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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.'"
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
s/Silverlight/Flex 2.0/g
Except that basically everybody has a flash player running already, there are tons and tons more resources and libraries available to developers, and it works on every significant platform.... There are even open source players.
Flex/AS3 development is pretty damned easy. How much easier can Silverlight possibly be to justify deploying to a platform with significantly lower market penetration?
Not all companies.
I have a Panasonic camera. They could have developed a proprietary memory format like Sony did, but it uses plain old cheap SD cards.
They could have made the lens threads a weird size so they could sell their own teleconverters and filters, but it's plain old 55mm, and people have quite happily screwed Olympus, Nikon, Minolta, etc. stuff onto them.
Some companies do just make useful stuff and sell it, but they're not the ones that make the news as often, since they mostly stay out of the spotlight and just sit around making stuff and money.
In the computer world, Logitech is sort of like this. They've not tried to integrate their speakers with their mice (Microsoft would find a way to do this!), and instead just try to make useful products that stand on their own merit.
I got the intent of your remark, but in an effort to fully disclose:
.NET languages; you can use any of 4 scripting languages. In fact Silverlight 1.0 (which the post you replied to is bemoaning) is actually more restricted than 2.0 because it is not able to use .NET languages. Don't complain about options!
.NET framework libraries will be available.
:)
Silverlight isn't open source, but you are not restricted to
Also, although still not open source, the source code for
And you are not limited to a single platform to develop on although it is currently difficult to do so on a platform other than Windows
And Silverlight 2.0 will be available on Mac (and, via third party, Linux).
The functionality that having the entire .Net framework at the tips of your fingers while developing is a godsend.
.NET runtime v1.1, the .NET Runtime v2.0, the .NET runtime v3.0, the .NET runtime v3.5, the .NET runtime service pack 1, the .NET runtime v2 service pack 1, the .NET runtime v3.0 service pack 1, the .NET 3.5 recommended update and the .NET runtime v1.1. security update.
Hi, to get the best user experience from this product, you need to install the
I know, I've just been doing that on the new server, getting it ready... 300 MB of download and 3 reboots (that's no counting the rest of the windows updates I needed to get).
Note that the runtimes are optional components in WU, so many of your potential customers will not have the latest and greatest versions (which, naturally, will be required) including those customers running Vista.
I very rarely hear people call Javascript a heap of crap who have actually used and understood it.
If you don't know who Douglas Crockford is, there's a very good chance you have no idea what Javascript can be.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.