what is main diff between ajax and silverlight

what is main diff between ajax and silver light

Both are based on javascript.

silverlight gives you rich controls and rich client ui.

and ajax will give you same but not easy as silverlight.

1. Both are client technologies bur are not replacement for each other.

2. Silverlight is mainly used for rich UI. With Ajax you can give better experience to user with Aync http requests.

3. Ajax is a technology specification and you can find many Ajax platforms/libraries. One of those is ASP.Net Ajax. Silverlight is microsoft technology which is similar to Adobe Flex

4. ASP.Net Ajax provides both pure client apis and server tools like (Update Panel), With Silverlight you can have server integration by using the web services.

5. ASP.Net Ajax works on JSON platform based on Javascript and Xml. Silverlight is like a browser add-on that can understand XMAL code used by Silverlight. Thus you dont need any additional installation to view a website that is using Ajax but for silverlight you have to install silverlight on your system.

6. Use silverlight when you need rich UI (like adobe flex) and dont have heavy server dependency. Ajax can be used to make web applications perform better (if used in right manner) and to provide better user experience than conventional websites by avoiding fill page refreshes

7. It is recommended that you dont put a lot of business logic in both Ajax and Silverlight as it will be ran on client, sensitive and critical operations are always preferred on server.