New Microsoft Silverlight Features Have Windows Bias

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Microsoft Silverlight Features Have Windows Bias

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 20, 2009 @11:57AM from the open-is-as-open-does dept.

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."

22 of 251 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

History by WiiVault · 2009-11-20 12:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

Anybody who didn't see this coming when MS came out hard about the "amazing cross compatibility besting Adobe!" a few years ago is insane. This is the same old shit they have pulled time and time again. At least they let the cat out of the bag before this needless plug-in gained any real traction. And no I'm no Flash fan. Adobe treats us like dogs too.
1. Re:History by MightyMartian · 2009-11-20 12:05 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Who the fuck cares? Just how many people actually use Silverlight anyways? They might as well release "Steve Ballmer's Excrement Beta 4 - Now With More Cherry Flavoring!"
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
2. Re:History by Ethanol-fueled · 2009-11-20 12:08 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Mod parent up, you fucking' philistines. Silverlight is the Zune of application frameworks.
3. Re:History by Anonymous Coward · 2009-11-20 12:18 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Any web page plugin that exists outside of the normal flow of browser control and navigation history is a bad idea. Perhaps HTML5 will go some way to addressing this, which Microsoft will presumably get round to working towards some time around IE12 at their current rate of non-progress.
  One hilarious comment on MSDN about this, to paraphrase, was that is was "unfair that Microsoft was expected to keep modifying its browser to account for all these new standards competitors keep coming up with." and that they should "stop making new standards and give Microsoft a chance to implement existing ones." Or as I like to think of it, "stop the world, Microsoft needs to catch up."
4. Re:History by Anonymous Coward · 2009-11-20 12:43 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Two singular events that are long over and a single company don't constitute widespread use.
5. Re:History by Nerdfest · 2009-11-20 12:59 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  A cross platform framework having platform specific features is hardly superior. I had it installed, but no longer.
6. Re:History by Anonymous Coward · 2009-11-20 13:00 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  To be honest, as someone who has spent a year developing with and comparing online frameworks, Silverlight is actually close to or already surpassing other available technologies like Flex and JavaFX. Probably the only real competitor to Silverlight is GWT.
7. Re:History by icebraining · 2009-11-20 13:10 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  *And* make an editor like the Flash suite. That's one of the main reasons Flash succeeded: it's easy to use by designers, instead of coders. That's also why most Flash apps/websites suck.
  
  --
  Dilbert RSS feed
8. Re:History by Mongoose+Disciple · 2009-11-20 14:13 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Wait... you mean it's better to be Microsoft than it is to be Flash or Shockwave?
  I'd say it's better that there's competition between the two, than having just one or the other.
9. Re:History by DarkOx · 2009-11-20 14:14 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Enterprise clients is exactly how they are planning to get in the door. COM integration says it all. Microsoft is really competing with their own technology as a first step, Adobe is down the road. They need to get silver light on the corporate desktops first. That way people can use it watch football highlights and clips of the Olympics on their lunch break; its after that they decide they want it at home and take the time to install it.
  Microsoft has push a great deal of their tech out the door that way. Fat clients are out of vogue these days and usually banned by some nearsighted corporate policy; so everyone writes web apps now which are really fat clients doing most of the work on the client side. Its hardly removed from the client sever model at all, but because it has web browser window decorations around it the policy folks don't notice.
  Now we can talk about the security problems and piles of bugs in COM all day long; but its one of the really useful things Microsoft has put into Windows, and it really is better than any of its competitors. Yes its being slowly replaced with some more modern alternatives in the .net framework but there are allot of com objects out there in the corporate world.
  If Microsoft wants those developers using silverlight than they have to have easy access to COM otherwise those "web" applications are being done as a good old fashion mess of activeX. If that happens there is really no reason to get silverlight installed on the PCs; which means Flash will be.
  
  --
  Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
10. Re:History by MightyMartian · 2009-11-20 17:14 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Now we can talk about the security problems and piles of bugs in COM all day long; but its one of the really useful things Microsoft has put into Windows, and it really is better than any of its competitors.
  Well it's certainly made coding viruses and malware substantially easier.
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
11. Re:History by mysidia · 2009-11-20 17:44 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It's not widespread use when Microsoft is giving you freebies and (in effect) paying you/making deals that cost them money, to use the technology, just so more people will be required to install the software and become aware of it.
  IOW, the Netflix and Olympics using silverlight are very likely specific efforts by MS marketing/sales.
  With the right freebies from MS (where using Flash costs something), or with the right kickbacks/sponsorships/friendly meals bought for the right people to discuss silver light.....
  IOW: these few high profile sites using it don't indicate widespread use, only very strong efforts by MS.
12. Re:History by Anonymous Coward · 2009-11-20 23:14 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  A technology getting used every four years is not much of a trend...
13. Re:History by NotBornYesterday · 2009-11-21 05:22 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  There are plans to use Silverlight for the 2010 winter olympics as well. It seems to be a trend.
  Trend? NBC is essentially the mainstream media partner of Microsoft. It seems to me your "trend" is just Microsoft marketing doing their best to buy their way into high-profile events to sway peoples' minds. I don't see this happening elsewhere at other high-profile media events and outlets.
  
  The only trend I see here is Microsoft developing a piece of technology that doesn't play well with others. If history is any guide, this will annoy everyone for awhile before coming back to bite MS in the ass.
  
  --
  I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Anything about Linux? by Edmund+Blackadder · 2009-11-20 12:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

I really want to run Silverlight in Ubuntu! Well, no that was sarcasm, but Linux should be mentioned when one talks about cross comparability. We should not allow the meme to emerge that the only options are Mac or windows.
Re:Quick, someone notify Miguel! by MightyMartian · 2009-11-20 12:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

He didn't like, Miguel is just the dumbest chump that ever came along. The guy was born with a sign on his back that said "Stick Your Hand Up My Ass And Move My Mouth!"
Everything Microsoft does is a time bomb, or crippled to ruin the competition.

--
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Features? by shutdown+-p+now · 2009-11-20 12:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

So far, the only feature in TFS that I can see as having "Windows bias" is ActiveX support. Which is kinda not surprising (I mean, who doesn't know that ActiveX is "that evil Windows thing" - even people who don't even understand what it is and how it works?). Qt also has an ActiveX support module, and it doesn't make it any less cross-platform - no-one forces you to use it. Same applies here.
1. Re:Features? by cbhacking · 2009-11-20 14:08 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Thank you for a voice of sanity and reason. The fact that you can embed COM objects in the latest version of Silverlight does nothing to harm Silverlight on other platforms; it simply means that if you (as a developer) are willing to limit yourself to Windows users, you can now embed third-party controls written in C++ into your desktop app (what a bizarre concept, I know...) If you want portability, you don't use this feature (any more than if a Java developer wants portability, he doesn't rely on a native code module that does registry I/O).
  
  --
  There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Re:So what? Freedom of choice is good. by RingDev · 2009-11-20 13:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

I wouldn't say that's quite a fair estimate in this case. Silverlight apps are still cross platform (mine run identically on Win 2k, 2k3, 2k8, XP, Vista, 7, and even a few Mac clients running IE6, 7, 8, and FF3.5) and will continue to be so in v4. But, if you call COM services, they only exist in Windows anyways. So who' cares that the COM functionality only exists in the windows bin, so long as it compiles and throws an exception when COM services aren't available for Mac bins.
This is hardly the dreaded lock-in that people are making it out to be. It's an added tool that (IMO) no one should ever use.
It's like claiming that Mono is a lock in because it contains extra functionality that exploits extra functionality available in Linux environments.
If you want to do cross platform development, you must make sure you either account for all environments, or explicitly only use those entities that are proven safe. It is really quite simple to make an HTML page (with a JSP/PHP/Ruby/what ever) back end that will not render correctly on different platforms. Or toss a couple of OS API calls in Java and watch it bomb out when you run it on a different OS.
-Rick

--
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
You are bitching about a lack of IE on Mac!? by harlows_monkeys · 2009-11-20 13:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

WTF? If I'm viewing something on my Mac, I want it to use Safari components, so it will behave like I'm used to on the Mac. If I'm viewing the same thing on Windows, I want it to use IE components, so it will behave like I'm used to on Windows. This is a good thing.
Re:COM Automation = ActiveX by jpmorgan · 2009-11-20 14:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

Close, but not quite. ActiveX is a COM component that implements the IDispatch interface. IDispatch is a 'meta' interface that allows dynamic binding to COM objects, rather than the purely static binding that COM defines, allowing COM objects to be called from dynamic languages (like JavaScript). From a purely technological perspective, it's quite slick really, and if you've ever played around in Win32 Python you'll know what I mean.
The security problems with ActiveX was that Microsoft exposed these low-level interfaces to untrusted websites through JavaScript, opening up an enormous attack surface (as now many ActiveX objects on your system, which were never designed with security in mind, were being called from untrusted JavaScript and running under local user permissions). Worse, was allowing websites to request the installation of ActiveX objects themselves. So yeah.... clever technology but a TERRIBLE use.
M$ B$ by Anonymous Coward · 2009-11-20 23:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

> So Netflix, the Olympics and the US Presidential Inauguration aren't high profile enough for you?
Erm, no.
1) I don't use Netflix, thank you. Maybe after I watch the bazillions of videos on the net. Hah, who knows?
2) The Olympics are old now. Do you think Silverwhatever will be around on the next?
3) I have my own President, thank you. And it's a lot funnier with about 1/5th of Obama's study years... think about the savings!
> Just because you have a seething inner hatred towards MS doesn't mean no one uses their technology.
Just because M$ is incompetent don't expect to be able to blame their faults on some primeval emotion. I don't like M$, as it turned to be, but I had no such feelings back then... they were simply morons. Now they're like Audrey from the Little Shop of Horrors: they demand a company every few days...
Stop arranging excuses and work! Make the products good. M$ can do it, they do reasonable hardware (albeit expensive). Why must they rely on emotional tactics to do software (bullying, complaining they are hated etc.)
Stop complaining and achieve success by W-O-R-K-I-N-G!
From that alone, you'll see much of the hate disappear. Do you know someone that hates Sun? Well, I don't -- even though nobody is throwing a party for them --> GET A CLUE!