First Look At Microsoft Silverlight 3

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Martin Heller finds Silverlight 3 gaining ground on Adobe Flash, Flex, and AIR in all the areas where Silverlight 2 had lagged. No longer do developers need to build desktop WPF apps based loosely on corresponding Silverlight RIAs, as Silverlight 3 adds the ability to install Silverlight apps on the desktop, update them in place, detect Net connectivity state changes, and store data locally and securely. Moreover, solid Expression Blend 3 and Visual Studio 2010 betas provide developers with much improved tools to create Silverlight RIAs. '"I do not expect many Adobe shops to give up their Flash, Flex, and AIR for Silverlight 3. I do expect many Microsoft shops to do more RIAs with Silverlight now that it's more capable and to create lightweight browser/desktop Silverlight 3 applications where they might have fashioned heavier-weight Windows Forms or WPF client applications," Heller says.'"

Comments

I'll pass.

[thetoadwarrior]

Silverlight is awful. I hope it dies a quick death soon.

Re:I'll pass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Silverlight 3 is actually multi-browser, multi-OS, easy to develop with, versatile, and "showy" in a clean, good way. It's definitely pro-WWW.

I will grant you that the tech didn't really grow up until now, 'cause 1 and 2 were crazy buggy (in development and runtime) and RIA services should provide a giant step forward in terms of coding database-heavy apps.

Re:I'll pass.

[im_thatoneguy]

So what should they do?

Slow down and stop offering new technology so that the Open Source guys can keep up at a slower pace?

or

Should they devote resources to a market with less than 3% market penetration and is largely composed of individuals who wouldn't install it simply because of the brand it's associated with?

I don't know how much more helpful Microsoft could be to the Moonlight team short of developing in house. And with the attitude of most Linux users out there combined with their numbers I wouldn't waste very much time trying to make them happy either.

Silverlight is an application largely targeted at the desktop. Its advantages are more interactive and friendly GUIs. If you start with 3% of computers running Linux you can probably shave off a half percentage of that for servers. Then you can probably shave off another % for zealots who won't use it because it's Microsoft. Then you can probably shave off another half percentage for the people who don't want a GUI and are perfectly happy to run everything through bash and CLI. These same people probably haven't installed flash either because good ol' HTML is all they ever wanted. So you're left with like 1% of the market who would use Silverlight on Linux.

IMO

[El Lobo]

As a developer that have worked both with Flash and Silverlight (1&2) I must say: give me Silverlight anytime of the day. Working on Silverlight you have access to a large subset of the dotnet platform with gives you a wonderfully organized library of classes that is just waiting for you to be used. In comparation, Flash is just a mess, really.