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What's with all the nerd rage over Silverlight? Ever been to that web page where they built an OS in Silverlight that runs in your browser? Its cool as hell! Hell if the FOSSies wouldn't have taken pitchforks to moonlight you'd have a nice cross platform framework that could do some very cool stuff.

Would it fit every use case? Nope, but that is true of ANY framework, but what's bad about having more tools in your toolbox?

As for TFA that's nice, but the performance of Firefox compared to the Chromium based has been so piss poor for the last several versions I moved all my customers off Firefox awhile back. And don't tell me it runs nice on your Core i7 with an SSD, I have to support a wide range of customers with all kinds of hardware, from late model P4s and Pentium Ds to netbooks to the latest multicores and FF hits the hard drive harder, is more likely to hang, you can really tell the devs have cared more about the GUI and their side projects like MozOS than they do FF of late.

Up to the 4.x branch they were making steady but measurable progress. You could tell each version was getting better and I looked forward to upgrading FF. Then around 5 they just went off the rails. Hell I can get an extra hour on my netbook by NOT using Firefox, and on my nettop I can sit there and watch FF slam the CPU to 100% on load, slam to 100% on new tab, hell it can slam the CPU to 100% scrolling the bookmarks, which I admit I have a ton of 'em, but Dragon and the other Chromium based just don't do that.

From what I've been told silverlight is pretty damned powerful, after all it'd have to be to make an entire OS in a browser. I'd love to see someone try to hack something that impressive together with just JavaScript!

How about an actual, in-wide-use, open source OS? bellard.org/jslinux/

But you are missing the big IF here friend and that is IF MSFT can get people to take Windows 8, and from the now 170 customers I've shown it to I have gotten NOTHING but hate. they don't like it, they don't want it, they wanted to know if they got stuck with a Windows 8 machine " can you put Windows 7 on it?". hell the closest i got to an endorsement of Windows 8 was this: "That's a nice looking cell phone screen, is that Android? i heard its quite nice...what do you mean Windows? Windows what? Well that is just stupid! Why would i want a cell phone on my computer?"

Frankly I think Ballmer is gonna get a pink slip when he finds out that like Vista you can't just ram crap down folk's throats anymore, MSFT just doesn't have the pull. The PCs being sold now that run Win 7 are frankly so insanely overpowered that most folks could keep them for a decade or more and not care. Does anybody think Suzy the checkout girl is gonna stress an AMD quad with 4gb of RAM? of course not. So when Ballmer's Folly comes out I predict we'll hear a giant "Yuck!" and folks will stick with win 7. if he tries to quit selling 7 to force people the pirates are gonna have a field day as Win 7 is beyond trivial to pirate.

As for TFA just one more tech Ballmer will most likely sacrifice on his altar to Steve Jobs and mobile. I swear for a CEO the man is retarded, trying to stick Windows on ARM? What a fucking disaster! they should stick with X86 on windows and just keep improving WinPhone for ARM. From what I've been told silverlight is pretty damned powerful, after all it'd have to be to make an entire OS in a browser. I'd love to see someone try to hack something that impressive together with just JavaScript!

But instead of helping Moonlight and making it a solid multi-OS framework Ballmer is probably gonna piss it all away trying to be Jobs. I can just imagine his "pep" talks "And with this we'll be as hip and cool as Apple! Yes we will! We really will! STOP LAUGHING AT ME!" followed by chairs flying.Oh and if there are any Apple guys here? I was one of those that made fun of you when the pepsi guy was running the company you depended on into the ground and I just want to say...I'm sorry alright? Its not funny anymore! I don't want to spend two damned years wiping Windows 8 like I did Vista!

Exactly MR AC, all three techs, .NET, Silverlight, and HTML 5 have their place. .NET for the backend, Silverlight for cool GUI heavy stuff like this which for those that don't have Silverlight/Moonlight is an entire Web OS in a browser, and HTML 5 for quick web apps. Why everyone thinks everything has to be an "X killer" is beyond me. probably a combo of buzzword bingo and page view rankings I suppose.

As for TFA I'm sure the guys out their writing .NET code, or who have plenty of .NET code in their company are quite happy about this. One would think having more choices would be celebrated here, but I guess that isn't true unless it comes from teh Google.

Not to mention you'll still need GTK 3.2 installed on the target machine, which makes it NO different than .NET or Silverlight. Hell I would say Silverlight comes out ahead as unlike this I have been able to run The Silverlight OS in a browser demo on multiple browsers with NO plugins (tested on FF, Comodo Dragon, and Opera) as long as Silverlight is installed on the OS.

So I don't really think they score much bragging rights here when others have not only done it but done it better by making theirs browser agnostic, and if they had truly followed the HTML V5 standard then it should work just as well on IE 9 and Chrome as you pointed out. The fact that it only works on FF 4 smells like a hack to me, and we know how well those end up working out.

Question: What EXACTLY is wrong with Silverlight, other than you don't like the parent company? Because while I'm not a coder I'd have to say the SilveOS full OS in a browser is a pretty damned impressive demo. I'd say if you can cook up something THAT cool in Silverlight and actually have it run smooth in bog standard Firefox with no funkiness needed you ought to be able to cook up anything in it.

Me personally I never understood this whole "hate a language" thing (except maybe Brainfuck, but that was evil from birth) since all languages are tools and it is up to the coder to use it correctly instead of acting like a monkey with a wrench beating on a bomb. I've seen damned nice apps written in everything from C to VB and the coders I've known usually didn't have any trouble picking up a language.

So what exactly is wrong with the language known as Silverlight? I haven't seen it used a lot, but that doesn't mean it isn't a perfectly usable tool, just unpopular.

Two problems with your scenario: 1.-You just cut out smartphones, netbooks/nettops, pads, and everything else that isn't an X86 PC with a CD player, and 2.-Almost no computer is set by default to boot CD first so you're gonna have to pay an army of support guys to walk all those grandmas through switching boot order, which for those with little PC experience would probably be about as daunting as diffusing a bomb.

The problem with all the ideas I've read here so far is there is a huge gap between "real security" and "grandma friendly" and it is doubtful those two will ever meet. Now since banks are a business like any other too many nasty hoops and everyone takes their business down the street, so you have to make it simple.

So far the only thing I've seen that might work might be something like this where you have a virtual OS running in the browser. Make a custom version that only goes to the bank site and connects with SSL and has a virtual keyboard for input and it should make it a real PITA for malware to get the data while making it relatively easy for the consumer.

Now I'm sure somebody will point out hacks to get around my idea, but that is the catch will ALL of these ideas, isn't it? No matter what you plan some hacker is gonna figure out a way around. As has been said many times the only secure system is one with all the wires cut embedded in concrete.

Hi MR AC! If MSFT ends up win a monopoly with regards to WinPhone 7 it will be because of that age old bit "Developers,Developers,Developers,Developers,Developers" because as PopCap has taught us casual gaming is a BIG business, and with Silverlight 5 developers will be able to sell a user a game for their phone while also giving them a version for their desktop that will allow carry over of things like position, scores, achievements, etc. And if you want to see just how powerful silverlight is just check this out which isan OS running completely in Silverlight 4 that is taking up less than 4% CPU and is snappy as hell even though I nearly have my CPUs nearly pegged out doing a 16x9 to 4x3 video conversion.

So while MSFT is usually late to the game, you have to give Ballmer credit for sticking to his mantra. Like them or not MSFT usually has the best and easiest to use developer tools and I have no doubt that Silverlight 5 will be easy to code for and allow the developer to cook up some seriously powerful and cool stuff. MSFT aren't usually nearly as anal about control as old Steve is, which as we have seen by the many articles from pissed off developers of rejected apps does rub many the wrong way. But from what I understand you can use your choice of Silverlight, XNA, or HTML, so it isn't like you are locked into a single framework (does Apple still forbid cross compilation?) like with iOS.

Ultimately I think the big battle won't be between iOS and Android, but between WinPhone 7 and Android, simply because having multiple carriers and devices will drive prices down and give users much more choice. To me the big question will be will fragmentation bite Android in the ass, because I still see 1.5 devices on stores shelves, whereas IIRC MSFT set pretty strict basic requirements so any WinPhone 7 device will be up-datable. Either way the next year should be quite interesting in mobile. Of course if HP was to market WebOS well (doubtful) we could still end up with a 4 way horse race. So interesting times ahead.

Actually if you are using an up to date version of Firefox you are already using their JIT which is called TraceMonkey BTW. There is also a link there to the code tree if any of the coders here would like to see if they can make it even better.

As for TFA it shows me that MSFT needs a better leader than Ballmer. I have seen some truly awesome Silverlight apps such as the SilveOS Silverlight OS in a browser, but MSFT just doesn't seem to be pushing the tech like they should. It is like they have this powerful framework but the suits just don't have a clue what to do with it. Hell just looking at SilveOS I can think of a few, like having OS VMs stored on a server at corporate headquarters that could be launched from ANY PC anywhere and give the employee a secure OS with access to the Intranet from anywhere in the world!

Silverlight is good tech that could easily do more than HTML anything, but MSFT just don't know how to promote it. Kinda sad really. BTW you can launch the browser in SilveOS and surf, so Yo Dawg you can have a browser in a browser so you can surf while you surf.

No, XAML is MSFT's answer to "everything...in a box" pretty much. If you have Windows and silverlight check this out, and remember that silverlight is a subset of XAML. With XAML you can have FMV, audio, apps, pretty much anything and everything, online or off, and use hardware acceleration (via DirectX of course) to make it all flow smooth as butter.

Say what you want about MSFT, and I'll agree they have done some seriously boneheaded maneuvers (canceling the family pack for W7 was seriously dumb) but their R&D dept does cook up some cool shit.