Slashdot Mirror
Silverlight Released, Linux Version Coming
Today Microsoft announced the release of Silverlight 1.0 for Windows and Mac OS X. This cross-browser, cross-platform browser plug-in is fully supported and competes directly with Adobe Flash. Included in this release was the promise from Microsoft to support the 100% compatible Linux version, called Moonlight.
They also provide a complete list of the supported codecs. I hope that, though I'm never touching *light with a 10-foot pole, this move makes Adobe finally release a x86_64 version of Flash (yeah, we all hate those banners and such, but being able to watch youtube videos without hacks like nspluginviewer would be quite nice. Besides, my nspluginviwer-ed version of Flash SUX at playing real time streaming video...).
My 0.02 cents
I hope this means that the demo of Netflix on cross platform browsers isn't too far from becoming a reality. Honestly, the only reason I even have a bootcamp partition on my MacBook Pro is for NetFlix's OnDemand feature.
Microsoft will include Silverlight as an update and makes it high priority. Silverlight becomes success and passes Flash as the major app in the sector. MS will discontinue Moonlight because of BS reason. Linux is locked out by vendor lock-in.
This is purely hypothetical but not at all improbable.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
...stick to open formats and Free code ;-)
.net to kill off the huge popularity of Java, especially now that Java is moving to GPL they are trying extra hard to kill it off.
They are trying hard to encourage
I generally hate microsoft as much as the next slashdotter, but on this they seem to be doing the right thing. I'm sure the cynical will find something evil about it, but I hope most people see it as an attempt by microsoft to be more cross platform and therefore "friendly" to the industry, and that is a good thing.
will it be called sunlight :-)
Queue AKAImBatman's anti-Silverlight rant, which ignores that Silverlight and HTML do different things, in five... four... three... two...
...what can I do with it? Are there any sites or interesting apps out yet to try?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Want an alternative to Adobe's Flash? Take a look at gnash, the GNU Project's Flash player. It's still in alpha but works with a lot of flash stuff, including eg YouTube, and on 64-bit.
We don't need Yet Another Microsoft 'Standard'.
-- Alastair
If so, why the different name?
I smell a Big Market Differentiation Rat. But then, everything MS touches, stinks.
you had me at #!
I can't wait to see the EULA that comes with it - my money is on a legal backdoor
Like I'm gonna let Billy boy put his binary in my linux box.
Silverlight has been on mlb.com for a few weeks now, I guess they were one of the first partners. I find this all extremely obnoxious as that site is a huge crap mix of Flash, pop-ups, WMV, and now Silverlight. And that's not counting all the issues with the pay-to-view content, DRM, and content black outs. Sometimes all I want to see is some highlights from last night's games, but I don't want to jump through hoops to do so. Silverlight is just the next annoying hoop, it may look pretty, but it's also on fire.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
It doesn't appear to work with Mozilla Firefox. I wonder when they'll fix that?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
-
Microsoft are publicly endorsing Linux as a respectable OS. Not more of the "multiplatform = Windows and Mac OS" crap.
-
It does appear that Microsoft is willing to conduct a true partnership here - even offering Novell their internal test suites, which means they really do want it to work. Hopefully this isn't a temporary thing.
However, on the other hand,-
"[D]etails that might be necessary to implement 1.0, beyond what is currently published on the web"
...why are not all Silverlight specs and APIs publicly available? Are people supposed to pay money to develop on this platform, or are they strategically delaying publishing the specs, or what? In any case it sounds very fishy. Enlighten me if there is a good explanation for this that I am missing.
-
The codecs are binary-only and only for use in a web browser. This is annoying, but it is about the same as Adobe do with Flash, I guess. Bad, but not quite 'Microsoft' bad.
So what is going on here? Hard to say. The only thing I am sure about is that after years of Miguel de Icaza following a not-always-popular pro-Microsoft approach, today he must feel quite vindicated: Microsoft has taken another big step towards respecting and collaborating with Linux (or at least Novell), and Miguel is a big part of that.FYI, it won't work if you have Flashblock enabled on FF.
Slackware
Doesn't this sound like the history of the browser all over again:
Someone comes out with a technology that threatens Microsoft's dominance: Netscape.
Microsoft develops a multiplatform technology to defeat it: IE on Mac.
Microsoft incorporates it into its OS to get it into 90% of the PCs.
Once the competition is destroyed, it levels off development, and ends support on non-Windows platforms: IE on Mac.
It'll support *light on Linux/OSX until Flash is defeated.
I've been creating some Silverlight apps the last monts and my impresions are very positive. I have created some flash apps in the past, and there is no comparation. With Silverlight you have a very important subset of the .NET platform ready to use. Silverlight is not only the presentation forms (whichis also goos), but you can transparently use databases, manipulate and parse HTLM, wire handler events for HTML, excellent communication capabilities, and a lot more. IMO everything is more powerful/organized than the flash conteirpart.... Way to go!
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Why is the entire front page populated with stories by kdawson? Did the rest of the "editors" quit or something? It'd be nice to have more of a mix of stories on occasion.
You are missing the point here. Native 64bit flash.
I would hope that Novell were awake enough to include actual licenses for Microsoft patents in last year's pact. I would hope that would protect Mono and Moonlight from patent-fu.
So far, what they've done is create "yet-another-MS-proprietary-format" to compete with the existing standard. Microsoft's new tool offers almost nothing technically innovative (at which I must say I'm shocked, shocked!) and exists merely to compete with Flash for the simple reason that Flash exists and Microsoft doesn't own it. There's no immediate financial benefit to MS from this, since they're giving it away (the sample is always free, right?)
I don't expect the Mac version of this to last past the point where this gets to 50% market penetration (Mac IE, anyone?).
This is another exercise in Microsoft suckage, straight up.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Original Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.
.NET attacks. Silverlight offers bot-net herders a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications that can be used for spam, IRC, DDoS and XSS "I hax0r3d j0or payGe". Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of all major attacks.
True translation: Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in that will ultimately be leveraged by bot-net herders using the next generation of
Infiltrated dot Net
Personal computers are now fast enough that we can add yet another layer of abstraction between the hardware and the applications.
I have a hunch this will succeed, because it will target web developers looking for the easiest way to make web pages "fancier." There's a huge market for this. 90% of the people you make web pages for will have no comments at all except, "Can you make the logo fade in and fly around like on www.ultrashitty.com?"
So about 20 years from now, we'll be developing applications for the Silverlight platform which will have changed names ten times by then, and it will support the Big 3 OS's which have become entrenched and have nearly identical functionality. Someone will have come along and copied an old idea to produce a new OS which is slightly better than the Big 3, but will be fighting an uphill battle because it's not Silverlight compatible.
At that point, people will realize that computers are fast enough to run a layer on top of Silverlight that's also compatible with Platinumlight, the Silverlight copy that's nearly ready for the new OS. A company will produce that, sell to Microsoft, and the cycle will continue with the Big 4 OS's.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Open letter to Adobe - release Flash under the GNU GPL today
Dear Adobe,
No doubt you've seen the news that Microsoft and Novell are to work on a version of Silverlight for GNU/Linux. This puts Silverlight onto all three major platforms now, and puts yourselves and us into a difficult position. As the free software community, we want users of computers to have freedom to do all the jobs they can, including all those nice interactive websites out there that use Flash. We have Gnash now, but it's not finished yet, but it at least lets us look at YouTube movies in the browser with little or no problem, and Homestar Runner works very well as well. We're not there yet, but we're getting somewhere. Now, from your point of view, you give away the Flash player, but only in binary form, which means that while I'm sure it's better than Gnash, your license prevents us from using it with freedom. So, here's the rub... if you'll do a little thing for us, we can do some great things for you. We can help you beat Microsoft and crush Silverlight, but you're going to have to do something a little unusual, and a lot of people at Adobe aren't going to like it, but you have to do this and do it quickly.
Here goes... Make Flash free software, specifically, release Flash - the player, the editor, the server, for all platforms, including embedded stuff, under the GNU GPL v3 and do it quickly. As soon as you do this, we can start to win. We can get Flash Player onto the One Laptop Per Child machines, which gets a ton more eyeballs looking at Flash. We can get gNewSense, Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, Slackware, Mandriva and all the others to distribute Flash Player with their distributions. OpenSolaris can have Flash Player, too. You can still sell copies of the Flash editor, in lovely cardboard boxes on the shelves of computer stores, even as Free Software - you just need to add value. Bundle DVDs of freely licensed shapes, characters, sounds, loops and effects and dead-tree editions of your now freely licensed manuals, and people will still buy it, and of course, you bundle it in with things like Creative Suite, so it gets onto more machines, and you make it a free of charge download, too. You encourage people to torrent it, and the source, and you'll see more features being added, you'll see more video formats being supported and you'll see people doing amazing things with software you created, but only if you act quickly and get this right.
Don't lose this to Microsoft, for the sake of freedom of computer users everywhere, for the sake of a free web and for the sake of generations of people to come, don't let Microsoft get away with this.
Sun are doing this with Java, they did it with OpenOffice.org. You can do this as well.
It's entirely down to you now. If you need help, ask. If you have questions, shout.
Call the Free Software Foundation today, and make this happen.
(+1-617-542-594)
Do the right thing.
Do it.
Best,
matt
Exploring Freedom blog.
you had me at #!
Why? All they need to do is make a point-and-click "silverlight director" and dictate that everybody must use that to create their silverlight files.
... they'd be killing their own market and give room for a competitor to arise.
Because they are marketing it as a programmable language in Javascript/C#/Ruby/Python
So now people can pwn my linux box by exploiting microsoft bugs ?
I doubt this is a problem with silverlight over all and probably just this player. I tried watching the halo videos at http://halo.msn.com/videosHD.aspx but whenever I tried to pick another video at the bottom it just played the same one again no matter what I picked. Is anyone else having this issue?
This space for rent.
Microsoft only goes cross-platform when they are trying to screw a competitor with superior market position. If they aren't, they go as proprietary as they can.
In this case they're attacking a stupendously well-entrenched player, so they go cross-platform.
Here's my prediction: Silverlight 2.0 claims to be "Flash-compatible" (implementing 95% of Flash 6, say) and when you install it, helpfully remaps Application/Shockwave-Flash to Silverlight so that any recent Flash files appear borked. They've been doing this to QuickTime for ten years now...
Everyone is wondering what the bait and switch scheme is. Perhaps there is none. Microsoft may be realizing that the OS battle is a losing one. Just look at the Vista fiasco. The move to from local apps to web services has been predicted for a while and has had several false starts, but recently there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Microsoft doesn't care if the the underlying operating system is Linux as long as you are running their web services on top of it.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Amen! Ditto the Adobe abomination.
Acording to CNet (http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9769714-7.html):
Version 1.1 will be announced in may, and will be tightly integrated with .NET. Game over. Mono can't keep up.
Nooooooo! We don't need security holes in our linux browsers..
Thanks.. but NO!
Seriously man, why don't you go spend some time working on your own code rather than rag on other people about their choice of names?
... and at night working on my Ph.D., I need these few moments over lunch and break for my sanity :)
I code during my day job
But regarding the name, I find it ironic. The distro basically takes a much more popular one and removes the binary blobs... and then when you say it, it sounds like "nuisance", which to me is exactly what it is. Makes you think, they didn't think, or ?
Nostradamus too!, he said it: "And the light sall become silver while Redmon the giant cooperates with finish penguins and mexican primates. The silver moon will emerge and the end will just be around the corner"
Flash does suck in your case, but at the same time *someone* likes to develop using it. Who are these mysterious developers?
Because there is absolutely no incentive. Look at all the reasons Flash is being used: ads, quick games, video, music, forms, etc. With the exception of ads, there is a totally free (open source) method that could work (java, ajax, svg, ogg, etc.). So then why would the "FOSS" community want to reinvent something?
While making a plugin is not so difficult, who would develop for it if there is no content for it? And if there was content for it, why would they want to move from their already existing platforms (Flash) and switch to something new?
Actually I've seen some Nokia devices that support Flash, I think one of the mini tablets also runs Linux. So Flash *could* be more widely supported, and I suspect it *eventually* will. ... I'll bet Windows embedded devices will support Silverlight. ... But again, without content it doesn't matter.
Windows still won't ship with an OGG codec. I also remember reading that OGG was notably more CPU-intensive (still true?). While I have no objections to OGG, I do wish it was more widely supported (especially in some more popular mp3 players).
*** That's the biggest kicker. *** I personally think major FOSS "developer" products are seriously lacking when it comes to multimedia compared to commercial products (Flash, Director, etc.). Even if there was an perfect plugin, the SDK and all related tools including deployment would take a serious effort to polish to be even remotely competitive with current offerings.
A great goal, but unrealistic. In the end the commercial incentive for Flash (or Silverlight) are what pushes it forward, not any form of openness or accessibility. If you can't make money out of it, I doubt it will be widely used or developed.
Ultimately it would be in everyone's best interest to use what (non-proprietary) plugin systems that already exist interfaced with already open standards/technology.
Linux Resources
"Why not, instead of setting an arbitrary point where things just stop working, we could set up ANOTHER warning arbitrary point that says something like 'Your PST file has reached 1.5GB. At 2GB, Outlook will break.'"
Outlook 2003 does provide a warning at about 1.9G and will no longer let you add new content, but you can still read, remove, archive, etc. They also introduced a "new" PST format with a hard limit greater than 2GB (but, only readable by newer Outlook versions).
The mind boggles at who in their right mind would write such a thing.
I'd like to know what the people at Microsoft have against anyone else having a slice of the computer software pie. While I appreciate the idea of competition, Microsoft isn't about competing fairly. It appears they will not be content until they are the only software company left. Do they have so little confidence in their own ability to compete that they must drive everyone else into oblivion?
Just for the record, I despise Flash in all of its incarnations. Most web sites only use it for annoying ads anyway, so avoiding it is a small loss. But why Microsoft feels it has to drive Flash out of the market with their monopolistic efforts is beyond me.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Did anyone notice how M$ says that a version will be available for W2K "Soon**"? The "**" means v1.1 only--and I smell a bait & switch coming... "We'll tell you it's coming sometime next year--but wouldn't you rather have Vista?"
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
Well, ok then. I suppose that's nice of them, but I would think that they could have added that to some of their service packs, or at least have it generate an error message other than "the interface has encountered an unknown error"
But bully on them for getting something right after something like 8 years producing outlook for Windows.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Is for Adobe to release Flash under Linux, and not the player, I'm talking about the editing/actionscripting suit, I don't care about another "flash killer" or another plugin for the browser, I want better tools for content creation under Linux, if Microsoft can provide this, hopefully it will make Adobe do the same, the way I see it, the only reason this _could_ be good, is if it pushes Adobe to get better Linux support, Microsoft's products generally suck, so I'm not expecting much from them, but if it makes Adobe get off its collective overfed ass and get back into making products instead of raking in the money, then I say awesome. Of course, I doubt this will happen, but one can dream....
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
Microsoft will include Silverlight as an update and makes it high priority. Silverlight becomes success and passes Flash as the major app in the sector. MS will discontinue Moonlight because of BS reason. Linux is locked out by vendor lock-in.
This isn't what I fear. What I fear is running Microsoft code in Linux... no kidding. From a security perspective the code has not been vetted by the public. NSA key or other back doors could exist. From a stability point of view, how can bugs be found and fixed?
Now if Microsoft checks in 100% of the source....be a little different.
I wonder if MS will give Silverlight the same vote of confidence in it's product that Sun gives to Java. Sun is so confident in the capabilities of Java they have banned it's use in ALL internal projects... that's how much confidence they have in the Java platform.
If MS follows Sun's tail lights... they might someday have the marketshare Sun does!
If you're comparing it only to Flash - and especially older Flash - you're not giving Adobe a fair shake.
.NET" available; Flex can definitely make standalone swf and can operate with it's full server installed. (The server can also compile on the fly)
Put briefly, Adobe Flex is in beta of it's 4th major version, and it's what Adobe is offering for programming targeting the Flash Player. For a programmer, it is worlds better than Flash.
Silverlight might be awesome, I haven't touched it, but everything you said about it are all the same improvements over Flash that Flex has been doing for years now.
Flash is an animation tool. People starting using it for applications, and starting in 2002 and again in 2004 Macromedia gave it real support as a programming language. This is all still true, and they've continued to improve that.
But we're now on version 2 (3 is in beta, 1.5 was a major version) of Adobe Flex, which should be considered the follow-on to Flash for programmers and applications. The Actionscript which underlies this is identical in the two platforms, although Flex is driving the new AS versions and Flash lags behind a bit. But Flex also removes all the major craziness that programmers hated in Flash - layout is in an MXML (specific kind of XML) file, there is no binary source file like a fla, and it has further strengthened the already-present OOP capabilities. They have a Dreamweaver-like WYSIWYG layout editor and IDE - and it's also an Eclipse plugin. But like Dreamweaver and unlike Flash, there's no requirement that you use that.
Oh, and if you don't mind command-line compilation and a text editor, the SDK is free.
And that's all only if you don't install the Flex server. It is ALSO a presentation layer server, and Flex Data Services have a bunch of really smooth ways to give shared persistence or to interact with any other application server you might have.
I don't know whether Silverlight also requires the server to support it - I imagine it must to have "a subset of
REALLY, though, my big issue is mostly that I just do not trust Microsoft to make a good secure sandbox; they've shown no evidence of being able to pull this off in the past. Using something like this is inherently allowing complex arbitrary code to run... I'm sure this will be better than ActiveX, because it couldn't be worse...
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Why would they being doing this supporting other platforms thing? Here's my best guess:
1) knock Adobe Flash down from the top of the hill
-why? Adobe has nearly the same distribution channels as Microsoft since Flash is installed on nearly all computers sold. Flash is an API Microsoft does not control and its multimedia underpinnings are a threat to Microsoft's media file formats, ie control.
2) Makes Silverlight look like it's good to everyone in the industry by supporting the three major platforms, Windows, Linux, Mac.
-why? initial support from the industry for one thing. Linux is embedded in way too many devices to be ignored and Mac isn't doing too bad either. As stated by the parent, this won't last if Silverlight is successful in displacing Flash in the market. Microsoft has NEVER been a friend to anybody who's not a Windows-only vendor and they've never considered other platforms in their business model/methods other than how they threaten the cash flow of the Windows monopoly.
3) Make a platform to replace the browser neutral AJAX kits and eventually bring it all home to Windows-only.
-why? AJAX is spread all over the place and businesses are migrating old apps and/or creating new apps which run on any browser/platform. There is no NEED for Windows in this world and Silverlight brings that all home to Bill, Steve, and the friendly people at Microsoft.
Microsofts motives in everything they have done over the past 15+ years has been to keep Windows in a position of power and control. There has never been any desire to profit from cross platform software and nothing shows they've changed. This attempt at cross platform support is only a tool, or hammer if you will. It's going to smack everyone but Windows users on the head. But Microsoft has changed you might say. Just look at how they are manipulating the ISO process in attempts to get a proprietary format, MS-OOXML, as an international standard. They have not changed and Silverlight on Linux and Mac is nothing but a carrot hanging over the trap. There is no trusting of Microsoft and Novell is the fool for thinking once again, they can play in the pen with the wolf. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Did anyone notice how M$ doesn't mention a version will be available for W3.11 **at all**? and I smell a bait & switch coming ... "We'll tell you it's coming sometime next year--but wouldn't you rather have Vista?"
Here's your hit of the cluestick buddy: W2k went into extended support in 2005, and will be EOL'd in 2010. During the Extended Support phase, Microsoft continues to provide security hot fixes and paid support but no longer provides complimentary support options, design change requests, and non-security hotfixes.
Flash started as FutureSplash, a system for simple vector based goofy animations on the web.
Macromedia bought it, and ramped it up. About, oooh, a week (?) after Flash was bought, the writing was on the wall - Macromedia Director was a Dead Duck. What made Director useful, however, was its craptacular programming language, Lingo. Once the vision shifted from Director to Flash, the move was on to develop a programming language for Flash - the result? The even MORE craptacular ActionScript.
Several year ago, a survey was done and it was found that a full 80% of the users of the web would click "skip intro" and avoid using flash if they could. This set off a sea change at Macromedia, and now at Adobe, where Flash is no longer the funky little animation engine that couldn't if its life depended on it, but to become a "development environment" and platform for web based applications. Now, isn't THAT a totally stupid idea...
So, what Microsoft is trying to do is strangle and/or marginalise Flash as a dev environment before it gets any real traction.
Now you know.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
what is in it for Microsoft and why are they doing this?
everything they've done in the past has been to kill off some competitor so why do you think they have no motives to do the same here?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Once it appears there, I'm going to start wishing it luck against flash. Flash has had horrid crossplatform support for as long as I can recall, and increasingly is getting to be ubiquitous on the web. If an actual cross-platform solution has to come from microsoft, than so be it. I don't care about what 'might' happen, I care about the fact that I'm finding myself increasingly crippled in terms of choice because adobe is dragging its feet so badly in terms of both quality and speed of flash releases outside of desktop windows.
Everything will be taken away from you.
You can't delete, move, archive, send, or receive messages.
32 bit issues. Old code.
First it was 64k, was it? Now it's 2GB that should be enough for anybody. Great. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Super thanks.
Haven't got 4TB disks yet, but I think that is my current limit.
Don't worry, Microsoft will come out with M$-Linux 64 bit. Sooner or later.
They want to kill off Adobe, not Linux.
Went to www.microsoft.com/silverlight and the following message popped up:
This shit is the bomb.
Why do anyone in their sane mind would think of using Flash or Silverlight when we have SVG and SMIL? Web developers and companies building websites seem to not understand or not care about vendor lockin.
What percentage of web users have SMIL capable browsers? I'd love to see flash and MS-not-flash die but SMIL is not a viable alternative... yet.
> .NET was the next incremental improvement on Java
.NET project - but it was one of Microsoft's flagship developments mentioned in all the litterature. It also crashed and burned. Not letting that colour my opinion too much I would say that Java was a paradigm shift for many developers while keeping a familiar C/C++ syntax. .NET is just a clone because Java was NIH, nothing much to see really. I would say the current paradigm shift are languages/stacks like Ruby on Rails although a lot of those ideas are now being folded back into Java by the OS community.
I've only worked on one
Forgive me for the n00bish comment, but what's so bad about using an x86-32 version of Flash instead of x86-64?
"Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale MOONLIGHT?"
First of all, there have been a lot of posts claiming MS will take over by bundling Silverlight with windows update. Well, that is not true. Check the official faq, they say they will play fair. Right, we just have their word but whatever. http://silverlightfaq.com/2007/04/25/how-will-silv erlight-be-distributed-by-microsoft/
.net c# developer. I completely built the application first on Silverlight 1.1 in one month. It works great. I then built a portion of the application in Flex just to learn both technologies. I can say that doing it in C# was way more intuitive and natural, and FAST. The xaml and everything was easy to learn. Now flash/flex was not as intuitive at all, and was harder to learn. Once I learned it, I thought it was OK, but I do prefer Silverlight. Granted, thats probably because I'm a .net developer already. But I just found silverlight easier, even for just creating the graphics. Also, realize I am an experienced Photoshop user, so you would think I would like the flash tools better.
Second, I can also chime in here and state that I am evaluating Silverlight and Flash/Flex for a production web application with a deadline of January.
I came from no experience with either technology. I am a
Just look at Gnash...
At least this starts open. Also, if Moonlight ends up being better than Silverlight for some things, it could get to be like Firefox/IE was -- that is, Firefox became just popular enough that websites started targeting both, even if they realized their audience was mostly IE-only. Microsoft finally had to give up deliberately making IE break standards, and is actually trying to improve the situation now, because they're tired of being hated by web developers.
In any case, I'd much rather have just the update not work for some short amount of time than have everything broken everywhere.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Do they put commercials on during "American Idol" saying how Java has so many new features and stuff like that?
Check out my free, Flash-based MAME front end at mame.danzbb.com
...
hardly unbiased himself
"Put briefly, Adobe Flex is in beta of it's 4th major version, and it's what Adobe is offering for programming targeting the Flash Player. For a programmer, it is worlds better than Flash."
"Silverlight might be awesome, I haven't touched it, but everything you said about it are all the same improvements over Flash that Flex has been doing for years now."
If it is still in beta how has it been doing anything for years????
It is a long beta then and still isn't out?
Microsoft's system as much as I hate to say is now out. Flex is still in beta.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
They want to kill off Adobe, not Linux.
Wow! Where have you been? Microsoft wants to kill-off everyone who isn't Microsoft.
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
So Microsoft wants to kill off Adobe, got a reason why this might be? Have they done something to Microsoft?
And I would not even touch the idea that Microsoft does not want to kill off Linux.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
this poster provides a good starting point. and this article. Basically both companies are looking to leverage more than just an in-browser animation scheme, rather another layer between the web and the desktop. (and of course the Google wants in on this too, right?) It's anyones chance to dominante.
another vehicle for MS W0rMz yo!
Exhibit A: Windows Media Player for Mac
Went till WMP 9.0 then Microsoft killed it, after DRM PlaysForSure support would be need for Mac OSX. Guess if Apple can make Fairplay work on Mac OSX, WIndows, select Motorola phones I would assume Microsoft wouldn't have a problem with making WMP 10/11 for Mac OSX.
Exhibit B. Window NT.
Support on not only IA-32, but also MIPS, DEC Alpha, PowerPC. Discontinues on all but Intel platforms.
Exhibit C. Virtual PC.
Bought Virtual PC from Connetix. Stalled development to support the G5 platform (PPC 970) until they needed work on it for Xbox 360. Finally killed Virtual PC on all platforms but Windows.
Learn from history.
that's about right. Adobe put its target on its back when they turned Flash into a dynamic rich media platform with Flex. The double whammy was that not only was Flash already on millions of PC and every one shipped, they also were cross platform. Pretty much the same reasons why Microsoft went after Netscape.
I've known Microsoft for 20+ years and I have no misconception that they would continue cross platform support once they reach the 70% market share number. They are all about protecting the Windows operating system and since there's little to no money in this, it's all about protection.
IMO, if Adobe, Google, AJAX, etc keep developers and Microsoft Silverlight ends in the gutter, we'll all be better off from the competition. If Microsoft wins, we all lose. Personally, I'd rather see the open market move this sector and not have Microsoft involved. They only ever screw the developer over in the long run. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I see no greater threat to the future of free communication than the de facto standardization on closed, DRM tools like Flash, and perhaps now Silverlight. There are so many websites which require this binary blob to run.
It's a bad trend. Don't use Flash. And for God's sake don't use Silverlight, either.
expandfairuse.org
"FYI, it won't work if you have Flashblock enabled on FF." ....two birds, one stone!
-Valiss
No, they want to kill Adobe first, then Linux...
Did we really need another Flash-type plugin?
Isn't it abused enough?
For those of you who have not been in IT long enough, this is a well used path by MS. You will be screwed if you switch to this and it gets market share. Adobe is a company that wants to make money, MS just moved into direct competition with a big part of their business. I expect to see many direct Adobe product ripoffs all to support this, they did it to Novell.
I expect the first will be free, the second say 5 bucks, then next after it hits 40% market to be 400 bucks for license to some part of it. Killing off the MONO part, all simple and legal like. This is business as usual for MS.
Adobe has put a player on linux which they get almost no money for in return, MS will not do that, Linux is a threat to their 2 monopolies, office and windows. They are just using a new carrot, and apparently the younger computer crowd sees this as OK and are accepting it.
You will all cry foul in 4 years about this whole thing, it will goto court for another 5 years, and then if there is any judgement it will be thrown out. You will look back and say Damn that was stupid of yourself, and never be in the position again to change it.
Stick to the companies that have been friendly to Linux, don't screw around, let this thing die a large ME/VISTA style death.
Adobe, perhaps will now see the benefit of being more portable in the future, without cutting to many money making ties to MS, until its worth it.
Would the whole protocol pass as an ISO standard? Or does it have proprietary dependencies? Just curious after the whole MOOXML mess... at least this time they are not trying to push a bad standard through ISO. Knowing that, would it or would it not pass as a standard?
so let me get this straight, you are bitching about an old version of outlook and how MS don't fix anything, even though the last 2 versions of outlook have addressed this issue. Let me guess your one of those trolls that think every software company when they change a feature should go back and implement those new things for the last 10 years in every product they created.
It is one of Microsoft's biggest earners so it will bw kept until it is not.
Wow. Adobe must be really pi**ed. They used to be such an Apple die-hard company all those years ago. Between them (with Macromedia and Aldus), Apple computers & printers, they had the desktop publishing and graphics market cornered.
:-)
Then Adobe started to bring out their products for Windows, allowing some graphics shops to move to Windows as well. Microsoft probably gave them a hand there, recognising an ally in their attack on Apple in a market Microsoft had no presence in. Adobe saw the writing on the wall for Apple (in the late 90s) and had jumped ship.
Now, once safely established, Adobe is facing the weight of Microsoft. Microsoft seem to feel the impulsive need to dominate every IT market there is. It's not enough to focus on operating systems and office suites, they must DOMINATE and CONTROL every standard, OS, market and methodology that arises.
I sincerely hope Adobe can ride this storm. Hopefully here is another specialised market that will prove history wrong, and through sheer good planning and weight of momentum, Adobe will remain ascendant.
Not that this is necessarily a good thing too! SVG or some other more open standard for this technology would be better still. But at least, for the moment, it isn't Microsoft
* It's slow. Of course it's slow -- it's interpreted code.
* Cross-platform isn't doable. Write once, debug everywhere.
* Developers don't want to rewrite all of their applications in a new language.
* Locally installed applications will always provide a superior user experience.
(I don't see any reason why we shouldn't take every bad thing that Microsoft ever said about Java applets and THROW IT RIGHT BACK IN THEIR FACE right now.)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
FYI, Silverlight works perfectly well on windows 2000, both 1.0 and 1.1. The only thing they did was make the installer reject any installs on systems "under" XP. There hasn't been a single thing MS has released that hasn't worked on windows 2000 so far, and that includes the XP+ exclusive directx upgrades since the start of the year as well as SL, .net 3, the list goes on. Someone at MS obviously thought it cute to make the installer check for the OS version and dump you right out of the bat. Let me paste you the msi check for SL 1.0, for extra entertainment value:
4 -Orca_MSI_Editor.html or http://www.brentnorris.net/orca.msi or just download the Windows Installer SDK (from the platform sdk site), it's in there, then open the msi with it, and just change that check to say VersionNT = 500 or something along those lines, and install away.
(VersionNT = 501 AND ServicePackLevel >= 2) OR (VersionNT = 502) OR (VersionNT >= 600 )
You'll notice it just borks out even if you have XP with no sp2, as if sp2 really makes that big of a difference on silverlight.
The only thing you need to do is download a nice MS tool called Orca, http://www.technipages.com/downloadview-details-4
They did the exact same fucking thing to NT when W2K came out, by not allowing installs and not making usb drivers available for it, and they'll do the same to XP one of these days. Wankers.
no, asshole, it's an issue that existed BEFORE service packs, and wasn't fixed in the release of the service packs. It existed in outlook 2000, and they released 2 or 3 service packs, and outlook 2002, 3 more service packs, several "fix" tools, and then finally office 2003.
So no, I'm one of those trolls who thinks that people shouldn't just fuck their corporate customers and leave them out in the cold to deal with their goddamn issues.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Wow, that example on microsoft.com/silverlight (after silverlight has been installed) is REALLY badly made and doesn't work as you'd expect it to! The video had to be in exactly the right place in the circle before it would open a video window when I clicked it.
thegnu, you got owned, just admit it and then STFU.
Meanwhile, .NET is vastly superior and is mopping the floor with Java. Why? Because Java sucks.
.NET as the replacement for VB6, and for some Java web application development (for those that have been burned by bad practices). I don't see it replacing most cross-platform or server-side applications that need to run on *NIX.
.NET GAC isn't a "magic" directory? Please.
.NET is way nicer than Java.
.NET is quite nice in many respects, but you're fawning over it a bit too much.
.NET to make cross-platform apps that work as well as .NET on Windows does now.
.NET will never eclipse Java on the server side because it inherently is Windows-only. The Mono team had their chance to become a major mainstream alternative, but it seems quite likely to remain a useful niche rather than a major popular approach.
.NET anyway within the next 5 years. Most that don't want to run Java will not turn to a sibling, they'll look beyond it.
Wow, objectivity. "Vastly superior", sorry, must strongly disagree. Competitive, totally. I see
Why should I have to mess with a classpath when I can just include references in a build file or dump a binary into a "magic" directory?
Erm, you've been able to do that with JARs since 1997. And, what, the
That's not to say they didn't take some lessons from Java, but the fact is
That would be your opinion. I happen to think
I'd love to use
Herein lies the problem:
And frankly, the world is getting ready to move on from Java and
-Stu
Sure they hate and loathe linux, but they arent fanatical when it comes to hating linux as many linux users are when it comes to hating microsoft. it's all business. and silverlight is in the business of tearing adobe and flash a new one.
so naturally they want to dominate every market adobe's in. if flash didnt exist for linux, neither would silverlight.
...but I don't understand why Microsoft even needs its own closed source implementation when it's actively supporting an OSS implementation. Surely the OSS implementation could be ported to Windows, and probably will be anyway sooner or later.
The only reason for a closed source edition that I can think of are that Microsoft is using the OSS support for PR purposes only, and has future plans to make sure they're incompatible over time.
innerHTML is one of the single most usefull parts of the defacto-DOM. Simply because the browser already has a HTML->DOM converter built in to parse the page as a whole in the first place, so attempting to force coders to serialise objects and manaully, painfully, construct a DOM tree and attach it is pure sado spec writing*.
Onto my main point, why is silverlight a Flash competitor and not a lightweight DOM/Forms/Web App extender designed as a Java retry? As a developer who's been following the WhatWG Web Forms spec for a few years (and lurking on the mailing list) it's nice to see it moving forward, it's just moving too slow.
So I propose an emergent solution. a browser plugin that will provide all the asyncronous web forms goodness that we've wanted all these years with some kind of simple hand-off for allowing browsers to impliment their own native (fast) code. Being able to make nice 2.5d platform games is not my highest priority right now, right now it's getting rid of the cludgy DOM/AJAX bloat that passes for web 2.0 applications and having native (i.e. C++ core) objects, functions and libraries to use instead.
Somewhere in that rant i had a point. Oh yeah, and why is it MS that's releasing this plugin to great fanfare whilst us slashdotters bemoan the lack of a standards-promoting OSS solution. Can't we just, like, you know, make our own?
* sadocification?
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
thegnu, you got owned, just admit it and then STFU.
p
9 4401033.aspx#3
I don't know, Anonymous Coward, I seem to see you get owned all the time
Right from the horse's mouth, scroll to the bottom and read:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296088
APPLIES TO
Microsoft Outlook 2000 Standard Edition
Microsoft Outlook 2002 Standard Edition
Microsoft Outlook 98 Standard Edition
Microsoft Outlook 97 Standard Edition
And check this out, asshole:
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/repair2gbpst.as
I had Office XP SP1, and now I know why she got cut off at 1.82GB, except her computer exhibited the same behaviour as if I had just hit 2gb. And, I may add, you'll notice that it's an issue in Office 2000. Also, the fact that they changed it to a lockdown at 1.82 GB, rather than just throwing up a message that let you save your ass, is still kind of fucking weird.
See here, http://www.brienposey.com/kb/pst_maintenance.asp, that Microsoft is getting better, because at least you don't have to call them for the repair tool anymore. Hrm.
And, to further address the "providing support for all their 10 year old software" troll, here's a reference to product support lifecycle for Office 2003, which states that they will support it "until users start adopting" 2007. The actual number is Jan 18th, 2009. 2 years after the successor is quite reasonable, given the nature of the application.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA1022
Now, given that one can infer from MS's own actions (in addition to regular old logic) that it would be reasonable to support Outlook for 2 years past the subsequent release, it's odd that sometime between 2003 and 2005, MS didn't port back some patch that made 2002 less broken. But that's obviously not something they're interested in.
again, AC, fuck you and your family.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Up until today, there was very little malware for OS X. Now, I really have something to watch out for. The end is near.
Microsoft released .NET some time ago, and the Mono project was started by Miguel at Novell to produce an open-source, cross platform implementation of it. Silverlight 1.1 (but, apparently, not 1.0) is built on the .NET platform, and thus Moonlight (Novell's implementation) is built on Mono. From reading Miguel's blog entry on the subject, it appears that the rendering surface code is common between Silverlight 1.0 and 1.1, but 1.0 does not use .NET (and thus necessarily Mono) at all. They are apparently working to remove the Mono dependencies from Moonlight 1.0.
What a surprise, FUD being spread as an AC.
If you're interested in only running code you've verified, then install your own maven repository server, which is simple to setup. If only allowing execution of signed applications is such a security windfall, I imagine Windows would have a far more stellar track record than it does. All it does is provide a false sense of security. Furthermore, the maven centralized code repository is validated the exact same way the PHP (Pear), PERL (CPAN), Ruby (GEM), Linux (APT-GET/URPMI/portage and so on) are validated. So this poke at Maven is entirely unfounded.
Oh, as for horrendously overcomplicated:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring</artifactId>
<version>2.0.2</version>
</dependency>
That's not so bad for adding dependencies! This is a great example of doing more with less complication using COC (Convention over Configuration) An entire maven build script with the ability to do run test scripts etc can be much less than 10 or 11 lines of configuration.
except that people do actually use things like youtube and yahoo maps and pretty much every graphical ad and every blog video player is in flash. intros aren't annoying because flash is a bad technology, they are annoying because they are intros. your rant sounds like it is from 2001. get over it.
meep
Despise it? Flash is used for ads quite often but clearly you have never seen the plethora of creative titles made with Flash: http://www.ninjai.com/ .
Singularity + Silverlight
See https://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/
Flash already dominates the 'interactive web applications' market. I fail to see why anyone would bother learning Silverlight's equivalent to AS, and bother moving over. Virtually every GUI-based Internet user uses Flash, which is already supported on Linux, and in loads of browsers too. Personally, I doubt there will be any success with Silverlight, unless it's significantly cheaper than Flash. Even then, I doubt people will bother to download the client unless it is widely used, which it won't be because nobody will have it, it's a vicious circle.
-- There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, And those who don't.
And yes, I use wine every day. It works incredibly well for the applications I need it for.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That had nothing to do with Flash. it was just a movie. The content wsa interesting - the frame is irrelevant.
Flash sucks. It always has and it always will.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I used to think Microsoft had to pay astroturfers to spread their manure.
..."
When Silverlight was first announced, I read an independent developer report saying:
"... The buzz in the hallways was how efficiently Microsoft had completed its execution of Adobe
So this Harold-Lauder-type was gleefully reporting that Adobe is already dead. He isn't going to develop for Silverlight because he has to, he's going to develop for Silverlight because he wants to help the Walking Dude destroy all his enemies.
It just blows my mind. Much more than the astroturfing campaigns ever did.