Ladies and gentleman... Microsoft today has officially launched his clone of Macromedia Flash 
, SilverLight (alias WPF/E), a new cross-platform, cross-browser plug-in for developing rich applications for the web.
Microsoft Silverlight will enable content providers to deliver media experiences and rich interactive applications that incorporate media, graphics, animation, and much, much more with full application functionality on both Windows and Mac platforms and inside IE, Firefox and Safari.
The first question that comes after the SilverLight announce is that it's really a Flash-clone "made in Microsoft" and, despite what someone could say, I think that SilverLight is exactly positioned on the market where Macromedia Flash actually is.
Like Macromedia Flash, SilverLight requires a plugin on the browser 
and it permits you to create animated Internet Applications. SilverLight is scriptable (like Flash) but it's XAML-based and with the growing of the Microsoft Expression family building a XAMl file will be alwasy more simple, so SilverLight has all the chance to become more standard-compliant than Flash (but obviously, Flash is the actual leader).
The second natural question that comes out is: SilverLight and Flash will compete on the same market? Who will be the winner?
Only the time will give us a response... Flash is the leader but SilverLight is a little guy that can grow a lot!