@simonchadwick Using Silverlight for what is (basically) a blog/message boards is like using a sandblaster on a soup cracker*. In practice, both Silverlight and Flex are overkill unless you need features that aren't supported by current browsers - like easy pixel-perfect positioning for complex application previews, or application forms that don't lend themselves to the shortcomings of HTML forms very effectively. CSS is a solvable problem, and with good class/CSS development, it's not even particularly hard. (On the other hand, if you don't understand why CSS is the way it is or how to architect a good CSS solution or are inheriting a poorly-architected site, it can be a complete disaster.) Quite frankly, with HTML 5 and CSS3 on the mid-term horizon, I can't imagine why Microsoft is dumping as much money as it is into Silverlight to kill Flash, when both technologies will probably eventually disappear, anyway. * With special thanks to Scott Adams.