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Silverlight 2.0 Released
rfernand79 writes "Via Scott Guthrie's Blog for Microsoft, we find out that Silverlight 2.0 has been released. The blog post notes some interesting statistics, including the magnitude of video streamed during the Olympics and the Democratic National Convention (both using Silverlight). 'Hello Worlds' and educational links are included in the post."
As I still haven't installed Silverlight 1.0 or seen a site that requires it.
was gained.
...call me again when Mono has an implementation.
No downloads for Linux! I'm safe!
I don't know what the value of using Silverlight is over using Flash.
I was more excited to hear Garfield The Movie was getting a sequel.
Good Lord. Who cares?
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Microsoft today announced the release of version 2.0 its world-beating Silverlight multimedia platform for the Web. As a replacement for Adobe's Flash, it is widely considered utterly superfluous and of no interest.
"We have a fabulous selection of content partners for Silverlight," announced Microsoft marketer Scott Guthrie on his blog today. "NBC for the Olympics, which delivered millions of new users to BitTorrent. The Democrat National Convention, which is fine because those Linux users are all Ron Paul weirdos anyway. It comes with rich frameworks, rich controls, rich networking support, a rich base class library, rich media support, oh God kill me now. Google haven't called back. My life is an exercise in futility. I'm the walking dead, man, the walking dead!"
Silverlight was created by Microsoft to leverage its desktop monopoly on Windows, to work off the tremendous sales and popularity of Vista. Flash is present on a pathetic 98% of computers connected to the Internet, whereas Silverlight downloads are into the triple figures.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Flash10 appeared as a regular update on my Fedora installation(adobe repo), just when it was released.
Never would had happened without you.
We're looking for a replacement for canvas in IE. excanvas sucks. We could use flash, but the Javascriptflash interface is very slow. (It serializes to XML twice.) Is Silverlight's any better?
Does this mean it's time for me to burn my Fedora 9/MacOS 10.5 CDs and install Microsoft Vista?
Were you trying to be modded +funny?
Especially the "tremendous sales and popularity of vista" part.
Meanwhile, any developer with a shred of common sense knows silverlight is like asking to create more viruses for windows.
Silverlight wouldn't even get a glance from lazy developers if it wasn't for that flash is a horrible piece of crap as well.
Like Vista, this is unwanted technology from a company who's main goal is isolating their customers from the customers data while forbidding access by people not fully paid up an using their technology. Its like me building a toll road that people have to go out of their way to get to, then pay me money for using my road, then do another detour to get back to where they were going. Its really quite insane (gee, no takers huh?). I am going to start calling this technology Pilferblight.
Version 1.0 will be a joke and no one will buy into it. Version 2.0 will be only moderately better than 1.0 and it will gain a little momentum. Version 3.0 will be only moderately better than 2.0 and almost everybody will switch to it within a year or two.
From the silverlight terms of agreement:
You may not
 work around any technical limitations in the software;
There - right there - it says that if your computer is limited by this software you may not find a way to fix it!
Oh my goodness! I am so glad I got "your browser or hardware is incompatible with silverlight" or some generic message when I browsed to the silverlight page...
I wonder if "not allowed to work around" includes uninstalling it...
7. SUPPORT SERVICES. Because this software is âoeas is,â we may not provide support services for it.
So if it breaks your computer you are on your own!
Oh dear - what a chuckle. Trusted computing my left buttock.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx?mode=sysreq&reason=unsupportedplatform
Seems I am safe after all.
(sorry for the ugly linkage...)
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Let me see if I have this right.
If you are developing a rich internet application and need it to work with the most possible platforms, you use AJAX. If you are willing to settle for a smaller number of platforms in exchange for more UI flexibility, you use Flex. If you are... uh... trying to watch the 2008 Olympics, you use Silverlight.
Right?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Major League Baseball (mlb.com)
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Full version up now:
Microsoft today announced the release of version 2.0 its world-beating Silverlight multimedia platform for the Web. As a replacement for Adobe's Flash, it is widely considered utterly superfluous and of no interest to anyone who could be found.
"We have a fabulous selection of content partners for Silverlight," announced Microsoft marketer Scott Guthrie on his blog today. "NBC for the Olympics, which delivered millions of new users to BitTorrent. The Democrat National Convention, which is fine because those Linux users are all Ron Paul weirdos anyway. It comes with rich frameworks, rich controls, rich networking support, a rich base class library, rich media support, oh God kill me now. My resumé's a car crash, Google won't call me back. My life is an exercise in futility. I'm the walking dead, man. The walking dead."
Silverlight was created by Microsoft to leverage its desktop monopoly on Windows, to work off the tremendous sales and popularity of Vista. Flash is present on a pathetic 96% of all computers connected to the Internet, whereas Silverlight downloads are into the triple figures.
"But it's got DRM!" cried Guthrie. "Netflix loved it! And web developers love us too, after all we did for them with IE 6. Wait, come back!"
Similar Microsoft initiatives include its XPS replacement for Adobe PDF, its HD Photo replacement for JPEG photographs and its earlier Liquid Motion attempt to replace Flash. Also, that CD-ROM format Vista defaults to which no other computers can read.
In a Microsoft internal security sweep, Guthrie's own desktop was found to still be running Windows XP.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
It's locked-down, proprietary and a M$ product. Need I say more?
The only thing that Silverlight has over it's opponents is less vulnerabilities than Flash, but I think it's security through obscurity.
Sure HTML and Javascript have gotten us a long way. But even the best DHTML/JS tree control, tabs, slider panel, etc run slower then native widgets, Silverlight, Flash/Flex.
Get the source code for Firefox and read the code in the parser directory if you can...try not to throw up. HTML parsing is just old school...time for a real f'ing GUI library for application development. Sure slashdot and fark can get by with HTML and it's got life left, but I think there are better ways of creating a portable GUI.
Who is this "OOS" you're referring to?
maybe together with some other open web standards
Were you trying to be modded +funny?
"Yes"
This year will be the Year of Silverlight on the Desktop! Just you wait!
call me again when Mono has an implementation.
Mono is the camel's nose under the tent.
By far the longest and slowest and most complicated "Hello World" example I have ever done.
My impression was that the amount of Olympics streaming using Silverlight was less than YouTube during the same time period. If so, it doesn't seem like much of a success to me.
(Calling it a success because people installed silverlight isn't much. Afterall, the same people would have probably installed a rootkit and trojan in order to watch the Olympic streaming. They just don't care.)
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
So the "tremendous sales and popularity of Vista" part struck you as humorous, but not the bit about Linux users? Oooooookay ...
http://rocknerd.co.uk
You are my bitch Silverlight, just like Flash.
May I say how pleased I am that that comment got a +1 Informative mod. o_0
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I was *NEVER* asked or prompted to install the damn thing on any website. Plus...it's a Flash competitor? If i ruled the world, Flash would be limited to streaming media and shitty online games.
I want my hyperTEXT back in my interwebs please.
the many C# devs who will now start forcing users to switch to Silverlight business based apps and give html+javascript a bad name..
just wait and see what silverlight and sharepoint will do together in the corporate world..
"Linux is like the electric car.. not a chance"
I'm sure that Microsoft kindly shared the specs for SilverLight 2.0 with Mono/Novell during the development so that the Mono project would not have to play catch-up once 2.0 came out. Right?
Otherwise, Microsoft would be releasing a technology that will only work reliably on Windows and shun the other major platforms.
Hum... I wonder why they just don't do like Adobe or Sun and release a version for Linux, Mac and Windows?
Surely, I must be misinterpreting Microsoft's intentions with Silverlight!
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
Which platforms are available? XP and Vista?
No sig today...
My impression was that the amount of Olympics streaming using Silverlight was less than YouTube during the same time period. If so, it doesn't seem like much of a success to me.
If the bar for success for video on the web is deliver more content than YouTube, than there has not been a success in web video since YouTube launched :). 9.9 million hours of video in 17 days is a whole lot of video.
Some better metrics for success might be:
Was it profitable for NBC?
Did viewers get a good experience?
Did it innovate anything new in video delivery?
My biased opinion is "yes" in all three categories.
I've got this blog post with some more details about Silverlight and the Olympics:
http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/Final-Olympics-numbers/
(Calling it a success because people installed silverlight isn't much. Afterall, the same people would have probably installed a rootkit and trojan in order to watch the Olympic streaming. They just don't care.)
People don't care what software they install as long as it delivers what they want? Probably true, but that sounds more like a feature of Silverlight, not a bug.
If a consumer is always aware what technology is in their media player, the player is probably too obtrusive. The user should be mainly aware of the awesome experience.
My video compression blog
Do I even need to bring this up? http://gizmodo.com/5035456/blue-screen-of-death-strikes-birds-nest-during-opening-ceremonies-torch-lighting
Relative to Flash, Silverlight doesn't really bring any more or less to the table from a user's perspective. But as at least one other poster mentioned here, the real power is on the development side of things. Relative to ActionsScript on the Flash side of things, and relative to some weird HTML/CSS/JavaScript combination on the "legacy" side of things, Silverlight is the best, most advanced web development platform I have seen to date, hands down. Sure, there are libraries that help with JavaScript development...YUI, the GWT, etc. But those are slow...and let's face it, the GWT, however effective it might be, is still one big hack for a set of technologies that were never meant to host full-blown applications.
.NET framework. There is a LOT of value here.
With Silverlight, you get a couple key things:
1) Clean division between UI design and implementation. Gone are the days when the UI designer hands over an HTML prototype to the programmer, and the programmer mangles that into a JSP page, PHP page, oor whatever else. In the old world, making changes to the UI design was a mess, unless those changes were limited to CSS. Now the UI designer and developer are both on equal ground -- either can easially import the other's work for updates.
2) You don't have to write your front-end in a crappy language -- or more specifically, in a crappy runtime. Despite all the love that dynamic languages are getting these days, if you look at it, JavaScript's lack of built in libraries, the cumbersome DOM access, and the awful runtime implementation in browers like IE make it a real pain. With Silverlight, a development shop can pick whatever language they see fit -- it could be JavaScript, it could be C#, or it could even be Python or Ruby. And they get the power of a subset of the
3) Good tooling. Having proper tools is of critical importance. You get Visual Studio OR Eclipse on the development side and Expression Blend on the UI design side. I don't know how Expression Blend stacks up against the Adobe products, but I do know that on the development side, Visual Studio is one of just 2-3 top of the line IDEs. I love hacking in emacs as much as the next guy, but any serious large-scale development shop is unlikely to be using emacs or vi or notepad. Having the same tool you use for your back-end development apply to your front-end development is a very, very good thing.
4) Technology that was meant for application UIs. Let's face it: HTML was meant as a document presenation language. Sure, it's been updated over the years and other technologies like CSS have greatly helped. But at its core, it's still not architected to really be an application development platform. And it will never be that, no matter how many bells and whistles you may add.
It's easy to dismiss Silverlight because it's a Microsoft product or whatever. My background is in C and Java, mainly on Linux and Solaris. But Silverlight impressed the hell out of me. So long as they maintain the cross-browser, cross-platform compatibility, I feel it's a perfectly valid choice for developers to make. Keep in mind that competition is a good thing. Firefox was the best thing that ever happened to IE; both browsers now motivate improvements in the other. The same applies between Flash and Silverlight. It will be interesting to see whether Silverlight sees more widespread adoption going forward.
-James
"Google, Apple (via MobileMe) and most programmers are pushing for a standards-based, browsers-neutral Web 2.0 approach."
By "browsers-neutral" you must mean "it sort of works in most browsers" because Web 2.0 apps certainly don't work identically in all browsers unless browser-specific handling is included.
In any case, I think that the standards should eventually embrace something better than a hack added to a HTTP/HTML/Javascript environment that wasn't designed for web applications.
Perhaps its time to skip the HTML browser and create a "GUI browser" that is designed for decent GUI's from the ground up. That way we don't have to worry about whether MS will support it or not.
Table-ized A.I.
It is much. It's not a contest of public opinion, it's a contest of install base. If Microsoft can get the numbers, it doesn't matter whether the people thought rationally about it first.
It seems silly to write off Silverlight. Windows, IE and Direct 3D come to mind. You can't take over the world in only one version!
Why should they switch back to Flash or do twice the work to offer both?
Just because you personally don't like Microsoft? Really? In that case, don't expect a response because they already consider you a crackpot.
FTA: Below is a screen-shot of the Silverlight DataGrid, RadioButton, CheckBox and DatePicker controls in the final release
oh my.. See if you can beat that, Adobe! RadioButtons, CheckBoxes and even a DatePicker!
I have to say, that your post, to me, honestly resembles astroturfing. Silverlight client support is Windows and Mac, and development support is Windows only.
Based on Microsoft's past record of dropping support for any Mac software that didn't actively further Microsoft's aims, be it the WMV video player, or Internet Explorer, how long do you think that Mac users can actually count on Microsoft supporting them?
Judging from both WMV and IE, which they purposely neglected on the Mac when the Windows versions were enjoying an uncontested monopoly(ASF was never ported to the Mac Windows Media Player, and IE was left to languish at Version 5 for years after IE6 was available on Windows until Apple eeventually made their own browser after which MS simply dropped IE on the Mac), I suspect it will be the same all over again:
Initially Microsoft will put full support behind Silverlight on the Mac, but then will let it purposely lag behind the Windows version.
Jeezuz, you would think after the God-knows how many times Microsoft has tried to shaft the market, its customers and everyone else, you would have thought that people would have learned by now, and in fact it seems as if most people have, because, surprise, surprise, Active-X never took off because of its proprietary nature and Microsoft's numerous attempts to force web developers into developing for its unstandard web browser have gotten them exactly nowhere.
Once again, Microsoft tries the same old tired game that they've tried so often, and once again, it will almost certainly fail, because, even if you're a Windows developer, you're very likely to land up in the same place as VB developers did some time in the future, i.e. out-dated and once again forced to update to Microsoft's latest money grabbing scheme.
Or did you think that Microsoft actually gives a shit about you?
andnothingofvaluewasgained
diealready
Now that is being objective. Way to be a "news" outlet slashDot.
Bias: A particular tendency or inclination, especially one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
I can't care even if I want to since it is not available for PowerPC macs. They didn't even bother to run a basic uname -a sh script in installer on some 2.x beta and PPC users also ended up with a non working plugin in their Internet Plugins folder.
Of course, Adobe on the other hand released Flash 10 final which does multi core/cpu processing even on G4 Macs along with GPU acceleration (in graphics sense). Lets not forget their entire creative suite (recently shipped) not only runs on PPC macs, it runs better thanks to GPU acceleration.
BTW on Intel Mac, you got 2 ways to create Silverlight content. Eclipse (yes, that Java one) or Parallels/Bootcamp Windows.
Can we care or take it serious? Would Adobe care? I don't think so.
This news is a week old.....
Good Lord. Who cares?
we do.
"...and the Democratic National Convention..."
Please look up the definition of democracy. You are intellectually lazy.
It is the Democrat party, NOT Democratic party.