Microsoft is indeed challenging the dominance of Adobe in the field of cross-browser, cross-platform and cross-device plug-ins by supporting rich interactive applications and .NET based web experiences with Silverlight, but Flash is still the indisputable market leader. The ballet for the largest slice of the market is far from being over with Microsoft releasing Silverlight 2 at the beginning of the week, and Adobe making available Flash 10 starting today, October 15.

“Designers and developers know if they deliver video, online games, rich Internet applications (RIAs) and other interactive experiences using Adobe Flash Player, they can reliably reach the entire Web,” explained David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “Flash Player 10 continues to set the pace for Internet innovation, and we’re excited to see how the community is already using it to create an entirely new class of experiences not previously achievable on the Web.”

Designed to integrate with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (including the Ubuntu 7 and Ubuntu 8 distributions of the open source operating system), Flash 10 brings a variety of enhancements including GPU hardware acceleration. At the same time, Flash 10 offers native animation and molding for three-dimensional processing, advanced audio options and enhancements related to custom filters and effects. Adobe did not disclose improvements, if any, impacting the Flash 10 runtime's performance, stability or reliability.

“The Silverlight technology today is as good or better than Flash. I would say that today. That doesn't mean it's as popular yet as Flash,” stated Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer talking about Silverlight 2.0. “I think we've got a very mature, even if we're only in our second release, we have a very mature technology, we've got very good development tools, and yet we know we probably have a way to go before we get most of the creative work that your agencies are doing moved off of Flash and onto Silverlight.”

Flash 10 is available for download here.

Silverlight 2 RTW (2.0.31005.0) is available for download here.