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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.'"
Well, not in the grand scheme of things it's not, I'd rather see the likes of Silverlight and Flash dissapear altogether. I think however in this context Silverlight might actually be a good thing. Flash has become so widespread because there was really no challenge to it, Java applets never really ever managed to perform as was originally hoped.
On one hand I'm glad to see some competition for Flash rather than it be allowed effectively a monopoly on RIAs but on the other the worry is of course that this'll just mean more RIAs!
I'd personally rather see the advances in Javascript allow us to move forward for RIAs because no plugin is required, and it's not some compiled proprietary lump of bits. Google's chrome demos mentioned here a couple of months ago looked very promising in this area so hopefully this will eventually the path we see taken for RIAs but in the meantime I think Silverlight is possibly a good thing, if not only because even in the worst case it forces Adobe to make Flash a better product.
Seriously. Silverlight is gaining on flash in all areas. What about portability ... open standards ... interoperability. Not that flash is really that much better, but at least Adobe is making a token effort.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
I would sooner accept the existence of elves, gremlins, and Eskimos, than Silverlight apps in the wild.
What's this, you say? An anti-Microsoft post on Slashdot with 100% opinion, 0% content or information, modded up to Informative? Say it ain't so!
What would the web be without JPEG, GIF and PNG? Can you imagine what a hot mess it would be if you had to install proprietary binary plug-ins to view images on web pages? And if some of the plug-ins weren't available on your platform?
Then go in the other direction and imagine what the web could have been with a universal video format and vector animation format. That's the crazy amount of damage Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Real and the MPEG4 LA have collectively wreaked on the web at large.
So please, please avoid Silverlight (or Flash, for that matter). It aims to balkanize the web into mutually-incompatible, vendor-dominated fiefdoms in which the overwhelming incentive is to tax users for their access to data.
The Infoworld article looks as though it may be a paid ad.
"Bottom Line: Microsoft Silverlight 3 is catching up to the capabilities of Adobe Flash, Flex, and AIR in all the areas where Silverlight was behind."
Did you forget that it's Windows only and there goes against everything the internet stands for. That's enough to dislike the software.
Moonlight http://mono-project.com/Moonlight (with a semi official technical collaboration from microsoft.. they gave implementation hints). It has been around for a while and I'm sure it'll eventually get to 3.0 compatibility rather quickly
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
The only Windows I'll have in the house is Windows 2000. My day-to-day machine is a SuSE Linux box, and I have an OSX Leopard "Hackintosh" for things like when I need to stream video using "Silverlight". (I don't like it, but some TV catch-up services don't give a choice and reject "Moonlight" clients.)
Applications that can be run in the browser or installed on the desktop? Java's had both for many years (applets and webstart).
Ability to update desktop apps? Webstart again.
Access to a rich, general purpose library? Yup, Java provides that - and it's very similar to .NET for some reason.
So suddenly the old thing is the new thing.
For Silverlight, the only direction it had to go was "up". I mean, it had an almost zero percent installed base. Now if I were Adobe, I would seriously consider open sourcing Flash and all technologies around it. Otherwise Adobe will only continue to lose market share to Silverlight.
Just in case anyone decides to post the parent as informative, I'll point out Moonlight which is an implementation of Silverlight that runs on Linux. There is also Mac support in Firefox and Safari.
No? /me doesn't care
That's just exactly the problem. TBH I dont care either. I browse with no flash plugins (if absolutely needed then yes I have a separate installed browser with it), noscript, and all the other little useful privacy goodies.
I want information and I want it fast. In all reality text is still text information is information. I dont need popups, animations, ads, etc etc the list is long.
The problem arises when technologies like flash, silverlight, etc come out. Major websites and corporations start publishing there material and information with these technologies because everyone wants to be "up to date". Then your normal user who doesn't have and idea about technologies being used comes along. These users who think the internet is that blue "e" or the little "fox around the globe" on their desktops. These types of people want content too, and if they cant view it then they start to feel they are "missing out". They just don't care and just want it to "work like designed".
Like another reader commented about "balkanizing the web" I feel that this hits the nail on the head. Think of the repercussions if major social networking sites, or other major web presences starting implementing code "X" which doesnt run on every system. (And I am not saying it hasnt already happened) They are alienating people. Which then in turn makes movements like FOSS, OSS, or other kind of free and open standards look bad because your "normal user" thinks while it sounds nice and the idea is good nothing "works as designed" and is in the end limiting their user experience.
imo I think its time that the experienced user base starts taking back the web. Implementing more "open" standards. Showing some of these major asshat corporations that it can be done differently. The internet was not intended just to make a $
Moonlight supports Silverlight 1. Support for Silverlight 2 is in "preview".
Thus far the Moonlight project is "compatible" enough to tell you your version of Silverlight is out of date, and please upgrade.
That's not even close to what I'd call multi-OS or useful. Hell, I barely put up with flash (no-script saves the day most of the time). If sites are forcing Silverlight down my throat, I'll just not use them.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2316
I asked Becker about Microsoftâ(TM)s plans to support Silverlight 3 on Linux clients. He said if and when that support happens, it will most likely come from Novell, which created the Silverlight port to Linux, known as Moonlight.
So no, it's not really multi-OS. Silverlight will never come to Linux. It will always be Moonlight which will always be behind Silverlight and will always run the risk of MS undermining it.
Advertising something as "multi-platform" is a joke when one platform is always at least one version ahead of the other platforms: it looks like silverlight 3 support will be available on Windows before Moonlight actually supports silverlight 2.
Now, keeping things that way might not be Microsofts intention in this case but knowing their track record I'm not betting on it.
Why does any RIA discussion fail to mention JavaFX?
JavaFX ties in seamlessly with server-side Java code. It has a desktop component, a mobile component, and a TV component. This means it uses common APIs among the three, which no other RIA framework has. What's more, depending on what Oracle decides to do, it may become the only open source RIA framework.
Granted, JavaFX is late to the party, but JavaFX 1.2 has shown solid improvements, with more to come. There was a demo of a really cool media builder tool at JavaOne.
So why are only Flash and Silverlight get mentioned in any RIA discussion?
This space left intentionally blank.
The market for Flash is huge. That there is a need (perceived or real) is self evident, MS are simply trying to get in on this.
For the forseeable future, the bulk of desktops and notebooks on this planet are going to be running Windows software. If the failures of VISTA did not push a significant fraction of Windows users to Mac OS or Linux, nothing is going to change that. So yes, site developers will be using Silverlight, especially if MS makes it cheaper to develop for than Flash, because they don't really care if you're going to avoid thier site if the bulk of the computing market doesn't share your issues. This doesn't please me as a Mac user, but I've lived in worse times than this.
Silverlight is a terrible marking choice for a name. I automatically think 'silverfish' when I see the word in print, and find myself substituting that word when I say 'silverlight' or sound it out in my head.
Silverfish, as far as I know, are a small bug that scuttles down further into your mattress when you pull up the covers.
Work on it a little in your head:
Silverlight ,,, Silverfish
Silverlight ... Silverfish
I think you, too will start to associate silverfish... er ..light, with a scourge.
I am rather uninformed, but since when has that ever stopped me from making commentary?
I have heard/read casually that a lot of HTML 5 will do what Flash does. That rather puts Flash and anything Flash-like (including Silverlight) out of business soon doesn't it?
'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'
I don't have admin rights on this computer and how does installing some remote app make this computer more not less secure?
For the forseeable future, the bulk of desktops and notebooks on this planet are going to be running Windows software.
eh? go to any tech conference and the only people not using Mac laptops are the ones with asus eee (xandros or ubuntu) or thinkpads running linux. Maybe 1 or 2 Windows machines per hundred.
...I'm not a programmer, hence the question. Can HTML five do the things you talk about above? Just wondering.
Thanks.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
I'm pretty sure I have Silverlight 2 running on my Mac OSX Leopard - it's what I use to watch the ITV Catch-up service. It's possible that it's just Silverlight 1, but I'm pretty sure the button I clicked to download it said "Silverlight 2.0"...
This reads and smells, no make that stinks, like a microsoft advert. Since the user "snydeg" links to InfoWorld I think that conclusion is at least worth considering.
Salut,
Jacques
The only windows box in my house is Win 3.1. My day to day machine is a Beowulf cluster of Swedish bikini models. So there.
Sorry about the mess.
I hate to feed a troll, but obviously no one is suggesting Adobe should open source their dev tools.
Just the flash interpreter. They give it away for free anyway (those commie bastards), why not let other people deal with fixing it? Then they can proceed to rake in tons of profits from people who want to build apps that they now can rest assured will run on the coming generations of Flash-enabled smartphones.
You misunderstand. Silverlight doesn't allow you to store your data more securely. It allows the developers to store their data more securely on your computer. That is, so you can't access it without their permission.
UltraLearn Studio uses Silverlight.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
And people who attend tech conferences represent what percentage of home and buisness users again?
I think he was referring to "isolated storage". Basically you can allow "applicatoions" to store data locally on your machine. By default only a limited quota is granted (the application can ask for more and the user has to approve it).
The stored data is obfuscated to avoid malicious apps downloading files/scripts and then use social engineering techniques to fool the user into launching them. This allows an app access to data even when offline.
Silverlight itself executes inside a pretty restricted sandbox. Silverlight has an impeccable security record Secunia reports zero vulnerabilities in both SL1 and SL2. That is not to say that there are no vulns in SL. But at least compared to Flash it's quite good.
Even so, installing yet another plugin/app will *never* make your computer *more* secure, except when you're installing some lock-down app or firewall. Obviously any app only increases the attack surface.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
They're already on version 3? I had no idea there was a v2
Apparently Microsoft isn't learning from it's experience with the EU and US antitrust and competition regulatory organs.
Adding silverlight support to visual studio, instead of making a separate IDE for that or a plug-in which is sold independent of visual studio, smells like abuse of monopoly position to me.
In order to make silverlight applications, you now need visual studio. In order to run visual studio, you need windows. You can bet on it that some future version of silverlight will become buggy on linux and will be rock solid on windows... or it simply won't be available on linux, once enough market penetration has been reached.
Lets hope Adobe and Sun start complaining about this anti-competitive behavior of Microsoft.
MS knows how to make developers lives easier - this is why DX is far, far more used these days than OpenGL.
The same will happen with Silverlight. It's expected that within 3 years, nearly 25% of what uses Flash today will be moving to Silverlight, and within 5 years, 50%.
Many shops are looking very closely at Silverlight as the Next Big Thing on the web. It isn't quite there yet, but it will be, so they want to get early experience now.
I think the Internet has a good run, but it's now time to move to something more sophisticated. Like Microsoft Winternet 1.0.
The Basic edition will be very reasonable priced.
Muahahaha!
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;
We develop for both OSs here, Vista and Windows 7.
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;
I expect Silverlight© to enjoy the same sterling security reputation as the rest of the Microsoft® stable of software, increasing the joy and ease of use customers have come to expect over the years.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Microsoft push of Silverlight as a media framework undermines current and new standards (HTML5). Silverlight is meant as yet another way to lock people into Windows and patent-encumbered proprietary products.
The web belongs to no one! Not Adobe and not Microsoft.
Use open standards!
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
No, this is FUD.
/. is getting a bit nuts: this really isn't a bad platform. It's logic/pres separation is light years ahead of Flash, and as it has .Net underneath it's a much more of pleasure to program with than ActionScript.
Silverlight currently runs on the VAST MAJORITY (read 98%+ of non-mobile) of machines today: Windows and OS X.
Anti-MS zealotry on
Yes, it is vendor 'lock-in'. Sort of (see Moonlight). BUT IT IS NO WORSE THAN ANY OF THE ALTERNATIVES INCLUDING FLASH/FLEX/AIR AND JAVA/JAVAFX!! Please see through the bullshit and realize that the only thing that really sucks about this product is the company that made it.
I had a couple of Microsofties come in to work to present to us about Virtual Earth. They talked a lot about VE's Silverlight integration, but when asked they admitted that only about 35% of desktop users had Silverlight installed. Even if that is not a high estimate, it's pathetic.
Even if you only care about Windows users, Silverlight is not a suitable technology to roll out to end-users. Flash 9+ has something like 98% market penetration.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Some people see the web as being like an early library, with beelions and beelions of books to be searched. However, they don't like these newfangled 'movies' or 'records' because they are in binary formats and aren't composed of text, which is all that the purists think belong in the library.
Yet, in modern libraries, movies and music are integral, despite not being text. On the web, RIAs provide experiences that aren't available in other formats, yet the Old Librarians of the Web don't like them and want to eliminate them, because they're not text, or because the Librarians say that one day, someone will make a 'book' that kinda sorta does what RIAs do now, but the new format will be approved by the Old Librarians. I suppose there was once resistance in the Iibrary community about buying proprietary movie projectors and phonographs to access this content with, which sure seems silly today. If it were up to the Old Librarians, libraries today would only have books, and the web would only be text, and everybody would be using Lynx. Good thing the Old Librarians are limited to Slashdot ranting!
As of right now IE is lagging behind when it comes to most of the web technology. So even when support for HTML5 comes into play I'm sure MS is going to lag behind like they always do. For the company I'm working for now I have to build a HTML and Flash version of the company website. Let me tell you I can't wait to do the Flash version because most of the hacks I'm doing for the CSS/XHTML version is for IE, that's even with a AJAX toolkit. In Flash it will work across the board and I don't have to worry about writing hacks for different browsers and platforms. I don't want Flash, Silverlight or even JavaFX to become the norm. I just want Microsoft to support W3C standards just like the other browsers. Everyone at my work place think I'm not trying to support IE when it comes to the project. They just don't realize how much in the pain in the ass it is to even support IE.
From Zero to Hero... Starbuck Zero
I would sooner accept the existence of elves, gremlins, and Eskimos, than Silverlight apps in the wild.
Mr. Simpson: Elves[1], gremlins, and Eskimos exist. And until recently, Major League Baseball used Silverlight. Believe it.
[1] One axis, two axes. One Elvis, two...
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/silverlight.html
So yes, it is multi-OS. Linux is such a niche desktop OS that it's not a priority for any commercial entity to support it, let alone MS.
And Java has done that for years, FileOpenService, FileSaveService and PersistenceService, JNLP (Web Start) one of the most useful API on Java that nearly everyones ignores
What does Siverlight, Moonlight, and Twilight give me? I have SVG on my Internet Browsers that I test with; they are Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, and IE. SVG can work with Javascript, and through Javascript access PERL, PHP, Ruby, Python, and any other language that can handle HTTP Posting. XSLT with my XML can generate SVG, and HTML web pages. mySQL can SELECT/DELETE/UPDATE just a good as the other brands. Even Microsoft agrees that Apache is better than IIS. I think if Microsoft wanted to lead the industry, maybe Animation of SVG would be the direction to go. There are other paths of Innovation that Microsoft could follow, like Server Side File Processing, and Graphic Format Handling. These two areas are fertile fields of opportunity. I think my major concern is even thinking of putting ".NET" anything on any of my machines, or clients machines. This global recession has definitely accomplished one thing, and that is the initial evaluation of cost outlay of .NET to openSource, and the need to have a business partner that will sue you to get their way. As for Moonlight, and Twilight; my need socialize to with all things junior high ended in the late 1960's.
Moonlight supports Silverlight 1. Support for Silverlight 2 is in "preview".
Thus far the Moonlight project is "compatible" enough to tell you your version of Silverlight is out of date, and please upgrade.
Silverlight 1 and 2 are much more different than 2 and 3. The Mono development team has explain that implementing the full CLR for Moonlight 2 is one of the largest stages of the development process. For instance, Moonlight 2 Preview already has many Silverlight 3 features implemented. So, once Moonlight 2 is out, it will not be long before Moonlight 3.
Furthermore, I consider this the best pro-developer free software rant explaining the pros of mono in general:
http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/
What MS does is allow people with no programming skills to write programs. That's not necessarily a good thing and that's a big reason there is so much insecure software for windows.
Silverlight is essentially .NET bytecode + XAML markup + media .NET ECMA spec: http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-335.htm
Silverlight XAML spec (under Open Specification Promise):
http://blogs.windowsclient.net/rob_relyea/archive/2008/10/14/ms-slxv-silverlight-xaml-vocabulary-2008-specification-v0-9-published.aspx
Media is MPEG-4 or MP3 (ISO), Windows Media (VC-1 is a SMPTE spec), and the Raw AV pipeline for extensitbilty to aribtrary codecs.
As for interoperabilty and portability, how about a GPL'ed clean room implementation?
http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight
My video compression blog
Mac does have SilverLight 2.0. Macs are already popular so porting SilverLight won't be a big problem but I suspect MS wants Linux to be as inconvenient as possible for users.
JNLP is closer to .NET ClickOnce (actually its the same thing, just for .NET. And yeah, ClickOnce came in later). The other .NET technologies that need to run in a similar sandbox just tap into the same APIs. So XBAP apps and Silverlight, for example.
Doesn't really matter. Any thing on the internet should be platform neutral.
In order to really get an idea of how fast (or slow) Java is, I tried the following on my outdated machine, a 1600 MHz AMD Turion. First, I tried to measure the dreaded JVM cold startup time by running Apache Rhino:
peppe@tikal:~$ time java -jar
[...]
real 0m1.444s
user 0m0.232s
sys 0m0.084s
Then I’ve done it a second time to see what the delay becomes on a hot start:
peppe@tikal:~$ time java -jar
[...]
real 0m0.358s
user 0m0.252s
sys 0m0.036s
...that’s a little more than a third of a second. So there is a one-time delay to pay if you write your app in java, but it’s not so user-noticeable as many believe.
So far for the startup time. Then I tested the run time.
Probably the JVM cannot compete with native code as a byte-pusher. But how well does it fare when it comes to support high-level languages? I wrote two small nonsense programs, that aim to exercise some random high-level functions I expect to be common in today’s software. The two programs try to do exactly the same thing, the first in C, and the latter Java.
Link to the C source
Link to the Java source
(sorry, slashdot didn’t let me put the snippets inline without making them unreadable)
I compiled and timed the C implementation:
peppe@tikal:~$ gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: x86_64-linux-gnu
[...]
gcc version 4.4.0 (Ubuntu 4.4.0-6ubuntu2)
peppe@tikal:~$ gcc -O3 -march=athlon64 cperf.c -Wall -o cperf.exe
cperf.c: In function `main':
cperf.c:18: warning: ignoring return value of `asprintf', declared with attribute warn_unused_result
peppe@tikal:~$ time
real 0m43.429s
user 0m43.351s
sys 0m0.028s
...then I did the same with the Java version:
peppe@tikal:~$ javac -version
javac 1.6.0_14
peppe@tikal:~$ javac JavaPerf.java
peppe@tikal:~$ time java JavaPerf
real 0m28.300s
user 0m27.770s
sys 0m0.464s
Not only Java performance was comparable to native, but Java was even faster in this case. And that included the JVM startup penalty.
Finally, about the JVM size versus the .NET framework size, the latest win32 version of the JRE weighs 15.50 MB (link), while the latest win32 version of the .NET framework weighs 231 MB (link).
The same is happening on the Java world, since Java 6 update 10 the applets (java plugin) uses JNLP, and JavaFX too
eh? go to any tech conference and the only people not using Mac laptops are the ones running linux. Maybe 1 or 2 Windows machines per hundred.
The tech conference is - let us say - somewhat - unrepresentative of the larger world!
We're going to trust the future of rich media/apps on the web to a company that studiedly ignored any progress on their basic web browser for over five years?
Seriously, the IE 6 fiasco seals it. It was a concrete and persistent demonstration that the company simply does not care about the quality of their products beyond their position in the market, a giant middle finger rising from Redmond to web developers everywhere for the better part of this decade. They sat on a nearly unmatched trove of resources and let said developers waste millions of man hours making things work on a broken if dominant platform for an eternity in the software industry -- essentially stealing time from those developers -- and I don't know if the most rabid reactionary Microsoft hater's hatred has actually reached the depth of contempt that the company deserves for that.
Part of me recognizes they've been making some awesome stuff, the .NET platform really is cool, Seadragon and Silverlight and Photosynth, all good stuff (especially together). I don't care. The fact is, they've spent a long time being the abusive jerk of the computing world, and all the flowers and chocolates and "honey, I can change!" talk in the world shouldn't woo anybody into trusting a Microsoft solution.
Tweet, tweet.
MS invented Ajax, and for a long time only IE supported the XmlHttpRequest (it was originally designed for Outlook Web Access). So it wasn't a platform-neutral api. I guess it should have been condemned too, because it "broke" the internet, right?
Rich clients and media delivery like Flash, Silverlight, etc. are here to stay, for better or worse. The best you can do is to pitch in and help out with Moonlight, or switch to a Mac and forget about it.
What tech conference are you going to? Based on your statement I am going to guess it has something to do with Apple products. Most of the tech conferences I go to have a blend of people running mac, pc and linux.
when asked they admitted that only about 35% of desktop users had Silverlight installed. Even if that is not a high estimate, it's pathetic
It's not pathetic at all.
Flash has been around since 1996.
Silverlight is a product two years in beta.
If the geek calls a 35% share of the client desktop "pathetic" - what is one to make of Firefox at 20% and Linux at 1%?
Microsoft today announced the release of version 3.0 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, uh, scratch that ... 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
I had a couple of Microsofties come in to work to present to us about Virtual Earth. They talked a lot about VE's Silverlight integration, but when asked they admitted that only about 35% of desktop users had Silverlight installed. Even if that is not a high estimate, it's pathetic.
Even if you only care about Windows users, Silverlight is not a suitable technology to roll out to end-users. Flash 9+ has something like 98% market penetration.
Pathetic? If your going to make a broad statement like that lets even the playing field. Look at how long silverlight has been out compared to flash. There is a reason that Flash has a 98% market penetration IT'S BEEN OUT LONGER For how long it has been out it is actually picking up market share relatively quickly. If you want a fair comparison take a look at how many people had flash installed when it had been out as long as silverlight has.
Flex/Flash and Java/Java FX are much more open. In fact, Java is open source now so it's much more open than Silver Light.
The alternative to Silverlight 1 is HTML 5.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Ajax is just JavaScript and XML. Both of which were invented beforehand and free for anyone to use. So while MS might have come up with implementing current technologies in that way, they had no way to stop others from doing the same thing.
And Linux users are techies, who almost by definition have high income.
There's so much fun to made of this. So little time.
On the other hand, more and more cell-phone devices are gaining userbase to worry about.. The picture is more interesting there...
Most mobile browsers still lack flash support, though their general capability of rendering and interacting with websites is nearing parity with desktop browsers otherwise.
So if your website can only expend effort to develop to one of Flash, Silverlight, or standard Javascript/HTML5, which do you pick? Desktop users in theory would be able to download a free browser to support the standards, but mobile phone users are quite limited. It may be wise to accommodate the market without much recourse and hedge your bets on free desktop apps filling the gap.
Even putting aside HTML5 for a moment, many people continue to use flash for things that can be readily handled in HTML4/Javascript/CSS broadly. Multimedia content isn't well accomodated, however some use flash just for 'dynamic' looking interfaces/content, which can largely be implemented in more universally available javascript.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'd like to know where you got bikini models that can do binary math.
Learn to count -- "I do not want" = 4 words!
I see a lot of people here advocating javascript+xhtml+css over silverlight. I have to assume you've never actually used silverlight, because anybody who has would see that it is immensely easier. XAML makes way more sense then xhtml+css. C# is way easier to maintain then Javascript. The .net library has way more functionality then anything Javascript has to offer.
Simple example: A 3 column layout in xaml:
<Canvas x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<Rectangle Fill="#BBBBFFFF" Width="800" HorizontalAlignment="Center"/>
</Canvas%gt;
As simple as this is, html+css simply can't do it. At best you can kind of fake it
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
Silverlight is awful.
[citation needed]. Have you even used it?
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
fanboiCon2009 ?
Requiem for the American Dream
Never heard of OS X, eh?
Is it just me or did this read like a promo right off of Microsoft's web site?
Is slashdot going to go the way of PC Magazine back in the late 1980s and just becoming a venue for corporate promotion?
This article was kinda depressing.
It is nice to have at least one corner of the Netverse not dominated by the corporate overlords.
only about 35% of desktop users had Silverlight installed.
Which is more than the combined marketshare of Mac OS X, Linux, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and the iPhone.
My video compression blog
Damn it I so want to mod you insightful. Someone needs to stand up to the illogical bullies of this place. But our numbers are small and thus your post got modded flamebait.
You are most certainly correct.
However, I don't see any open source projects that do anything remotely similar to Silverlight, or flash.
As usual, if I am wrong, please correct me with proof. And I will gladly change my opinion.
Who are the morons that modded the parent flamebait?
Oh, welcome to mod me down too, when you are here.
If it were a competition between Moonlight and Silverlight to implement a neutral, third-party standard, I would agree. But such isnot the case.
"Did you forget that it's Windows only and there goes against everything the internet stands for."
Since the origins of the Internet are from a US military project, I assume it stands for world-wide military intervention. I didn't realize that Windows was so peace-loving.
Since people with no programming skills can't write programs by definition, I don't think there's a problem.
"Ajax is just JavaScript and XML."
Right. That's why they call it "jax" .. oh wait.
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.
In other words, loyal Microsoft followers will use new Microsoft tool that produces Windows-only GUI software instead of older Microsoft tools that produces Windows-only GUI software.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
So what is best for Linux, being a version behind on Silverlight or not having it available at all?
Just in case anyone decides to post the parent as informative, I'll point out Moonlight which is an implementation of Silverlight that runs on Linux. There is also Mac support in Firefox and Safari.
And I'll point out that it doesn't bloody work on video sites. So pretty much pointless. Offer Moonlight as a token effort, and then try to take over Adobe's niche. SOP pretty much.. Why yes Mr customer.. Silverlight is cross platform.. (It works with Vista and XP..) So your customers will be able to view the rich multimedia experience no matter what platform they use..
Air on the other hand, works great with the BBC iPlayer on Linux AND Windows. No idea if it is available for Apple.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
I call the bluff. To run moonlight you need mono. Microsoft holds ALL the pattens on the dotNET programming environment. When you can show me an app that runs on Mono that Microsoft gives one of those royalty free licenses to, then come talk to me.
I am an old Forth programmer so I don't mind building my own stuff. However, I would appreciate some actual "proof" that I won't get sued. A supporter of Mono saying that "Microsoft would not dare get into a patent war over dotNET with open source comapnies" just does not cut it for me as proof.
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no, not Apple or related conferences
Yes I'm sure the entire world model their OS market share data based on your tech conference observations.
Wake me up when we can view a netflix silverlight stream on Linux.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Moonlight supports Silverlight 1. Support for Silverlight 2 is in "preview".
Thus far the Moonlight project is "compatible" enough to tell you your version of Silverlight is out of date, and please upgrade.
Silverlight 1 and 2 are much more different than 2 and 3. The Mono development team has explain that implementing the full CLR for Moonlight 2 is one of the largest stages of the development process. For instance, Moonlight 2 Preview already has many Silverlight 3 features implemented. So, once Moonlight 2 is out, it will not be long before Moonlight 3.
Furthermore, I consider this the best pro-developer free software rant explaining the pros of mono in general:
http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/rants/124/
And as soon as Moonlight catches up with Silverlight 2, Microsoft will have Silverlight 4 out. Let's face it, this is _exactly_ what everybody was predicting back when Moonlight started: endlessly running after Microsoft but never catching up, a perpetual existence as a "nice, but not useful for anything current" piece of software.
Microsoft has a history of attempting to subvert standards based technology.
Also, for quite a number of years now Microsoft has not supplied a version of its browser for Unix or Linux - especially since being put under pressure to make its browser comply with the published HTML standards - despite having previously supported those popular platforms.
Also, Microsoft had previously attempted to embrace-extend-extinguish the multi-OS Java platform by modifying it with features that only worked on a Microsoft operating system.
The Flash browser plugin is available for most if not all major browsers on all major operating systems.
Silverlight is not available on Unix or Linux platforms. Not sure if it is available on MacOS.
In your view do you think that Microsoft will behave any differently with Silverlight?
Do you genuinely believe that MS will in the long term support that browser plugin for all major browsers on all major platforms?
While I would hope that would be the case, I do not trust MS to behave any differently from its entire history to date, of entirely attempting to kill any and all products or services offered by any organisation or corporation that it perceives to be a threat or competitor in a "market" that Microsoft is either already dominating or is seeking to dominate.
In the last browser war as soon as Microsoft had killed its opposition it stopped actively developing its browser.
Do not be deceived. Silverlight is Microsoft's attempt to kill Adobe/Shockwave Flash. Microsoft also attempted to kill the standards approved "PDF" Portable Document File format originally developed by Adobe and freely available on all major platforms and many minor ones too.
We are now experiencing a Browser Plugin war being relentlessly waged by Microsoft against Adobe. Does Microsoft really deserve your support to help it kill Adobe? If not then why do you have Silverlight or "Moonlight" installed on your computer?
35% is actually a much higher figure than I had in my head. About 12-18 months ago, a Microsoft representative was unable to tell us what percentage of users had Silverlight installed and web estimates seemed to put it at less than 5%. If the 35% figure is true, that's huge growth over that period, and more than enough to make it a serious consideration for shops considering rich internet applications.
I'd like to see some research to back that figure up, because if it's true, it's enough to change our product's technological road-map for the future. We're a Microsoft shop producing premium data products delivered over the web. Creating rich data applications is likely to be far easier in Silverlight (1.0 or 2.0, let alone 3.0) than, say, Ajax, Java or Flash. We couldn't say to our customers "install Silverlight - 1 in 20 people have already", but we can say "install Silverlight - just over a third of people have".
he didn't say it was fast, or that it never crashed.
And as soon as Moonlight catches up with Silverlight 2, Microsoft will have Silverlight 4 out. Let's face it, this is _exactly_ what everybody was predicting back when Moonlight started: endlessly running after Microsoft but never catching up, a perpetual existence as a "nice, but not useful for anything current" piece of software.
Or, the mono community can make use of the moonlight implementations they have finished. It's very useful and makes for a nice consistent way to develop dynamic web content. .NET is really a very nice technology to develop on. You also forget that much of silverlight is open source, so the implementation curve can be narrow. I doubt online applications will be riding the bleeding edge, anyway.
parent is not flamebait - its insightful.
The thing that peeves me about silverlight is that MS gets to brag about having a "multi-platform" tool, when in reality, apple and novell do the work porting the code to for osx and linux, respectively. Having a semi-open spec which doesn't rule out third party implementations just isn't the same as having a tool that is officially released on multiple platforms like flash is.
when asked they admitted that only about 35% of desktop users had Silverlight installed. Even if that is not a high estimate, it's pathetic
It's not pathetic at all.
Flash has been around since 1996.
Silverlight is a product two years in beta.
If the geek calls a 35% share of the client desktop "pathetic" - what is one to make of Firefox at 20% and Linux at 1%?
WOOOSH!
Silverlight is a platform. Firefox is not (at least in the sense the web developers support it). Firefox implements the open platform of HTML+JavaScript supported by 99% of the web clients out there. 99% is way better than 35%. Turning away 65% of your visitors is just plain stupid. With 35% market share, the only entity that benefits when a company chooses to require Silverlight is Microsoft.
In fact, Microsoft's whole business is based around tricking people into picking them instead of a better option.
It's just Microsoft is exaclty what it is; Create new, totally uncalled for software duplications done wrong in order to screw every standard/open establishment in order to gain more lock-in and control and in the end more money.
It is and shall always remains "just Microsoft" for me.
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call the bluff. To run moonlight you need mono. Microsoft holds ALL the pattens on the dotNET programming environment. When you can show me an app that runs on Mono that Microsoft gives one of those royalty free licenses to, then come talk to me.
Actually if you look here you'll see that Microsoft (and sponsors Intel/HP) agreed to make most of the .NET patents royalty free. The only component which contains royaly patents is Windows.Forms, which is why it's not inclued as part of Mono.
The clash of honour calls, to stand when others fall.
Correction to your latest statement, not even Silverlight 2 is multi-O/S.
Silverlight 2 seems to have a Windows and OS X version.
The clash of honour calls, to stand when others fall.
To quote from the post you mentioned
They say you can get the license "royalty-free". Try to actually obtain the license. I don't care if the reality is that after being in court 2 years and spending a million dollars proves that Microsoft would have to cough up the license. Until someone with deep pockets goes to court and wins. Microsoft has the ability to take any open-source project to court for violating it's patents. With no money to defend itself the small project will lose. That is the reality.
When you can produce an actual covenant not to sue OR show how an open source project can actually obtain the royalty-free license there is still a danger. Since Microsoft is a convicted monopolist who is known for stealing, swindling and bullying small guys. I want some something more substantial than a quote that Microsoft is willing to provide a license but no one has actually been able to obtain one.
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This problem isn't unique to Silverlight. Quite frankly, all of the open/free video codecs are crap.
Silverlight uses VC-1, which is also used by both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. It's quite a good codec. To make the Apple side of the ecosystem happy, Microsoft also threw in H.264 support to the software. Although we can groan about proprietary standards, these are by far the two most modern codecs in widespread use.
Content-producers are extremely familiar with these formats, and it's hard to fault the Silverlight team (who are not in the business of making codecs) for supporting the two most popular codecs on the market.
Theora, which is part of the HTML5 spec, is not terribly great at the moment. Even the developers admit that it needs a lot of work. Dirac is also fairly open, and used (and developed) by the BBC. However, it's also very much a "previous generation" codec, and hasn't found much acceptance in the F/OSS community.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
As a Java developer who has over the last couple of years taken a tour of the different RIA frameworks, I find Silverlight fantastic.
Flash, if you're a designer is awesome. But personally, as a developer, I found the environment pretty basic compared to server side java. Flex Builder is kind of crappy(at least as of 6 months ago), lacking many features even free Eclipse-based tools provide (such as meaningful refactoring). And the programming api outside the gui toolkit is only skin deep. And, which really makes me sad, no eval() in the runtime.
Meanwhile, with .Net/Silverlight, you've got oodles of libs, a pretty decent IDE, tons of great books, and REALLY NEAT projects like the DLR(which is a way to get eval() in this environment, and a whole lot more). Plus, eventually, you'll be able to run full SL apps on your phone with windows mobile 6 + Symbian. For this working developer whose resources are constrained by time and money, this sounds like a real coup.
Love Microsoft or hate it, Moonlight/Silverlight is something devs should be excited about.
I also hope Adobe learns from it for future versions of Flex/Flash, continuing to drive innovation.
Adobe Flash is not only an establishment, it's also as open as it gets. Not open source, but open and free documentation.
The Flash player is a .swf player. The streaming protocol RTMP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Messaging_Protocol) and the Sorenson codec (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorenson_codec) are missing from the spec, but Gnash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash) is clean room reverse enginering this, making that open too.
Here you have the documentation: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/
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It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy though.
Maybe if the FOSS community were to stop ostracizing Novell for working with MS, and actually tried to help, then that wouldn't be the case.