Adobe and Silverlight are not the only players in this game. You should take a close look at Curl which has a much longer legacy and provides more capabilities than either Adobe AIR, Flex or Microsoft Silverlight. For example, Curl can handle 2D and 3D rendering, is available on Linux, Windows, and Mac (beta), and can process hundreds of thousands of records (an order of magnitude more than any other RIA solution).

Curl is not as pervasive as Adobe Flash but its very competitive with Adobe AIR and Silverlight which actually do not have a very large share of the market yet. In addition, Curl is targeted for the enterprise rather than mass consumer applications so it capabilities are less multi-media and more enterprise focused.

Adobe greased up Monday for its wrestling match with Microsoft over who gets to call the shots in the all-important rich Internet apps (RIA) department, that blurry future where web applications and desktop applications start looking and acting like each other