimation, 201-500 employees

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Cient side office support
Additional controls

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Mateusz Michałek

Ekspert

Orange PolskaTelecommunications, 10,001+ employees

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Usability

Adobe AIR 7.0

Based on 1 answer

Although Adobe AIR is just an SDK without an actual "UI" it's commonly used within Flash, Flash Builder, or FlashDevelop. Considering the integration with Flash IDE, there are very few tools that can compete with its features.

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Thomas Gorence

Software Developer

IntelityEntertainment, 11-50 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Generally stacks up fairly negatively, program definitely has its place, I appreciate what it can allow but now most desktop apps are fine enough as browser based experiences or for personal use mobile is the way to go. Air isn't the best environment for that.

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Chris Cookson

Junior Animator

MediaMonksAnimation, 201-500 employees

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Microsoft Silverlight allows more adaptability and it integrates well with our products across the company. Adobe Flash crashes or doesn't work with our shipping campus.

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Verified User

Technician in Information Technology

Financial Services Company, 201-500 employees

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Return on Investment

It's a safe environment, great for entry-level programmers to get started and show their ideas.
Easy to get started, build and iterate.
However, at a certain point, Air applications can become unwieldy so for any serious project. We often would rather build it all outside of a middleware environment.

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Chris Cookson

Junior Animator

MediaMonksAnimation, 201-500 employees

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