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Silverlight runs client side, so I don't really know why you're putting scarequotes around that. It's like saying that Flash games aren't running "client side".

I'm writing an in-browser IDE for Python. Having a Python interpretor in the browser is incredibly useful for that.

There was a bit of talk a while back about integrating Moonlight (open-source implementation of Silverlight) into Firefox itself.

I'm not sure whether it was decided to be infeasible but I really liked the thought of having a general purpose VM available directly within the browser.

.Net has a standard library, that's why.

And a 200mb installer.

Silverlight's installer is 4MBish...

And the .Net installer? If you're using the .Net standard library, it's reasonable to assume .Net is a prerequisite.

http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/292203.aspx

Looks this has now been addressed with .Net 4.0. It's back down to 48MB.

Silverlight contains a large subset of the .Net Framework in that 5Mb install. You don't need (and it can't use) the full .Net Framework.

Didn't know that, thanks! 5mb is indeed quite reasonable.