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MS To Push Silverlight Via Redesigned Microsoft.com
Marilyn M. writes "It looks like Microsoft is getting desperate about the dismal rates of Silverlight adoption by consumers and developers since its release earlier this year. According to NeoSmart Technologies, Microsoft is preparing a fully Silverlight-powered redesign of their website, doing away with most HTML pages entirely. With over 60 million unique users visiting Microsoft.com a month, Microsoft's last-ditch effort might be what it takes to breathe some life back into Silverlight. The article notes: 'At the moment, very few non-Microsoft-owned sites are using Silverlight at all; let alone for the entire UI.'"
Requiring a silverlight download for the website?
That's 60 million people who won't go to microsoft.com anymore.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
But seriously, many flash sites only used it for part of the site, and had not flash options. Even if they picked up silverlight, why wouldn't they do the same? It strikes me as stupid to cut out a huge chunk of your audience by using a piece of technology they can't use, or can impede use for some reason (even if it improves aesthetics).
If it doesn't work in Firefox, I'm not interested.
Oh wait... it does. Just kidding - still not interested.
MS is giving up after 3 days? wow!
that they haven't made it one if its 'critical updates' or even the proverbial forced 'back door' updates that no one knows about until you suddenly find it on your machine. The idea of Silverlight seems pretty cool since I'm a .Net junky myself, but still like the ubiquity and semi-platform independence of Flash.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Company tries to spur adoption of their technology by actually using it themselves! The ultimate act of desperation!
Film at 11.
Seriously? Wouldn't it be a bit more suspect if the *didn't* use it?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I guess I should thank Microsoft for preventing me from visiting their website. Although knowing them they'll force it on us through a Service Pack or automatic update.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
It's bad enough MSDN Library still doesn't work properly with Firefox after three years of using it. It took until last year for Microsoft.com to work even remotely well in a non-IE browser... I can only imagine how many people will stop using microsoft.com altogether.
If it wasn't required to visit windowsupdate.com, it would be the nail in IE's coffin.
Wow, Microsoft help is already terrible enough. MSDN right now is such a mishmash, that, when I took the survey to improve MSDN, the survey itself crashed. Like, I don't even bother with Microsoft.com anymore, or msdn.microsoft.com. They broke F1 == Help in Visual Studio... what more incompetence do you need?
This is my sig.
So... let's be realistic, how long before everyone's using this instead of Flash? My dib's on three years.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
The nice thing about Silverlight is that it is a breeze to program and work with.
I think, once the initial knee-jerk anti-MS crud is past, people won't mind. Just like any web/presentation technology, it has it's pros and cons. But look, to work with Silverlight, to create Silverlight, you don't need an expensive suite of tools.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Yes, but will it run on Linux?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
TBH though, I am a .Net developer, so I may have a bit of bias. But the power and ease of development that Silver Light gives you is very impressive. It's not the right tool for every job, but for multi-media intensive, widely distributed apps, from the tools I've seen, it definitely has some great advantages.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Vertical integration uses market share as a lever. One day, MS is going to leverage its market share so much that it breaks.
They want a world where everyone uses either only MS products or not at all? The path of least resistance will eventually lead away from MS.
So what is Silverlight and why would I want it. No, seriously.
I remember when Netscape introduced frames, they changed the netscape.com website to use them. It lasted a few months, then they realised how silly they were and changed their website back.
Silverlight may be good for embedded applets and for applications, but it's ludicrous to use it for an entire website. I expect that Microsoft will shortly figure this out.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
...Does not work with Opera.
Not interested.
I've never understood the chosen marketing strategy for Silverlight. The big advantage IMO is that you can use XAML to design an interface that works in both the browser and on the desktop. That is something that has some real potential in the world of business apps. Unfortunately they got to about 90% compatibility between WPF and Silverlight and then decided to market it as a tool for making Flash-y web sites.
How does affect their SEO status? Flash is pretty much crap for SEO with most flash content being extremely non search engine friendly (mainly due to the inability to link to a certain page within a flash file).
I have a new DELL laptop with XP SP2 on it (no way was I going to get Vista on it). Silverlight crashes both in Firefox and in IE7, even on a system that is has almost no other apps. I have pulled silverlight as something that may work someday, but at the moment is a pile of donkey poo.
See my journal, I write things there
That bit, the third numbered bullet, is what matters. They aren't doing something special, they are just forcing their technology on others because they can. Now I'm kind of interested in seeing what happens, because frankly I think MS's current site is a mess (I can never find what I'm looking for). But if they are going to push something like this they should go all out and demonstrate what it can do, not just use it in place of JavaScript (which they tried to replace with VBScript and failed) and AJAX (which they invented, to a degree).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Will Microsoft leverage its dominance once again to force a sub-standard product upon the computing public?
Does it come with a perl silverlight-generating library ? Because I can make flash on the fly now; is silverlight open ? Does it script ?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question. What does MS think they're doing, naming a rock band? MS used to have utilitarian (though descriptive) names for their products. Access, Word, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, Windows. Silverlight doesn't tell me anything about what it does. While some may argue that Flash is the same thing, at least with Flash, once you saw it in action, you understood the name.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Every time I visit Microsoft now, I get an annoying popup telling me how great Silverlight is. It's horribly annoying, and doesn't exactly enhance my feeling about them as a company. If a product doesn't stand on its merit, telling me repeatedly how great it is simply turns me off. Personally I wish they'd be patient and use existing client standards. Making up new standards to suit your business model is frustrating as a developer.
I'm guessing only mircrsofts search engine will be able to index pages buried on the revised microsoft.com site until other search engines add silver-light navigation to their crawlers?
I don't know about anyone else but I use Google to find KB articles.
I think most developers are just waiting for version 1.1 to come out of the alpha stage. (1.0 is javascript based, but 1.1 is suppose to let you code in several other languages, like C# and Python).
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I'm quite certain it'll render marvelously in Safari on my Mac. Absolutely perfectly. 'cuse me while I stop laughing.
DaveyJJ
Silverlight currently only supports Firefox of the Gecko browsers - it blocks all other Gecko-based browsers even though they'd be completely compatible. One has to wonder whether explicitly supporting only Firefox is an intentional move to limit competition in the browser market.
I hate Flash based web pages, as it is low on content and high on irritability, and un-googlable. That's why many good websites use flash sparingly, only for specific features that'll benefit from it. I'm not surprised MS is following in everyone else's footsteps.
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
ilovegeorgebush
Breathe life BACK into silverlight?
It had some to begin with?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I dislike MS as much as most here. However, I do very much welcome any competition for Adobe.
I'd like to think that the consumer will be the winner in this -- although MS and Adobe are probably the two least customer-centered large software firms out there.
The world seriously needs something better than Flash. Sadly, I doubt that Silverlight is going to be better, although it is likely to be relatively successful. Big content providers like mlb.com are already testing it. It must be very DRM friendly.
We've needed a Flash solution for a decade. It's lame that MS is the only company to make any effort in this field.
P.S. Flashblock plugin developers, I'm going to be needing a silverlightblock plugin too, I do hope your working on one.
Those morons better not make this a requirement to visit support.microsoft.com.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Full Tilt
All trolling and MS-hating aside, Silverlight is not meant for the World Wide Web. Rather, it is, like many other Microsoft products (SharePoint, PerformancePoint, BizTalk, etc) for the corporate intranet. The corporate IT department can simply force the software onto everybody's computer, and the developers can easily develop a *real* UI without having to fumble around with trying to make HTML behave like Windows Forms.
Yet another site that won't work on my mobile phone (even with pocket IE - the worst browser in history) or my N800...
You mean, like the way MS uses Linux on servers, and how a lot of its staff use Firefox?
Another buggy plugin!
The smartest man in the whole, wide world really don't know that much. - Mose Allison
Doesn't it look like they are trying to sell feminine pads?
It looks like Microsoft is getting desperate about the dismal rates of Silverlight adoption by consumers and developers since its release earlier this year
This is just about as ridiculous as it gets. Let's at least get 'facts' out of the way.
Face #1, The final version of Silverlight 1.0 was released just a couple of months ago. Even the designers (Blend, etc) haven't had full final version native support for over a month. Do you really think MS is 'desperate' that in a month or two every web site in the world hasn't converted?
Fact #2, MS already has a large following of providers preparing and starting stream and video based web video content sites based on Silverlight. Since it can do things like flip channels as fast a TV, etc companies looking to provide multi-stream content are going with Silverlight as it is the only viable solution - let alone the only multi-platform solution.
Fact #3, a majority of Video pushed over the web is already in VC1/WMV format, yes this sounds strange with all the flash/Tube sites, but Windows Media is still either at the very top or close. Silverlight natively uses the same content, so for any site using WMV content already, they will flip to silverlight, as it will increase their user base.
Fact #4, Silverlight is about a 2mb download, I see posts where people seem to think this is a big issue, are these people still using 2400baud modems?
Fact #5, The major version of SilverLight is Version 1.1, and can be downloaded by developers/end users. Version 1.1 is the major version as 1.0 is only the graphical and video portion of the technology with limited UI abilities. (1.0 is the basic drawing and compatibility layers, and MS doesn't expect most people to consider Silverlight until 1.1, that is why the 'standard developer version they offer is 1.1, not 1.0) Silverlight 1.1 adds in the UI basic interface technologies like simple control events, additional hit testing, etc. Without 1.1.
The Microsoft Download site has been Silverlight based for a few weeks, but it is a conceptual site, and it is demonstrated to developers of multiple page content areas can interact beyond a single SilverLight Control.
Fact #6, a Silverlight based Website does not mean the entire page is based on Silverlight or the page is shown in only one Silverlight control like Flash based web design is. Silverlight is light enough that each Image element can be replaced with a Silverlight Object instead, and when needed, Silverlight Objects can use standard client/server scripting for communication and functionality between the Objects.
It would be easier to think of Silverlight like a 'fancy' image object that can be scripted, take events, and talk to the client/server and other image objects on the page. This is what makes silverlight ahead of Flash, even before v1.1 is released.
Now with facts out of the way, this makes a freaking difference in the OSS world how? One proprietary company/product is competing against another that is just as nefarious, and they are BOTH winning against ALL OSS solutions.
Maybe OSS should actually be pushing for Silvelight to win, as you can at least create Silverlight content in notepad for free, and aren't forced to buy a massive Adobe illustration package just to put a few pretty buttons or videos on your site.
Back to the anti-Microsoft goose-stepping...
I'm waiting for 1.1 when they get the DLR up and running before I even consider Silverlight.
The reason they haven't seen the uptake of Silverlight they would have liked is due to the same phenomenon that's keeping Windows on the desktop--Inertia. Why would I jump to rewrite a perfectly good website to "take advantage" of Silverlight just because Microsoft releases it. I think it may be a nice tool in the chest for when the time to look at updating the site may come along, but I probably wouldn't waste my time taking a working website or Flash program and rewriting it for Silverlight. Also, to help prepare them for the disappointment, they may hype on how much more people like Microsoft.com after they release the new Silverlight version, but don't expect the hoped for uptake of Silverlight because of that. Microsoft.com is an abysmally designed and maintained website for such a prominent technology company to have--Anything will be an improvement.
I dont know why it was worded to sound like Silverlight isnt being adopted by developers. Everyone at my company is excited about Silverlight, and I am currently rebuilding an application in Silverlight. The MIX events from Microsoft were very successful. Telerik and many other vendors already have control sets out for Silverlight.
.net developer, there was essentially no learning curve for me to be able to do some pretty slick things on the web.
I think its a very good technology. As a
Microsoft didn't succeed at monopolizing the net by bastardizing HTML, and their introduction of ActiveX controls.
Is Silverlight just another attempt to try and push a Windows-only technology onto the net?
By getting rid of HTML and by using Silverlight, MS are going to sit on the specifications. They are definitely not going to share the Silverlight internals with the rest of us.
Let's see, there are still millions of people using W2K yet there's no Silverlight for it. I guess those people won't be allowed to access Microsoft.com... (Read the system requirements--Silverlight 1.1 will supposedly support W2K, but that's months away...)
What about Windows Update? Will there be a special "Windows Update for W2K" until Silverlight 1.1 appears?
Why is M$ only supporting PowerPC Macs with Silverlight 1.0 and not 1.1?
How will corporations take to having Silverlight installed on their W2K, XP, & Vista PCs--in all likelihood against their wills by way of an automatic update--despite having automatic updates disabled? (Microsoft recently did this...)
Could all of this be due to a lack of trust in Microsoft???
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
1. Via silverlight MS is going to leverage its huge install base to move to the next phase of its business model - i.e. "adapt". 2. Over time silverlight uptake will adapt your web access to their proprietry model. 3. When this process of adaption is well beyond a critical point the benevolence towards other OSes will end and no new vesions of Silverlight will appear for Linux or OSX. 4. Javascript will be replaced with .NET, the adaption will be complete.
5. HTML & Javascript will wither on the vine or a small second tier web will co-exist.
6. MS will own the web.
This is key to MS survival so if you think they are pushing Silverlight with a few irritating pop-ups...
"you ain't seen nothing yet!"
we are all cosmic nuclear waste
there are zillions of websites using already established and working formats. it doesnt matter what programmers, designers, lead developers in deep recesses of pompously decorated offices think - users are satisfied with what's on the web. and they are the decision maker. ms wont be able to 'push' anything to anyone by changing their site - the mere fact that they had to redesign their OWN site to 'push' their thing proves that noone cares for it in the first place.
its not 90s anymore. you cant 'push' anything to anyone. you have to do what the users want.
Read radical news here
How long has this been in firehose?
Maybe you should all focus on NOT bashing MS in 2008. It's pretty boring. Gee, a company trying to force everyone to use their product..how evil!!! Grow up asshats.
will my screen reader work? For all MS knows, I have limited vision and therefore use a screen reader to aid me. Will it work in Silverlight? No. Will I have to buy a new screen reader from them just to access their crappy site? Yes.
Summation 2
At home, I use Ubuntu for most things. I've got a Windows XP box set aside for my wife and World of Warcraft. The only time I hit microsoft.com (intentionally) is for Windows Update; and never through any browser. Microsoft can paint it's website purple and translate all the text to Chinese for all I care.
At work, we use SQL Server 2005 as our database. The only time I hit microsoft.com is through a Google search for something related to T-SQL. If these searches don't turn up something useful because Microsoft has hidden it from the Google index, I'll hit their site less. If the site stops working for our mostly Linux-using development staff, and has technical information we need, I believe there will be a significant push to change to a non-Microsoft database.
If Microsoft wants to slit it's own throat, who am I to deny them a nice sharp knife like Silverlight? They paid for it. Let's enjoy the show.
What is the point of Silverlight? What is it for? What is it doing in my life? Seriously can anyone give me a reason why I might want to use it in place of Flash/Flex/Java?
Someone at Microsoft should ask Adobe how zippy fast Macromedia.com was while it was an all-flash design. (ugh)
Seriously though, Microsoft will most likely have HTML in there somewhere, it's just a matter of getting it served to you.
(Why yes, I'm using pocket ie, um, on Vista, with WUXGA resolution, see it says here in the user agent, this isn't Opera)
Silverlight is not meant for the World Wide Web. Rather, it is, like many other Microsoft products (...) for the corporate intranet.
So basically this is just like when they took ActiveX, which was designed as an application interface programming toolset (and a very good one) and shoe-horned it into their web browser as an "alternative" to Java. One must then wonder how much "enhanced and superior functionality" has been left enabled that should not have been there in the first place. Lack of proper planning with ActiveX led to wonderful things like unauthorized bank account transfers, viruses and worms, and people's computers spontaneously turning off when they visited websites that used it.
The Flash Player 9 has been installed over 3.5 Billion times. Silverlight could gain 60 million a month by forcing people to use it. So the numbers at 60 million a month... it would take over 58 months for Silverlight to get to the install base of Flash Player 9.
I will keep Flex/Flash/Air for now thanks.
I had a flame... but she had a fire.
No Linux support for Silverlight?!? Why, I'm speechless...
...security fixes that will be added to Silverlight after it is pushed into the glaring sunlight of a serious web site LOL. The Silverlight team must be dropping eggrolls right now. Is it just me or is M$ just trying to push out too many UI related things at the same time? The presentation foundation, other .NET 3.0 UI moves, dumping .NET support in DirectX and thereby separating C++ advanced UI development from .NET advanced UI development, Silverlight, various other weird (imho) implementations of abstraction layers over .NET and C++ through things like XAML. I know that Silverlight, .NET 3.0 and WPF are all intricately related, but they still operate differently, have different development approaches and toolsets, and seemed to be 'marketed' as 'different' from each other. All very confusing. Thank God I only have to deal with Qt on Linux and MFC on Windows. I may spend a little time getting back into Java as well. I've heard the UI frameworks are more mature these past couple of years now.
Loading...
I guess perhaps it may be slashdotting of the examples on silverlight.org, but I just installed the thing in OSX 10.4 and when viewing silverlight.org/Showcase in Firefox all I get after the interface loads is "there was a server error".
How informative!
Most of the other examples I saw were awfully slow to load, and none of them were that impressive, really. But then again I don't want the web to become a ginormous mish-mash of different user interfaces and interface methologies. It's bad enough as it is already.
You only have to visit windozeupdate.com if you use windoze...
http://www.ubuntu.com/
also, fuck greedy, evil micro$oft!
It's about them leveraging an existing product to force the adoption of a new product.
Shocked! Shocked I am that that Microsoft would do such a thing!
does not exist for any MSFT product / service.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Microsoft has grown too big. They should refocus their resources on their core products: Windows, Office and their flagship server products (Exchange Server, SQL Server, etc) and stop trying to have a hand in everything else. Get the brightest minds in the company, have them focus on a (relatively) small number of products and get rid of the rest of the bloat and the next version of Windows and the rest of their core products might actually be something that people want to pay money for.
Flex SDK is free, incidentally. You are overrated.
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/sdk/
So, if this is Microsoft's replacement for flash, when is SilverLight block coming out for when the inevitable happens and we get Silverlight ads?
Why are the people who make arguments where they start every sentence with "FACT" so annoying? Lets see...
FACT, this is lame
FACT, i am a tool
FACT, there is no way I could be making it up, because I said 'FACT'
FACT, i have cool words, fact fact fact
FACT, i win.
People always say "fact" when they are trying to cover up some weaselyness. If it's true, you can just say "so and so happened". The declarative is plenty. Stating "Fact, so and so happened" just makes you like like a douche with something to hide, but no where to stick it.
Windows Forms apps are a pain in the butt to deploy. If you make a new version of the app, you would have to push out the new version to everybody who had it, which would of course require some sort of subscription program, etc. And you would have to either make sure any database changes are completely compatible with the old version of the app or make sure absolutely nobody is using the old version of the app. Additionally, you would have to either make the database accessible to everyone using the app or implement a web service to feed the data to the users. It's just easier to update the website, and have the IT department only push out silverlight.
Windows Forms apps are much easier to build than (good) ASP.NET apps, but maybe Silverlight will change that. Who knows.
I went to a presentation on Silverlight hosted by a local MSDN users group. From what I can tell, Microsoft made a donation to a non-profit, and earmarked the money to go to a MS partner who would redo their existing (and very dated) Flash site in Silverlight. At the end of the presentation, I talked to the presenters about a Silverlight project that my employer was considering. The response I got from both Microsoft Gold partners was "Don't use Silverlight!!!!" They went on to explain how anything that Silverlight can do, Flash can do better in terms of both final result, and development time. (They were using Flash 1.1 beta at the time). Basically, Flash is a ubiquitous open-standard with mature development tools and tons of 3rd-party partners. Silverlight is a quickly cobbled-together Flash clone with 1/10th the features, completely immature tools, and no 3rd-party support. The presenters gave me their cards, told me to call if I had questions, and gave me a list of tools that they recommended I use for the project.
It was very enlightening. They left me with the one final note that, in a year, their opinion may change as Silverlight matures. But based on the examples they gave me, there's just no reason for anyone to ever adopt Silverlight.
Going into the political aspects here... this is exactly what Microsoft does well - they clone something, pay people to adopt it, and use their gigantic Windows Update distribution system to put it on 90% of the desktops around the world. Flash's days will be numbered when we get to the point where Microsoft starts to introduce Flash compatibility. That's the embreace-extend-extingush approach, and we should run for the hills when that happens. It's too bad that Microsoft can't just compete by using the open standard instead of flooding the market with an incompatible clone and cramming it down people's throats.
Not really interested hope limelight or filelight or what ever it is fails miserably then Vista won't feel so lonely.
With silverlight and flash gone will be the days for easy web automation tools and where copy/paste from web sites was possible. Are there automation tools for silverlight and flash something like Watir or Watin?
Specifically, notice how you can view their entire homepage without Flash.
I'd imagine you can view the entire site, save for Flash-specific stuff, without Flash.
It's one thing to use their technology themselves, but this tells me that Microsoft is actually using Silverlight to replace HTML, which is something that is generally considered bad when people do it with Flash, and is also something that even Adobe isn't doing with Flash.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Adobe may use Flash on their site, but if you don't have Flash, there's still HTML. If Microsoft is "doing away with most HTML pages entirely", I think that makes them a good deal worse than Adobe.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You need to get the user base up so that devs can be more excited about working with it - and also to serve as demos of what the tech is capable of.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Microsoft plans to use its website to push Silverlight technology adoption.
I remember when MSDN and other Microsoft sites were available only with IE. This was bad for who worked on Linux or used Netscape/Firefox but had to support Windows hosts. They finally changed their sites to be standard compliant (or at least, closer to that).
Now that they're losing market to Firefox and they're having to go standards compliant on HTML, they'll try to push a "better" technology to try to make HTML irrelevant and keep their monopoly.
If you look at it, OOXML is just the same, its integration with Sharepoint is another try to make HTML irrelevant and keep their monopoly on the web.
In the end, it doesn't matter if Silverlight is cross-platform and supported, because Microsoft will always own the format, lead its development, and introduce new incompatible features. Everyone will have to keep following them forever, not to mention that probably they'll start adding patented features or DRM. They've been doing this with every program and file format they have.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
It's their website. I doubt many of you go there anyways. They can do what they want on their website, so STFU and quit complaining.
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
You can use your QT skills in Java with Trolltech's QT Jambihttp://trolltech.com/products/qt/jambi libraries. I haven't tried them myself, but the feature set looks pretty good.
Stating "Fact, so and so happened" just makes you like like a douche with something to hide
How ironic coming from an AC.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
We know adoption is low. So low in fact that I bet many are like me, and don't have a clue what it is. Even though I surf the web, telecommute every day, I avoid MS technology when I can as I don't like the 'lock in' they try to force. The technology I work with daily is usually Java based running on Unix servers. So, now I am at a loss as to what this whole Silverlight thing is. A nice quick phrase saying what it is might have been nice. Like '...Silverlight (MS's new thing to do something marvellous) is being ignored blah blah blah...' Or a none MS link to explain what it is so I don't have to deal with their marketing hyperbole. MS doesn't excite me enough to go looking for it.
:)
I only mention this because I see this often on Slashdot. People assuming that something that might be truly interesting to most here, is always know about by most here.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I was pushed to Windows Update yesterday - really just looking for MS-Office SP3, but the button sent me there instead.
Anyway, they had a "Use Silverlight Beta" on the http://update.microsoft.com/ site yesterday. Obviously, I declined using it. It isn't my job to help a competitor to test/debug their code for free.
Sadly, they still REQUIRE I.E. 5 or later. Complete BS. Nobody should be using OCX on the internet these days - absolutely **nobody** for security reasons.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Before I read the comments, I didn't even know what Silverlight is. and like the article suggests, that ignorance may reflect as poorly on MS as it does on me. I am living with someone who is well up the learning curve for Flash 3 Action scripts. These prices will force the little people to look at the MS "alternative" but her employer is gung ho for a rich client-side and the money is insignificant. Besides...
is SL really a Flash alternative?
The video presentation is not even the interesting part to companies that have data [YOUR DATA] that you want formatted and readable in some custom way, or graphed just the way you like it. Can you easily make animated and interactive graphs with SL? Does it have object and event interfaces to let you create UI that can react to nearly any item the user might click on? Does it natively support [ie, know how to render] tabular and XML structured data as it is fetched from the server?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
All trolling and MS-hating aside, Silverlight is not meant for the World Wide Web.
Perhaps you should tell BillG that before they waste another dollar on their silverlight-based re-design of their microsoft.com site on the world wide web.
The corporate IT department can simply force the software onto everybody's computer
Microsoft and others (Altiris' main business is this) already have extensive tools to do this without the need for silverlight. Making a web application dependent on vendor- or platform-specific tolls and technology misses one of the main points of even having the WWW.
developers can easily develop a *real* UI without having to fumble around with trying to make HTML behave like Windows Forms
I again fail to see the point of silverlight if this is a reason to use it. If an app must behave like a windows-forms app then develop a windows forms app. If an app is "document/resource centric", must be very widely deployed, accessible from multiple platforms and centrally administered with relative ease then you've really got to evaluate why it is so important to have "windows forms behaviour", when in fact such a design is sub-optimal for every situation except on full-sized, Windows-based desktops.
I'm not that much of a... um... smart. And yet, even I think it's kind of funny to see what's 2 places higher according to alexa. Maybe MS needs to take some UI lessons from them? A bazillion preteens can't be wrong! Silverlight needs, at very least, one really loud pop song embedded on every page by default.
So now that it's non-HTML, I won't be able to Google Microsoft's site to actually find anything any more? Talk about worthless.
And yes, sometimes you do need to browse Microsoft's website from a non-Windows PC. Usually because you're repairing that Windows PC and the non-Windows one is the one that is still working...
no, its not just you. I think MS is churning out way too much stuff than is good for them, and of course, all of it based on .NET in some way.
I had reason to check out WWF (Workflow in case you're not up to date with the WxF acronyms), I can't see it being around in years, just like, say, crappy sharepoint or biztalk or commerce server. I wish they'd concentrate on creating small amounts of really good stuff instead of masses of bits that are slapped around all over the place.
...because M$' answer to the iPod worked out well, didn't it? ;)
The times I've had the misfortune to use the Microsoft website, it hasn't been a pleasant experience. Broken links are the norm (they seem to change all their URLs every few months as a matter of principle), you have to click through lots of crap to get what you want, and the search function doesn't work. If they get the same people to redo it in Silverlight, it will do more than anything else could to put people off the platform.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
to OSX :-) and for the pain Gentoo ;-)
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
> Hmmm... Ok so tell me how often are you going to be visiting the Microsoft website if you happen to be a Linux and Firefox user?
> Probably 0...
Not really. Sympatico and many other ISPs have outsourced their email service to MSN, so if MSN is included in the redesign, users of these ISPs are in big trouble. Sympatico support at least refuses to acknowledge that anything other than Outlook is your email client, so if you don't have Outlook and there's an email client, you either have to install Outlook or lie and do the equivalent actions in Thunderbird or other mail clients.
Does anyone know if MSN is also going to be redone?
Even if MSN isn't redone, documents like the OOXML spec, C# spec, and "Get the facts" are on Microsoft's sites. If you get a reference to one of their docs, there wouldn't be a non-Silverlight way of refuting any claims in those docs or even browsing the Microsoft site to see what they're saying about Linux.
...that .Net was a clone of Java.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Yeah, I forgot to mention that one. I just couldn't understand, in the WWF case, the purpose of it (by which I mean why is it necessary? You can solve all the same problems with far more mature/documented/respected approaches already.)
.NET, but it's like they're muddying the waters themselves. It is seriously annoying that they disconnected managed code from DirectX as well, but that may make a return. I'm a real-time graphics professional and I can't really tell you what the difference between DX9 managed and XNA are, or what XNA has/doesn't have in comparison to DX10, or will have, yadda ^ 3. LOL.
It's almost like there are senior guys at Micro$oft with nothing much to do and they're churning out research ideas. That's not a bad thing except when you pretend that "this is the way it will be done from now on" when you know it'll fade out in a couple of years.
They certainly produced some fantastic stuff with
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Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Interesting, thanks for that!
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In fact, Microsoft is only changing their download area to use Silverlight. In other words, surprise surprise - a kdawson article that is simply false. It's amazing, I know.
WTF (that's not Windows Transaction Foundation BTW, but give them a couple of months..... :-) ) is XNA?
scrub that - I've just googled it. Sounds good (LOL). I particularly liked the "The XNA Framework Content Pipeline is a set of tools that allows Visual Studio and XNA Studio "as the key design point around organizing and consuming 3D content". [7]" (from wikipedia)
just goes to show how MS went from being the most developer friendly company in the world to a buzzword bulls**t marketing company only interested in selling us more toolkits.
Have you actually used them?
Hint: YouTube doesn't work in any open source player that I've tried.
You're right that it works on every "significant" platform -- I know 64-bit Linux isn't significant. But Moonlight is a port of Silverlight to Mono, and it DOES work on 64-bit Linux.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Microsoft is about to come out from under antitrust oversight, and they want to make absolutely sure that by the time the next case settles there are a lot of bodies around, not just one. The Netscape thing was a hasty mistake; they never expected to be called on it. Now they know that they have to make the most out of Windows of freedom from oversight.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Like Pharaoh, they have to kill a lot of babies to make sure that they get the one that might grow up to become a threat.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Silverlight is just out of beta and the real big 2.0 release is still months away. I somehow doubt MS is "desperate" about anything. The article about MS adopting themselves is great, the desperation comment is really just flamebait. DC
http://chicagodave.wordpress.com
Ok, I know about the Moonlight project, but has MS decided to hedge their bets on a completely proprietary presence (and framework)? Do they actually think that this will ward off the evil ogres of FOSS and help to sustain the monopoly? A bit confused....
I went to microsoft.com to download SP2 for Win 2003 server. The links took me to Technet downloads. I was asked if I wanted to try out a Silverlight version of Technet Downloads. I thought, what the hell, I've already installed it, and clicked ok. It brought me to a pretty site that no longer had any mention of the service pack I needed. I clicked on the Downloads link (in the Silverlight page) and it brought me... Back to where I had started! I went around in a circle and this time was not offered the Silverlight beta. I downloaded the service pack and moved on. Good job, Microsoft.
Microsoft dropped support for PPC Macs. I see this as a good hint on what commitment to expect from them regarding future platform independence and support.
I'm baffled that the newspost is calling this a last-ditch effort.
Even the biggest fans of / experts in Silverlight that I've talked to say that Silverlight 1.0 is basically a glorified beta. It's usable, and you can do some flashy things with it, but it doesn't include even some of the basic anticipated features yet that got them excited about it in the first place. How can you have a last-ditch effort to save the first very rough release of something? Did Netcraft confirm that Silverlight is dead and I missed it?
My prediction: Silverlight will be a rarity for at least another version or two, but it'll start taking off. Microsoft excels at letting someone else innovate, break ground in an area, and make all the mistakes that someone breaking new ground is guaranteed to do -- and then comes in a couple years later and says "If we were going to make X again from scratch, already knowing all the lessons the X people have learned the hard way, how would we do it?" What they come up with won't do everything better than the original, but it'll do enough better to get people interested.
From there, you'll get Flash and Silverlight in competition, and with any luck both will end up the better for it.
Secure Digital cards (SD Cards) were developed by SanDisk, Toshiba and Panasonic to combat Sony's Memory Stick technology.
Silverlight 1.0 is kind of weak, but 2.0 is really going to be something! I am doing my latest project in WPF and find the UI experience and IDE really refreshing. I have tried developing in Flash before (not Flex though) and thought that from a programming perspective, it was probably the most horrendous experience of my programming life. I hear flex is better, but Silverlight has some real potential, especially if some of the features they say will be released really are (new UI controls, sockets, WCF integration...).
I wouldn't recommend doing a whole site in Silverlight, but as a component of the website, it makes sense.
What would be wrong with MS bundling Silverlight with a windows update? MS doesn't have a monopoly on RIA technologies, so why should that be an issue?
http://www.microsoft.com/beta/downloads/Default.aspx
thanks for the laughs mate, i've never seen so many dollar signs on a /. post. i realized halfway that you were going for the funny mod here.
FTA: Microsoft isn't new to the whole "virtual" monopoly business (where a single company holds the entire market thanks to "superior technology" and "better business sense") - it's just not too often that they're on the wrong side of this particular proverbial fence.
Since when has Microsoft been a stranger to taking on entrenched monopolies? Word, Excel, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Live Search, xbox, Zune plus a myriad of already failed products have taken on well established monopolies.
1. is flash enough of a pain to deal with (bw killer, and constant update needs, late linux drivers, and incompatible mobile versions)
... probably will only have a windows in a vmware session.
2. Do you have enough security problems already? Probably ou do not want an other closed source binary on your linux or mac.
3. Developers: aren't you already overwhelmed by the "web technologies", and that for a single web page you have to program in 5 different languages? I am, and I do not want an other one.
4. Do you trust MS? To be honest, after Vista I am not sure what is going to be the next flop. Windows is cute for games and I have one to test pages in IE. That's it. Not sure what will happen when the last games only com for wii/ps3/xbox
There's so much FUD in this discussion, I don't even know where to start.
.NET framework. There are NO system prerequisites that aren't already included in the ~4 MB Silverlight download.
.NET UI framework of choice (as opposed to Windows Forms). Does Silverlight do gee-whiz animations and graphics that resemble Flash? Sure, but so does WPF, and nobody has said that WPF is a Flash clone.
.NET and is somewhat excited about Silverlight.
First, let's tackle the most common misconception, that Silverlight isn't platform agnostic. The Silverlight runtime is supported on Windows and OSX in IE, Firefox, and Safari. For Linux, there's Moonlight, a Mono-based implementation. Additionally, it's worth noting that Microsoft has supported Novell's development efforts on this.
Okay, let's talk about versioning. The current version, 1.0, is somewhat limited in that it only includes XAML, JS, and media support at this time. The next version, 2.0 (formerly called 1.1) includes a mostly feature-complete scaled-down version of the
As far as tools required, Notepad.exe is all you need if you're so inclined. The basic markup of Silverlight is XAML, an XML-based format.
Web server: Anything. Doesn't matter. Silverlight is a strictly client-side tech.
Regarding being a "Flash clone:" Not entirely. The XAML-based markup for Silverlight is a subset of that used in Windows Presentation Foundation, which is on track to become the
And regarding search engines not being able to index Silverlight sites, that's partially true. XAML is just XML, so it's still readable by search engines. Resolving URLs within the XAML might be an issue, and I too am interested in seeing how that's solved. FWIW, Google's Site Maps tool solves this problem somewhat.
So, overall, I'd say it's a standard worth giving a chance. The folks responsible for Silverlight (ScottGu, among others) are aware of Microsoft's previous mistakes and are working to not repeat history.
Disclaimer: I am not a Microsoft employee or astroturfer. I am a geek who happens to specialize in
The article doesn't mention if MS is keeping a non-Silverlight version. Being MS, I don't think that they would. If this is true, Adobe has major complaints that they can file with the Justice Department and the EU. Most websites that use Flash have an alternate version for those that don't have/don't want Flash. Even Adobe's website has a Flash alternative.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The hyperbole in this comment is so far over the top, the top is no longer visible to the naked eye.
Well done, sir!
yet another MS-only proprietary technology that fills the same gaps as something standard thats already out there.
It's okay since I haven't been visiting microsoft.com for the last 3 years... sigh
just wonder why there are so many anonymous cowards in this world....
Take off the tinfoil hat for a sec.
(First, can Silverlight even capture or send that info? Never tried, no need to)
Maybe I want to display data to a user and keep it within the application? I don't want users to directly query my data source; it becomes a leeching opportunity, not to mention the person could set up their own front-end and use it for their own competing applications.
I know it's so unheard of here, but there actually IS a valid point for allowing data to be displayed and not discovered.
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
Back in the early days, Flash was pushed as a "better HTML than HTML." They *were* trying to tie up the web into their own proprietary product. Fortunately, nobody fell for it except marketroids who liked the pretty moving lights.
As for Silverlight, it's too little, too late. I think Microsoft is too far on the downhill side to push much of anything any more. They may be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (they still have *way* more market control than everybody else combined), but I don't see it.
Silverlight seems to be Active-X redux.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
They can't convince people running Macs or Linux boxes if they can't see the web site?
Or...will those people after seeing (you need to buy Windows to see this web site) go and buy windows to see an add for windows?
It'd be like an add for Rosetta Stone in a language you don't understand. Would you go buy Rosetta Stone to learn the language to be able to understand the ad?....probably not.
"Microsoft's website is in the middle of a redesign that will feature a fully Silverlight-powered interface - doing away with HTML and everything else."
So Microsoft has embraced HTML, "extended" it with MSIE, and is attempting to extinguish it with a proprietary system that you will be forced to use if you want to interact with their website.
And this is different from their prior monopolistic tactics how?
At best, it's an alternative development environment for Linux/Unix that just happens to be based on the ECMA-334 and ECMA-335 standards.
.NET is portable. Nothing could be further from the truth.
.NET as part of Mono is hard and ongoing doesn't make Mono a "piece of crap". In fact, most Mono users don't even bother installing .NET compatibility libraries.
That is exactly what it is.
Mono is junk that gives people a false impression that
Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth, and that's OK. The fact that support
So I downloaded the Mono for OS X package
That's your mistake: Mono doesn't work well on OS X because Apple is playing their own games with deliberate incompatibilities. For example, Apple deliberately keeps X11 on OS X broken in order to force people to port to their crappy native libraries.
I tried this out today, and within a minute I was already scrambling to close the browser window. ClearType is forced on and doesn't respect global system settings. Doing a little searching, it apparently cannot be turned off.
Some people like it, some people hate it (like me), but it should at least respect the user's preference. That's pretty basic.
I was on a web page (Microsoft owned), and I needed Silverlight to view the page. I clicked download, it opened up a new window. I clicked Linux, then it says "404 page not found".
Mono? Isn't that the UNFINISHED implementation of Microsoft's current .net version
.NET implementation; very few applications use it. It's mostly intended for .NET-based web apps.
Mono is a mature CLR-based platform with full access to the Linux desktop APIs. There are dozens of applications written in it now.
One of the packages you can get for Mono is a partial
Pardon me for not drinking the Silverlight 2 KoolAid until it is in a pitcher in front of me.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's so cutting edge I never heard of it before. So easy to use I never noticed it in my browser. It *can't* be a MS product then. They must have bought it.
"I got it all together but I forgot where I put it."
When you get back into Java, here's a free, ad-free site that has a pretty comprehensive set of Java/J2EE lectures: Free Java Lectures
I thought it was some crackpot half-assed nowhere-near finished beta project. Oh, wait. You know what the difference is between Google and Microsoft products? Google tells you it's beta software.
Msft has been playing the format shuffle game for decades. How many times does msft get to fool everybody with the same trick? Come on, we have all seen this dozens of times from msft. Maybe silverfish works with firefox *now*. But what about two years from now?
Look at msft's insanely agressive battle against ODF: bribes, ballot stuffing, forcing Peter Quinn's resignation, and so on.
Controlling the standards is the very core of msft's business model. With msft it's all about vendor lock, and forced upgrades, strategic incompatiblity, using one product to force apodtion of another, and so on. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm sick to death of msft's gaming. And no, other companies do not play the same game.
IMO: you would have to be stupid to trust msft to not exploit an internet standard.
Has anyone actually tried the new Sirverlight-enabled site? It's awful.
In short, this completely looks like a web site that uses too much Flash and in the wrong way.
-- Sig down
Hooray, now Microsoft's site will be just as much of an unusable, sluggish mess as Adobe's site has been ever since they rebuilt it with tons of Flash!
egypt urnash minimal art.
Let's review: you sell a product. You promote it heavily on your website. And yet, for the people who do NOT already use your product, you will hide your entire site. In short, it won't be simple to us eon Linux, it will be hit or miss with Mac, and it doesn't even work properly in all Windows browsers. So all of the potential Microsoft customers will be turned away at the door?
I call BS.
Looky.. http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=691
I have Windows 2000 and Silverlight does not run on this operating system. How will I be able to access microsoft.com?
"They've not tried to integrate their speakers with their mice (Microsoft would find a way to do this!) "
That really isn't a terrible idea. It could be sort of like rumble on a game controller. A speaker in a mouse could give you some tactile feed back when your pointer is over a window or when you click a button.
Not a terrible idea and now it can not be patented since I posted it on Slashdot.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The english language translation is "XNA lets you make games. And they work on the Xbox360 AND Windows."
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Papervision is a nice alternative to the MS offering.
http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/search?q=papervision
Watch the youtube video.
Clicked PopFly. Lovely pic of Bill!
Clicked random link on the page.
Output:
Well that is a first. Reccommending Firefox on an MS page. Progress!, unfortunately I am using Firefox ... on Debian.
Maybe after Miguel gets done pimping it for us nix users, I can behold the glory that is, nah I just can't finish it. Next!
Oh, and just in case that ad is rotated, here is the aforementioned pic of Bill. http://www.popfly.ms/ads/skyscraper/bdlc-skyscraper.jpg
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Well i don't know about your company, but mine pushes Windows updates from a central WSUS server, and our clients are not allowed to get updates from Windows Updates. I have yet to see an update that i havn't approved go through to the clients.
Too bad there isn't a hall-of-fame for Slashdot posts, where a post is so insightful that it becomes a classic.
Parent is "Why is flash bad?" or "Why is flash good?", all in one.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
... it's double platformed (Win and OS X). Linux, or any other platforms are no where to be found for system requirements (http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/system-requirements.aspx).
Nothing has been this big of a threat to the desktop monopoly since Java.
How does Java control my disk drive? No...I mean at the driver level. How does Java move data through my PCI bus and out the network card?
I'll answer: it doesn't. Java still needs an operating system to run with somekind of interface between the BIOS, CPU, and other resources. Java is not yet on a desktop bios that I know of and if it is, it certainly doesn't support the number of devices that Windows does. Wash, rinse, and repeat for Flash, Silverlight, Flex, AJAX, or just about any other similar architecture. They aren't operating systems. None of them can talk to my bios or be a substitute for Windows, Linux, OSX, or other OSes.
Hence, no threat to the desktop monopoly. You still need an OS. And right now, that OS is most decidedly a Microsoft product for the vast majority of people (+xbox +phones +cars +zune +). As long as that continues, the desktop monopoly will remain intact.
So nobody will be able to read Microsoft's website? I applaud this bold move and hope they succeed in erasing themselves from the map.
Silverlight has less chance of succeeding than applets did back in the 90s. In fact, the Applet engine has recently been overhauled in a big way making it even more competitive with Silverlight and Flash. Finally, as bad as applets are, they still have a better marketshare than Silverlight.
Here is a link to the new applet engine: https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html
Try it out for yourself. In my experience applets are *far* more usable. They load faster and integrate more seamlessly into the website. Caveat: this release isn't public yet.
Last Ditch? Where has this guy been? Just the WWE could flip the market.
http://silverlight.net/Showcase/
.....you gotta eat your own dog shit.
Now wash your hands.
Small minority community with obsession over trying to take down a corporation and no common goals for trying to help the average user.
Not interested
What the fuck is Silverlight?
Anyone who has played Runescape knows what Silverlight is, and I'm betting the meaning is similar between Runescape's and Microsoft's use of the item/software:
"Type of Item: Weapon"
"Item-Specific Info: Is highly effective against demons."
http://runescape.salmoneus.net/itemdb/ViewItem.php?ItemID=1293
Netscape is dead, the new web war is on! This time it's Flash vs. Silverturd, place your bets!
What we as a community should do, is each time MS comes up with some software like Silverfish.. Silverlight I mean.. we should band together and pool resources to develop a counter software that works like we should've dumped money together and effort for WINE when IMO it should've been helped in the Microsoft/Corel deal but clearly wasn't. So today if they were to focus on Silverlight, we focus on an open counter, the same plan for anything they may intend to do to lock people into loading Windows to use some program or document.
Guess not.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Main reasons I don't like it:
- It's not Open!
- It's from Microsoft (I don't trust it)
- Pushes Microsoft Developer Products (i.e. Windows)
- Don't like the name of it
- Don't really need (like Vista)
- Why bother when you have LAMP?
Wait for Uncle Ballmer and his patent troll bandwagon (something about which de Icaza is now blissfully unconcerned giving who is paying his paycheck).
/.ers inviting us to make our own noose from that dirty MS rope.
"Throwachair" Ballmer has made perfectly clear his intentions, but here we are, with many
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You paint us all this rosy MS loves open source and what not but fail to see where is the patent protection.
Go on, surprise us, show us unequivocally that no Linux distro is going to be sued by using this technology.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Mono is copying an MS technology (which they may have copied from Java and others, but hey, everybody on this industry pretends to be inventing the sliced bread all by themselves).
MS's CEO has explicitly threatened Linux companies regarding patented "inventions".
Now tell me, why should any sane person attempting to develop open solutions should use mono or any other technology aping (how apt) MS's closed, most likely patented implementations of any technology?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Microsoft has signed a patent covenant protecting Novell and the code they contribute to Mono from patent claims
Novell is not Linux (or anybody else for that matter). The rest of the industry is not protected, it is perfectly possible that other distros using Mono could find themselves the target of Uncle Ballmer's legal team .
So again, why should we use Mono if we are not Miguel de Icaza or other Novell employees?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I keep trying to view the demos and I keep going around and around with these install screens. Does anyone know where I can download the RPMs?
[signature]
I understand what you are saying, with respect to applications.
However, the point of my post is that MS dominates the desktop OS space and, since you must have an OS to run any of the apps you lay out above, then MS - by default - still dominates the desktop. The OS is the key to the vault. If you control that, you can stick your grubby little fingers wherever you want to, up to and including making those competitor apps break (though not as obviously as in years past).
Java promise was to made the underlying OS unimportant. "Write once run everywhere". They were just ahead of their time, the machines back them could not cope with the demands of this promise. Now that they can and manage fine in fields as diverse as enterprise services and mobile devices.
The irrelevance of the OS rightly concerned MS who tried the only thing they know: to embrace and destroy. They were aiming to corrupt the Java standard, go google for it. At the end they had to settle with Sun but in terms that left no doubt that they had been the losers. If Java had not been a real threat MS would have not concerned itself about it.
Enter the Internet (which MS almost missed) and the humble web browser. The web browser is promising, yet again, platform independence. A well designed application could run equally well in any device (including mobile ones), so here again the 90%+ dominance of the market by MS is being threatened by the likes of Google and many other companies offering web based services. The amazing uptake of devices like the EEE PC, Nokia N800 tablet, iPhone (all non MS platforms) is showing you don't need MS to provide successful services.
And what does MS od? What MS is doing is perverting that concept by designing something similar (a language running in a virtual machine) but ensuring it only works in MSware. So it is all over again MS wanting to keep their monopoly alive.
And here we are, with people don't getting it and cheering or justifying MS in spite of having been legally slapped in multiple occasions for their predatory commercial tactics and in spite of their explicit threats of patent litigation meltdown.
Keep the good work missing the main issues.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No patent threats?
Go on. Convince us.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Novell is not Linux, they don't represent the whole Linux community, they can't sign patent agreements in everybody else's name.
If code developed by Novell with help of MS find its way into lets say Red Hat, Solaris or Ubuntu, please pray tell me what is stopping MS to let lose its patent lawyers?
For goodness sakes, Ballmer is on record making patent related threats... Wake the fuck up!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So you drank the Kool Aid of a world without ideologies, aims and objectives.
All can be judged only on technical terms, one can remain blissfully ignorant of the impacts at a social and political level.
If it wasn't for the folks that set their feet firmly in a political agenda, we would not have Linux, BSD and even OpenSolaris, which gives us our last hope of having any choice when it comes to the OS market (even OSX and the iPhone are derivatives of works inspired by people with clear political views about the future of computing and technology).
I think a technician, engineer or programmer that does not consider the wider implications of embracing a technology is as bad, maybe even worse, than one with patchy knowledge of the technology at hand.
You sir are a danger to society because are a lost bullet when it comes to social issues and have enough technological know how to affect the world around you.
Bloody scary and demoralizing.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If my users are going to have to download and install something new (Silverlight plugin, .Net runtime) to use my online app, I might as well just code a native client app with an HTTP data service, and have them download and install that. It would be easier to code and have higher performance. iTunes is the most well-known example of this strategy, and I'd say it's doing pretty well.
Overkill, you might say? I'd submit that if this strategy is overkill for your product, your product is a Website and probably doesn't need to be built entirely in Silverlight or Flash in the first place. HTML+CSS+Javascript is plenty powerful for anything less than a full-on application, and is automatically cross-platform.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
yep, once again Microsoft is playing by there own rules and completely ignoring web standards. They realize that they don't stand a chance in the HTML world (cross-browser sites aren't exactly there strong point). They also know that if they use the silverlight on the Microsoft site then users will be forced to download the software. If users already have the software on there computers then many sites that would otherwise use flash will convert to silverlight.
On the other hand this could also be the downfall of Microsoft on the internet if users refuse to download the software.
Moving Microsoft's website to Silverlight is a bad move! Silverlight is not cross-platform in any real sense of the word. I went to see this demo, it told me to "get silverlight", then took me to a page that was more or less blakn -- it had buttons down the left, the "get silverlight" in the middle again, and "detailed installation instructions" which were also blank.
Yes, I'm very likely to ever look into Microsoft products if I can't even view their webpage 8-). Microsoft (and indeed, apparently many on Slashdot...) may not want to acknowledge it, but lack of cross-platform compatiblity is probably what is keeping people from using Silverlight (if Flash is widely supported, and HTML almost universally surported, why would anyone make a site with Silverlight which is not so much?) In the olden days, one thing that made Realplayer as popular as it was back then was quite simply they made a plugin for IE and Netscape, for Win95, 98, ME, and 2000, MacOS 8, OS9, and OSX (once it was out), and for Linux on several processors. As opposed to the many competitors who typically made a media playback plugin that worked on one specific version of Windows and that's it. This also was what made Flash catch on back in the day as compared to a few competing "rich media" plugins available; multiplatform availability.
Flash? Adobe has ported it to many many OSes, and there actually exists at least one completely open-source flash clone (gnash) which apparently has recently been brought up to being Flash 9 compatible.
Silverlight? Well, I've seen several mentions in this thread about moonlight. It appears to not be in a usable state yet. Please, don't go around pretending that moonlight is ready to use (and therefore there is silverlight for linux) when it has to be checked out from svn, built, and then can show some demo pages, but not others. If microsoft took cross-platform compatibility seriously (which, they do not) they would have people on the job of making sure moonlight is completed, and have a link on their "silverlight" download page, rather than just pretending linux and other platforms don't exist.