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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.'"
If your not paying attention to your Windows Updates Microsoft will slip in the silverlight update for you. No website download necessary.
Homo homini lupus
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
How to Google-proof your site in one easy step!
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.
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.
Yeah, they should use a sensible name with a product description like iPod, Gnome and Dreamweaver.
Oh, wait...
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
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...
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.
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
Good point. People on /. should stop trying to talk about how great Linux and MacOSX are. I mean, if they were so great they would be dominant already.
New products always need advertising. But what I'm really curious about is how is Silverlight not great? I haven't examined the issue yet (I thought it was still in Beta, so I don't consider their advertising excessibe), but you obviously have carefully weighted all the pros and cons, so I'm interested in your view. Or maybe your logic was "Boo, hiss, MS is the devil."
Your ad here. Ask me how!
If you'd said "encourage" rather than "force", you might have had a point....
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.
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!
Doesn't matter what add-on MS slipped in. The script blocker which my company requires includes Silverlight blocking. No Microsoft.com for you! And there will be some handicapped accessibility issues if there is no HTML.
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.
I'll tell you how Silverlight is Not Great, and I've never used it in the slightest. And it's not because it's by Microsoft, or because it's not free.
/x?html/.
It's Not Great for the same reason Flash is Not Great: it almost always results in a worse user interface than using normal
For the developer the site is The Thing. It's important that the site has clean code, looks cool, and is easy to maintain. Maybe Silverlight makes that possible.
For the user the site is likely just one stop on a journey tied together by a web search. It's important that the site behaves similarly to all others in certain respects: that the browser's navigation facilities work, that the browser's text search works, that input behavior for these are the same as on all other pages (keeping in mind that key bindings, mouse bindings, context menus, etc. vary from browser to browser and user to user). Flash breaks this, and if Silverlight doesn't do the same I'll be shocked.
For the developer it's tempting to think the site is a book to be read from start to finish. But users are more likely to look in the index, tear out a few pages, and glue them into collages of their own creation. The developer can use the introductory chapters to lay out unusual notational conventions that will apply throughout the text but the user, not having read from the beginning, is only confused to see them used in the middle. If you're tempted to cry and bitch about this as a developer, get over yourself: users have more important things to do in life than figure out this super cool new interface to your web site.
A big part of the reason the web took off is that its limited facilities for UI design forced sites to mostly follow the same conventions. If you want to do something better, more complicated, something that people have to learn, then write a damn desktop app.
(Yes, there are useful and good things that can be done by embedding Flash/Java in web pages. Nifty videos and games, no-install VNC and ssh clients... as long as they stay self-contained and aren't part of the page's navigation or textual information presentation, knock yourself out).
"Good point. People on /. should stop trying to talk about how great Linux and MacOSX are. I mean, if they were so great they would be dominant already."
If Microsoft's dominance had anything to do with software quality and not with barely legal tactics of coercing OEMs into bundling their and their software only, sabotaging Windows so it would not work properly with DR-DOS, and generally abusing one monopoly to create more monopolies, your comment would have some measure of correctness.
WFWG made obvious (to Novell's disgrace) people didn't want file servers - they wanted to share files and printers. Excel was respectable. Word (first on Mac, then on Windows) was decent. Multiplan and Word were even honest products on DOS and on Macintosh. Windows brought some GUI multitasking for those who couldn't afford to run Unix and X. I did a lot of Applesoft BASIC code during college.
Unfortunately, the real world is not like that. This Microsoft is not the same company it was on the 70s, 80s and early 90s.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
...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.
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.
For those who don't know, pleonasm is the redundant use of cute robotic dinosaurs.
Take off every Sig. For great justice.
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
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.
Secure Digital cards (SD Cards) were developed by SanDisk, Toshiba and Panasonic to combat Sony's Memory Stick technology.
I'm using 64-bit linux. (Speciffically Debian, but I've tried this with SuSE and Ubuntu as well)
With nspluginwrapper (configured automatically on OS install) Flash Player 9 works as expected in 64-bit firefox. If I didn't know how the system worked behind the scenes I wouldn't even realize there was a 32-bit plugin being used, or that there was a potential for issue.
http://www.microsoft.com/beta/downloads/Default.aspx
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
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.
Good point! I'd better go patch out the MS Word support for OpenOffice.
There's also two other issues here: Some countries do not allow software patents. For the rest of us, there is still the question of "What's a sane alternative?" No matter where you go in the software industry, you'll be running into patents.
All that said, I do actually agree that it's maybe not the safest move, and that I would much rather start from scratch.
Oh, on a related note: Remember the whole GIF controversy? For quite a long time, the only reasonable alternative was to use JPEGs everywhere, because it was either GIF or JPEG. It took a long time for PNG to be widely supported enough to be a replacement for GIF, and various ways of animating PNGs aren't really officially standardized, and are certainly not commonly supported.
So, at a certain point, you have to ask yourself if you'll actually have a completely open replacement created by the time the patent runs out.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!