Microsoft Silverlight is a technology that was originally built to compete with Flash, but never caught on with mainstream web developers as much. However, because of the existing Microsoft code base and the number of web and application developers familiar with with the underlying technologies, it soon outpaced Flash as the preferred form of interactive development when interfacing with Microsoft products. This was in part because it allowed significantly more interaction between Microsoft objects, but also because of the elegance of the suite and interoperability it offered across disciplines.
