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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.'"

19 of 710 comments (clear)

  1. Firefox... by binaryspiral · · Score: 5, Funny

    If it doesn't work in Firefox, I'm not interested.

    Oh wait... it does. Just kidding - still not interested.

    1. Re:Firefox... by mhall119 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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? Whenever a Windows-using acquaintance hoses their box and I have to boot a LiveCD to fix it.
      --
      http://www.mhall119.com
    2. Re:Firefox... by Stamen · · Score: 5, Funny

      I gave Microsoft a chance in 1995, then I gave them a chance in 98, 99, and 2001, and 2003. I gave them a chance with Webclasses, with ActiveX, with Fox Pro, with Visual J, with DNA, with vbscript, with jscript, with J#, with VB. I gave them a chance with IE, then again with IE, then again.

      I'm sure if I just give them this one more chance, they'll be fine, just this last chance, this is going to be the one that works out... I know it, I just know it.

  2. Earlier this year? by deckardt · · Score: 5, Funny

    MS is giving up after 3 days? wow!

  3. News flash! by east+coast · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
    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.

  4. Breeze to Program by WED+Fan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Breeze to Program by Reapman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Last I checked all you need is notepad, vim, or emacs to build a rather snazzy CSS / HTML based site with fancy scripts if you want. I haven't worked with Silverlight but I have heard from others it is easy to work with, so it does have that. But as someone who rather likes not being tied to any 1 OS, be it OSX, Windows, or *nix, I'll stick with the truely open HTML option (ya I know Silverlight runs on most but that's more due to the grace of Microsoft than anything, and requires special libraries like Mono I think if your not running a main OS)

      The thing is this ISNT just another web technology, this is a MICROSOFT technology, which historically has always ment you need to run a Microsoft Enironment to get the benefit out of it. Microsofts not evil, but they're not exactlly open either.

    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).

    3. Re:Breeze to Program by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh! Oh! I have! I have!

      It's a piece of crap.

      When I finally got it up and running, I had as many problems with the API set as I did with the documentation. Mono is junk that gives people a false impression that .NET is portable. Nothing could be further from the truth. 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.

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    4. Re:Breeze to Program by somersault · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ah - so the rumours about it having poor floating point compatibility were true?

      --
      which is totally what she said
    5. Re:Breeze to Program by dvice_null · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mono? Isn't that the UNFINISHED implementation of Microsoft's current .net version (I'm saying current, because at some point they will extend it a little more and Mono will lack behind.)? But I have a question to you. Have you ever heard of .net applications using Windows DLLs? Well I have as several of them do and because of that, they won't work on Linux.

    6. Re:Breeze to Program by BasharTeg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is your big misunderstanding. What makes Mono a "systemwide library system" and Flash just a library? Do they go in different folders? Is installing Adobe Flash not "modifying your system"?

      Silverlight works with Firefox, Safari, and IE.

      You know the spec for HTML? Which one? Transitional HTML 4.01? Strict HTML 4.01? XHTML? I highly doubt you actually *know* the spec for HTML. What you know is how to write HTML that works. Other people know how to write Silverlight code that works. Your arguments for Microsoft cutting support for Linux don't make any sense. Mono is an open source GPLed project, which happens to have some Microsoft backing and support due to their own desire to see Silverlight succeed and the agreement they have with Novell who is backing Mono. However, it's still an open source GPL project. Saying "what if Microsoft changes everything" doesn't make sense. You could make the same argument against Samba (prior to the recent release of the SMB documentation after many years of reverse engineering).

      The fact is, once Moonlight is up and rolling, there's no need for Microsoft's support to continue keeping it up to date. If they add some new function blah(x,y) they have to document that function in order for Silverlight users to actually make use of it, which means writing your own version of blah(x,y) from scratch wouldn't be that big of a deal. Open source projects like Samba have been doing this for years with NO documentation.

      Considering Microsoft's very early support for multiple platforms and for an open source implementation, and the years it took to even get a crappy version of Adobe Flash for Linux out of Adobe, it's really funny that you consider Flash the lesser of two evils.

      It's also really funny that you're so hot on the standards body for HTML and how great it is to have one true standard, when the whole HTML "standard(s)" and all of the commercial implementations of it are in shambles. No disrespect to the W3C community, but right now the par for a good HTML rendering browser is "whatever is better than Microsoft's support". We have 3 rolling standards, of which there is no actual implementation of 100% of the standard. I'm pretty sure Flash renders 100% compatible Flash, and Silverlight renders 100% compatible Silverlight. If you look at the same HTML on Windows and Mac, you'll get different output on many web pages, but if you look at Silverlight on Windows and Mac, you'll get the same output.

      With HTML you do have to worry about what kindness an organization provides, because you have to worry about how much of your HTML "standard" (and which one) they choose to support, and how much of it they choose to support. You're just as dependent on browser implementations as Silverlight and Flash people are on their plugins. There's no difference anywhere except in your mind.

      Oh, and both Silverlight and Flash are filing to become standardized specifications under standards bodies. Look at .NET, it's an open standard for anyone to implement. Silverlight will be the same. So again, where is this dependency on Microsoft's kindness again? They're doing everything that everyone demands of them: support multiple platforms, have an open specification, submit your spec for standardization, and help open source implementations of your spec get developed. And yet still there are people like this who knock their every move. Here's a hint: If you want Microsoft to change their behavior, don't give them a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario and don't be a hypocrite by being willing to be owned by Adobe but not by Microsoft. In my opinion Adobe has shown just as bad of behavior, and they clearly have a monopoly in several markets as well.

  5. History repeating by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  6. Re:Let's make MS Help EVEN Worse by ShatteredArm · · Score: 5, Funny

    You should have seen how badly the member website for Microsoft Certified Professionals crapped out when I tried getting in. The error message actually displayed a Guid.

    And yes, I'm completely aware of the irony.

  7. Re:Wow by diodeus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How to Google-proof your site in one easy step!

  8. Re:They're already spamming us by Al+Dimond · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    It's Not Great for the same reason Flash is Not Great: it almost always results in a worse user interface than using normal /x?html/.

    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).

  9. Just in case there was any doubt... by Foerstner · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...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.
  10. Enough is enough. by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I scanned the replies to this, nobody has pointed out that the article is a fabrication aka lie. Microsoft is not redesigning Microsoft.com to use Silverlight. The idea is preposterous if you think about it for just a minute. Imagine the work involved in changing a site that has developed over more than a decade entirely to use Silverlight.

    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.