Attack of the Developer tools 

Lets Continue,

In this second part we continue the discussion from the developer's side, and take a look at the development options available with Flash and Silverlight.

For any Web 2.0 website, the creating of websites has become more like developing software. The design of the user experience and interaction, the development of the client-side side functionality have become as important as the visuals. Regardless of the what technologies are being used to create and deliver the content, the development bit is more important than ever. The applications written today need to be scalable to be able to successfully meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Flash and Silverlight aren't just for creating simple animations and banners, they are target runtimes for highly interactive content and rich internet applications. As such they need a proper development environment, and a good workflow with designers.

Neither Flash, nor Silverlight are technologies which require an investment of hundreds or thousands of dollars. Both support free development environments, and it is now possible to create content written in either for free. However, both Microsoft and Adobe have professional solutions for creating content as well......

To read more... http://www.thinkdigit.com/Features/Flash-vs-Silverlight-Episode-2-Attack-of_3573.html