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Silverlight On the Way To Linux
Afforess writes "For the past two years Microsoft and Novell have been working on the 'Moonlight' project. It is a runtime library for websites that run Silverlight. It should allow PCs running Linux to view sites that use Siverlight. Betanews reports 'In the next stage of what has turned out to be a more successful project than even its creators envisioned, the public beta of Moonlight — a runtime library for Linux supporting sites that expect Silverlight — is expected within days.' Moonlight 2.0 is already in the works."
While Windows is getting version 2, and the Mac is almost version 2, Linux is almost getting version 1. Awesome job MS.
With what is being achieved with Javascript and dynamic HTML, I see less and less need for technologies such as Flash and Silverlight. The only thing they really have going for them are the development environments. To see some of the games already implemented using plain old Javascript and HTML:
http://www.apple.com/webapps/games/
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Standards anybody ?
I still think there should be a new standard that would obviate the need for flash, you can keep your silverlight and shove it.
MP3 Search Engine
I can't say I have much love for Adobe and Flash, and I simply do not trust Microsoft, but if Linux support is going to be a key point-scoring device in the corporate pissing contests of today then I suppose a few good things might come of it. Let battle commence!
"For the past two years Microsoft and Novell have been working on the 'Moonlight' project.
Translation: for two years, Microsoft has been using Novell to pretend they're not working on the Linux platform and aren't trying to embrace/extend it.
There ain't no way Silverlight will end up on my hard-drive. Having the Flash player is bad enough already.
Unless there was an advantage to the lock in of flash why is there a reason to swap to another propitiatory product? Especially a linux clone that will always be behind Microsoft's offering.
If Silverlight was GPL and available for use by all then there might be a reason to adopt it over flash, but to just swap monopolies, no thanks.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
I imagine how those developers working on Linux would be looked by the other MS employees. 'Oh, man, they're in the Dark side. They wear dark clothes, long hair, a beard, this can't be a good thing.'
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
"Web 2.0" seems to be nothing more than a non-stop assault of useless animations, personalized/targeted advertisements, and automatically-loading and starting background music to make up for poorly-organized sites. Animated .gif banners, despite often being gaudy, were not so offensive as scripts that scour for statistical data about me to offer localized advertisements. The addition of new, non-standardized software to each user's browser is the worst way to embrace "The Cloud"; it focuses on style alone while only marginally catering to the needs of companies and their clients.
Silverlight will see some adoption by Linux users who cannot bear to browse the internet without clicking monkeys to win iPods. I doubt it would hit even that level of popularity before its current audience becomes so fed up with its more obnoxious aspects. The process of understanding Silverlight will be akin to that of installing Flash:
1) Install Silverlight/Moonlight to be amazed by a few useful applications
2) Install advertisement blocking add-on to avoid the droves of awful applications
3) Tweak blocking black/white-lists until Silverlight loses its appeal
4) Remove Silverlight/Moonlight
On the fringe out here I'll stick to elinks where I can get a majority of my information while avoiding information overload.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
It's a real treat when you find a site that is static html. It's fast, clean, and refreshing. Flash and Ajax have their place, but more often than not they just irritate me. I'm tired of sites that peg my CPU and crash my browser.
Maybe I'm just getting old and cynical, but I'm sure Moonlight will only contribute to web bloat and add to my frustrations. And that is being generous and not bring up that MS is part of the equation.
I just hope this fails to catch on and people forget about it.
What? Windows/OS X users prefer Firefox because they think it's better than the alternatives, not because they care about propietary soft [that much]. If the did they wouldn't be using Windows/OS X in the first place.
A few things: you cannot write a (Mozilla) browser plugin all in managed code, there is simply no interface. You at least need a bridge. Silverlight is also related to WPF/Avalon, which has a native component on Windows. Most importantly, though: Silverlight is not open source. Moonlight is. It is not a port, it is a sanctioned, but independent, rewrite, which is also related to advances in the Mono support for quite a few things that weren't there 2 years ago.
what silverlight seeks to achieve that isnt currently offered in the web browsing experience?
I have flash in linux, and spend more time blocking it than enjoying it. i have javascript but also spend more time blocking that from shooting popups, redirects, and ads to me than actually enjoying it.
id enjoy java, but its been embraced and extended by MS to the point that no Java on the web works well, if at all in IcedTea (and icedtea explicitly meets all the requirements for java!)
activeX has turned into a security laughingstock...so perhaps this is why we're seeing silverlight?? if thats the case, i recommend linux stay the fuck away from it.
and imho, i think CSS has been the only tech offered to the web i've really enjoyed. the point of the web is to offer something everyone can share, and the megacorps seem to be diligently working to ensure we cant do that.
Good people go to bed earlier.
In capitalist America, Microsoft fucks you.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
*company releases software*
*People complain it's not on linux*
*company ports software to linux*
*people complain it's not OSS*
*company GPLs software*
*people complain it's not GPLv3*
*company forces a GPL2 or later licence*
*people complain that the company has a trademarked logo*
*company curls up in the corner, quietly sobbing*
*people complain that the design of the corner it's crying in isn't covered by creative commons*
If we are looking at silverlight as a flash replacement, it is just a flash clone with no market share, so that makes it a non starter. Also, flash comes installed by default this days on every operating system and browser. Silverlight doesn't. That is enough of a show stopper on itself.
If on the other hand, we are looking at it as a way to code the client side of business apps with a rich interface using a strongly typed, compiled language, it could have some potential, except for one thing. No printing support. Printing support is essential for business apps and Silverlight doesn't provide it, at all.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Microsoft today announced the release of version 2.0 of 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. Major League Baseball, er, forget that one. It comes with rich frameworks, rich controls, rich networking support, a rich base class library, rich media support, oh God kill me now. My options are underwater, my resume'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! We'll put porn on it! FREE PORN!"
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
Silverlight is not open source. Moonlight is. It is not a port, it is a sanctioned, but independent, rewrite, which is also related to advances in the Mono support for quite a few things that weren't there 2 years ago.
Those two words are contradictory: you need Microsoft's sanction (permission, as i understand) if you want to develop a 100% silverlight-compatible browser. (by the way, THAT's the difference between JavaScript and Silverlight). So how is it "independent"? Am I missing something here, my fellow slashdotters?
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Compare the user experience of loading a page with a Java applet vs. one with Flash or Silverlight. With the Java page, your browser is dead to the world while the JVM hauls itself up from the disk like a brontosaurus. With Flash or Silverlight, the control pops up quickly and the app loads.
This is one thing that I've always wondered about... why do .NET apps, even running through Mono, load so much faster than Java apps?
Serious question; I'm not really a fan of Java (although I use Eclipse a lot and I've written a few Java articles for IBM's developerWorks site), but I do like using the right tool for the job, whatever that job might be...
- chrish
why didn't this make it onto slashdot then???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.