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Microsoft Woos Developers Under the Silverlight
CWmike writes to tell us that with the impending release of their Silverlight 2.0 product, Microsoft is poised to enact the next phase of their plan, wooing developers and designers directly. Microsoft is funding a French open-source project designed to allow programmers to utilize the Eclipse framework to build Silverlight apps. "Microsoft is also releasing for free a set of programming templates called the Silverlight Control Pack under its Microsoft Permissive License, as well as the technical specification for Silverlight's Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) vocabulary via Microsoft's Open Specification Promise. The latter, said Goldfarb, should make it easier for would-be Silverlight developers."
Keeping in mind I am speaking in a group where there are huge amount of open source zealots. However Flash has the advantage that it runs in Linux, Mac, Windows (And more if you are designing for older versions) while Silverlight is only Windows and Mac.
Next Flash is usually installed by default on Mac and Windows systems. (And a simple plug in for Linux... But if you guys are so smart you can probably add a plugin yourself anyways or the distribution has it already installed) Vs. Having to install it on Windows and Macs too.
If you don't need the extra graphics and AJAX method works good too. Plus you don't need to deal with the Closed Source Flash as well.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I am so sick of reading these tech articles with an anti-MS bias to them.
As a developer, isn't the point to write better/more robust code?? Silverlight is a tool that Microsoft is designing so that developers can take better advantage of the rich Internet experience. It steams me that the author of that article seems bent on pointing out that MS has this "ultimate plan" to kill Adobe.
Why can't people get past the whole pro vs. anti-Microsoft thing? I may be ranting here (apologies in advance), but railing on MS for their past business practices (which I don't condone, BTW) is pointless. I tend to use the best tools available for the technologies that I code for, and Microsoft has some good ones! Sure, they are proprietary, but it could be any large corporation in MS's place, and people would rail on them for being the "big, bad corporation"! Open source has its' place in the industry, as does proprietary software!
Let's get past the hate, and just stick to what we (developers) do best: write awesome code!! I get stoked when I hear of new technologies coming out (from MS or Sun, or whomever), since that means the online experience users want is getting better, and WE are the ones who give it to the masses!!
W00t to new technologies!!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
http://gallery1.demconvention.com/
Yup, the Democratic National Convention site is Silverlight. The bandwidth isn't quite as impressive as it was while the event was going on. But flip through the site and check out the functionality.
As someone who has developed a bit with the beta Silverlight tools, I have to say it is an amazing platform. And I'm quite excited about using it in the future.
-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
Given that Adobe AIR is based on WebKit, and the OpenSource world has Webkit (Qt has Webkit integrated, but Qt is not required for my suggestion), why don't we just make a fully AIR/Silverlight clone using WebKit and Javascript?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I agree, Applets aren't that bad but it may take awhile to get people to forget all those horrible java applets people used to put on their ugly sites. One of my favourites at the moment is Wordle. http://wordle.net/
Actually you can build flash apps without Flash.
Flex SDK is free and allows you to compile Flash, Flex and AIR apps.
FDT is not free but it's very very good (uses Flex). If you think it's not worth the money, you can write your own Eclipse plugin.
There are a number of other options, like FlasDevelop or MTASC, which although not Eclipse-based, are free alternatives.
Actionscript is similar to javascript, although in version 3, with strong typing, it starting to feel more like Java.
Some people - me included - like its flexibility, while others loathe the same thing.
The only thing I don't like about it is the new syntax for Vector data type (Flash 10)
C#, Java: int list[] = new int[100];
AS3: var list:Vector. = new Vector.(100);
I installed Moonlight but the same message keeps appearing on the Democratic Convention site, and the Hard Rock Memorabilia site crashes FF. So much for Moonlight. It's a Microsoft perpetrated scam to fool people into thinking that Silverlight is portable to OSes not targeted by Microsoft.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.