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

History

[WiiVault]

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.

Re:History

[MightyMartian]

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!"

Re:History

[Ethanol-fueled]

Mod parent up, you fucking' philistines. Silverlight is the Zune of application frameworks.

Re:History

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:History

[mysidia]

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.

Anything about Linux?

[Edmund Blackadder]

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.

Features?

[shutdown -p now]

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.

Re:Features?

[cbhacking]

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).