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MS To Push Silverlight Via Redesigned Microsoft.com

Posted by kdawson on from the bye-bye-html dept.

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.'"

2 of 710 comments (clear)

  1. Re:News flash! by Entropius · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Breeze to Program by Pennidren · · Score: 5, Informative

    I got the intent of your remark, but in an effort to fully disclose:

    Silverlight isn't open source, but you are not restricted to .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!

    Also, although still not open source, the source code for .NET framework libraries will be available.

    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).