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Microsoft Prefers Flash To Silverlight
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft still has not adopted Silverlight, and uses Flash all over its websites. 'Despite all the controversy over Microsoft using Silverlight to take over the rich internet market from Adobe Flash, the software giant seems to be not even trying. In fact, even most Microsoft web sites are using Flash instead of Silverlight.'"
uhhh.... news flash, there is an OS X and Linux runtime.
JavaFX.com uses JavaScript and QuickTime to promote the benefits of JavaFX. No JVM needed.
(Of course, you still have to visit the Wikipedia article for an introduction in context.)
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Newsflash: getting silverlight (moonlight) to actually install on Linux takes a team of experts, and even if you manage that it'll fail on most pages. It's no more accurate to say that there's a silverlight for linux than it is to say that all windows programs run in linux thanks to wine.
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Yes, you're wrong.
It's a shame you spent so much effort writing all that and none on Googling, because there is plenty of information out there.
Adobe's own application platform for Flash is Flex. OpenLaszlo is an open-source XML based programming language for developing apps in SWF. Flash itself also has a substantial component collection for app development, and finally, there are dozens of third-party ActionScript IDEs and compliers available.
That's why Microsoft is introducing Silverlight. Flash is threatening to become an OS-independent application platform which could make Windows irrelevant.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
And as wikipedia says: "but as a lot of work still needs to be done[7], no firm date has yet been given on the Moonlight website."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_(runtime)#cite_note-status-6
Basically though, I think Flash has just gone too far down the wrong route, as application development in it seems like a hack. Perhaps someone can illustrate to me why I'm wrong and it really is good for application development and I'm just missing something every time I come to look it it (perhaps because the books and documentation are almost all aimed at animators+designers, not developers?).
You're indeed missing something, because you're looking at the wrong product. Adobe's product for developing web applications for the flash player is called flex. Go take a look at some flex books (for flex 2 or 3), and be enlightened.
In my opinion flex can go toe-to-toe with any client-side web dev platform, be it silverlight, java client, java/gwt, extjs, or whatever.
Actionscript 3 is modern language that encourages good development practices. The flex framework is complete, fast, light, easy to extend, and easy to work with. And mxml, flex's xaml-equivalent, well, just check it out, it's really nice.
I see it as quite opposite. Silverlight doesn't offer a compelling featureset to lure people away from flash/flex. It doesn't do anything development-wise that might tempt flex developers, and it cannot integrate animators and designers as good as the flash / flex combination can.
It IS open.
On May 1, 2008, as part of its Open Screen Project, Adobe dropped all restrictions on the SWF and FLV formats.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."