New Microsoft Silverlight Features Have Windows Bias

An anonymous reader writes with this quote from a story at El Reg about an early look at the Silverlight 4 beta: "There are ... major changes to Silverlight's out-of-browser functionality, a loose equivalent to Adobe Systems' AIR runtime for Flash. Even when fully sandboxed, which means having the same permissions that would apply to a browser-hosted Silverlight applet, out-of-browser applications get an HTML control, custom window settings, and the ability to fire pop-up notifications. ... Unfortunately, some of these features are not what they first appear. The HTML control in Silverlight 4 is not a new embedded browser from Microsoft, but uses components from Internet Explorer on Windows, or Safari on the Mac, which means that the same content might render differently. The HTML control only works out-of-browser, and simply displays a blank space if browser-hosted. Clipboard support is text-only in the Silverlight 4 beta, though this could change for the full release. More seriously, COM automation is a Windows-only feature, introducing differentiation between the Mac and Windows implementations."

Comments

COM Automation = ActiveX

[Anonymous Coward]

For those not up to speed on the windows acronyms, COM automation is just another word for ActiveX. It's exactly the same thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLE_Automation#cite_ref-5

Re:History

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

So Netflix, the Olympics and the US Presidential Inauguration aren't high profile enough for you? Just because you have a seething inner hatred towards MS doesn't mean no one uses their technology.

Re:History

[coolsnowmen]

I believe netflix instant viewing is written on top of silverlight.

Re:History

[tthomas48]

Those are high profile, but use kind of drops off after that. Sharply.

It's great if you want to stream DRM content and don't want to use flash. Otherwise the java and flash plugins are more widely installed for the stuff that silverlight's trying to do. They're late to the party and except for DRM they don't really have a compelling story for why someone would want to use their technology.

Re:History

[Azheim]

Unfortunately, some of us have to.

I'm a med student, and many of my lectures are viewed and reviewed at home via MediaSite, a Silverlight-based lecture management system from Sonicfoundry. While our lectures do play in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome with the Silverlight plugin, advanced features (such as the ability to play the lecture at whatever speed you wish) are only available in Internet Explorer. The crippling of Silverlight in competing browsers has forced me to return to IE.

Re:History

[McBeer]

Try developing some stuff in Silverlight and see if you can claim using the above technologies is anywhere near as fast/easy/reliable/etc with a straight face. XHTML+CSS is a huge pain in the ass compared to Xaml. Javascript is slower, harder to maintain, and has less features then C# + .Net. I've been a Silverlight developer for a year now and can't believe I used to use anything else.

Re:History

[Fred_A]

Try developing some stuff in Silverlight and see if you can claim using the above technologies is anywhere near as fast/easy/reliable/etc with a straight face. XHTML+CSS is a huge pain in the ass compared to Xaml. Javascript is slower, harder to maintain, and has less features then C# + .Net.

Except that those other "painful" technologies let other people actually use the apps published to the Web without necessarily having to invest in a PC and/or Windows. The purpose of Web sites was to have a universal system of interconnected data. Not to create a proprietary framework.

Even if Silverlight was the next best thing, the fact that it only works in Windows, marginally works in MacOS and just doesn't work at all elsewhere just rules it out.