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Silverlight 5 — Back From the Dead?
Barence writes "When Microsoft executive Bob Muglia recently revealed that Microsoft saw HTML5 as the future for universal in-browser development while Silverlight was being repositioned as a native application development platform for Windows Phone 7 devices, most pundits saw this as an admission of defeat. Now Microsoft has released a beta of Silverlight 5, PC Pro's Tom Arah asks if Microsoft has managed to bring Silverlight back from the dead. With a flurry of Android and Linux-based tablets, smartphones, set-top boxes and other devices set to arrive on the market, Arah argues that Silverlight's time will come. 'Crucially, they will also want to integrate their desktop (Windows) and their main applications (Office and other WPF-based applications). Thanks to its work on HTML5, WPF and especially Silverlight, Microsoft and its army of desktop developers will be well set to deliver,' he argues."
I went to the MS store here in Bellevue today. Some of you may have seen me. But I doubt it.
I was pretty much of the same mind as most of you. Silverlight is dead. It's a dead end technology, and no one will develop with it.
Then today I saw a Windows Phone 7. I actually saw several models. They were actually really great. I was honestly ready for another piece of crap like every other Windows Mobile device I've ever seen. This was different.
Microsoft has done something insanely great (to steal a phrase from Steve Jobs) with Windows Phone 7. I can't truthfully declaim the phone series to anyone who asks. So as more people buy the phone (and they will), more applications will need to be developed for it. That means more Silverlight programmers. As the key synergy is between the phone and the PC, applications for the PC will also be built in Silverlight.
Sometimes when they are up against the wall with real competitors, Microsoft can produce good stuff. They are a day late, but this time they've brought a barrel full of extra dollars.
Especially the work on silverlight undermines the standardization of the web. Even with the Novell Moonlight plugin available for firefox on Linux, Silverlight support on anything but Windos/IE is flaky at best, so developers who care about their websites actually working cross-browser, cross-platform should avoid this technology.
..just in case you we're wondering.
where the hell do you get the idea that silverlight is dead? .NET developer company is moving to WPF/silverlight.
right now almost every
The only thing stopping them from completely moving to silverlight is the fact that it still lacks some things from the complete WPF.
"It's a dead end technology"
<video src="mySilverLightMovie">
One just never knows.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Yes, I had gushing things to say about WP7 and I think it will lead to good things for Silverlight. That's my opinion after playing with actual phones today.
But is it just me or is there a really strong pro-Microsoft vibe here today? Has Microsoft really turned a corner and started offering something people want and need? Or are the MS astroturfers out in force?
Silverlight little applications are now trumpeted as native on WP7?
The absence of true native code in WP7 (C/C++) is a major problem, see, Apple has a clear edge in applications, they allow native code C/ObjC/C++ so people like Carmack can run Doom, companies like Korg can make true synthesizer DSP driven software and even FOSS people can compile and reuse their cherished code on iOS devices.
In the old days Bill Gates at least did know a thing or two about developers and what they need, it seams that MS is totally losing their vision, roots and edge by doing huge mistakes like dropping support for major native development inroads for their new mobile OS. So much for the Steve "triple developers" Ballmer's promises.
So they basically decided that it's best for them to have web developers out of control from adobe even if they cannot take said control. Good news.
However I still fail to be excited by HTML 5. IMO it fails spectacularly at anything they said it was good at. It creates huge privacy holes, makes it difficult to segregate components and still is not well suited to the mobile platorms. How do I activate an onHover() on my cell phone? Why does every page have a different idea on how large my screen is? On my desktop I have to zoom in if I want to read sites, because they can fix the font at 0.0001pt, on my cell phone I have to scroll horizontally every line. Let's forget that presentation should be decided by the client not the server, but at least why cannot they send a page formatted for *my* screen? With HTML5 they can know everything: where I am and my family tree, why can't they fucking look at how big my window is?
HTML5 is a travesty of a standard. I hope it never flies off as is. Unfortunately it probably will.
Ryan Air Routemap now in Silverlight only
And this airline's routemap too:
Aer Lingus Routemap now in Silverlight only
Ah yes, both of these airlines are headquartered in Ireland, where Microsoft has its European headquarters for tax reasons and Microsoft threatened the Irish government that they would leave the country if they changed the tax system in any way that works against them.
This should stop that proprietary HTML5 stuff getting a stranglehold on the web.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Microsoft's competitors have produced better software than Microsoft for decades and it didn't do them any good on the desktop.
Microsoft needs to be much better than Android and iOS or they have already lost. "Good" isn't good enough.
Kill it with fire!
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
I honestly don't know which i'd rather be using.
Flash (and adobe products) has an appalling history of security problems, is very slow and inefficient and is generally the reason for most people's browser crashes.
Then there's silverlight produced by Microsoft...MICROSOFT. Enough said me thinks.
However i do have silverlight installed but disabled until absolutely required (TheGuild HD episodes for example)
What always baffled me was the 5 year gap between the release of .NET 1.0 and Silverlight 1.0. Remember when .NET 1.0 was released, everyone was asking, what is .NET? Part of the reason for the confusion was Microsoft's marketing department slathering the term on a variety of technologies, as they did with "Active" the previous decade. The other part of the reason was it didn't have a way to deploy to the browser. It seemed to me the main advantage of an interpretive run-time was to sandbox on the client. Instead, Microsoft built all these server-side technologies around .NET.
If Microsoft had released Silverlight back in 2002 -- i.e. if it had the small footprint, Mac compatibility, and easy browser install that Silverlight has now and that Flash had back then -- then not only might Silverlight have supplanted Flash, the momentum of millions of Microsoft developers jumping in that early might have forestalled or diminished the role of HTML5 today.
Not all of this is 20/20 hindsight. Browser install, to compete with Java Webstart, was a no-brainer. Then, if it had been a goal at that time of Microsoft to be the standard for all browsers, would have seen why Flash was succeeding (small footprint, Mac compatibility) and adopted those attributes for .NET client.
What is really happening is that Microsoft is going about how they announce their future plans in a different manner. In years past they would hold large multiple-day events which would cover virtually every subject under the sun during which they would announce what they would like to see in a roadmap for the next release or two for a wide array of products. This often set lofty expectations which were often never met in full and also often gave the competition years to turn around their own implementations.
Lately it seems that Microsoft is holding their cards much closer to their vest. They are having smaller and more targeted events where they trickle out some specific details regarding a couple of related products and that is it. At PDC, Microsoft concentrated mostly on Windows Phone 7 and Internet Explorer 9 and largely ignored everything else. The pundits, as it were, took that to mean that because Microsoft didn't mention Silverlight that they were killing Silverlight. They also didn't mention Windows, Office, Exchange, SQL Server, or most of their other product lines, although few would claim that any of those products were going by the wayside. But they did make a comment about the future of HTML5, at an event talking specifically about web browsers, and that was enough to get the rumor ball rolling.
At a later event, geared specifically towards databases, Microsoft trickled out some details specifically about SQL Server "Denali", but nothing else. But while in 2003 anyone paying attention to SQL Server futures could recite a long list of announced features for SQL Server 2005, some of which never made it into the final release, today what we know about SQL Server "Denali" scheduled for release only next year is virtually nothing.
And finally Microsoft holds an event specifically for Silverlight developers. The date of this event was known even prior to the PDC, and the pundits made up stories that at this event all they would do is talk about HTML5, despite announcements that the keynote speech would be specifically about announcements of Silverlight 5. And lo and behold, what happens at this Silverlight-specific event with a future release keynote speech? They announced the future plans for Silverlight. And, somehow, everyone seems surprised.
I will admit that after being used to knowing what was on the roadmap five years and two releases into the future with detailed whitepapers regarding implementation details this new behavior from Microsoft feels a little odd. I can only deduce that it is due to the reasons I stated above: management of the expectation.
It boils down to dragging and dropping xml elements.
What "monopoly power" does Microsoft have in the phone market? I think your tinfoil hat is on too tight.
Microsoft today announced the release of version 5 of its world-beating Silverlight multimedia platform. 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. 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 resumé'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
Microsoft announced Silverlight 5. Scheduled bata release it 1st half 2011. Announcement here.
Bill Gates has moved on from Microsoft. Perhaps slashdot should to. Time for a new M$ icon. I suggested an animated one with Balmer monkey dancing.
WHO TOLD YOU TO SIT DOWN?!
Then I bought an N8. I love it.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
OSX has nearly 15% share in the US.
It isn't 1999 anymore. What are you suggesting they would do anyways? Require a WP7 device to be plugged in for Windows to boot?
It just isn't 100% anti-Microsoft which on Slashdot can seem like pro-Microsoft.
Silverlight was microsoft's attack on flash. At its heart, it's better technology, and with that, they opened the spec. Adobe's flash isn't open. Ouch. Alas, linux implementations of it suck. Until we see a single open-source codebase, that last 1% of internet users won't adopt it. If you want my personal opinion, apple who are going ahead of everyone and patenting things we might end up doing in the future are the bigger threat. Microsoft has backed down and given up fighting. Except for this. A truly open system of media in browers would give microsoft a good reputation and us a flash replacement. Do it microsoft.. time is running out for your monopoloy.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Have a look at Quake in Silverlight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2iS8LCAO8s
That Android magazine ban is the lamest thing I have seen in years. Who the frig cares about Oracle, there are so many DB options these days and both Java and OpenOffice were already underfunded with Sun. Just be glad someone bought Sun and didn't let its assets rot in bankruptcy court.
I recently tried Silverlight to implement a Wiki for use on the company intranet. The new Rich Text Editor control looked compelling for page editing. A few days into the project the shortcomings became evident.
1. You can add images and other items to the editor, but you can't save or restore them.
2. The document model is crippled. No Lists (bulleted or otherwise), no tables.
3. I wanted to subclass hyperlink to implement wiki links. No deal the classes are sealed.
4. You cant receive click events from embedded objects when the control is in edit mode, so it is impossible to implement design time functionality - like selecting a wiki page.
Here's the rub: it is my guess that Microsoft is in a cleft stick. It can not deliver a fully functional control for fear of undermining the control developer community. Their controls magically seem to avoid the above problems. For a mere $1,000 you can buy a rich text editor which actually works. Having been through licensing hell before we have a policy of avoiding buy-in controls where possible.
This pattern has also been seen before for grid controls, WPF did not have one for several releases.
In the mean time CKEditor on an html web page does the job nicely.
HTML for the win.
So was IBM. Computers WERE IBM. You didn't buy a PC, you bought an IBM and later an IBM-compatible.
And where is IBM now? Oh okay, still there, but insignificant on the PC front.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Can you really call yourself a proffesional if you are willingly pulling a IE6 again by writing for a format that is NOT universally supported?
Simple fact check, what runs on more environments? HTML5, Flash, Silverlight?
And no, opensource efforts that will always be playing catchup do NOT count.
You are once again tying your customers into a specific tech. Now I know who was building those IE6 only apps. It was you.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
OSX has nearly 15% share in the US.
Really? I've seen a lot of numbers for OS X market share, measured in various different ways, all in the 3-10% range. Where do you get 15% from?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Statcounter global http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-na-monthly-200911-201011
I blundered into a "feature" of DRM on silver light the other day. It turns out they are fingerprinting your system via it's harddrives (OSX version). You can tell this because If you boot your computer off of a removal harddrive the DRM on silver light refuses to run! (even if you re-install it or start witha fresh system copy). Everything about the silverl ight will work except it won't show DRM content. Also if you copy your internal harddrive to another computer then again the DRM will not work till you unistall and re-install the silverlight. The DRM actually warns you about the last one when it refuses to run.
It's not quite obvious to me why this is the case since I don't know of any use cases where not allowing you to boot off an external hard drive would be important to a content provider. I suspect that one of two things is going on
1) either they are future proofing this so they can regulate the DRM per device (e.g. per TV set)
2) or they are simply imbeciles. You may recall that windows 95 and 98 had at times had a similar draconian lockdown problem of not allowing you to move your hard disk to a new computer. (they fingerprinted the hardware of the machine)
In any event silverlight is their backdoor way of making your machine belong to them.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Please Netflix.com, drop Silverlight and go with something that's open and cross platform.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I currently don't have Silverlight on my old, updated Windows XP Pro. SP3 machine (installed since 2002 I think). I don't use it, especially Netflix that requires it which I refused to get (don't like subscriptions as well). I did use Silverlight briefly during Beijing, China's summer Olympics to watch a few videos and then I uninstalled it after the event ended. I haven't used it since then. I do have it on my office computer's 64-bit W7 HP which I can't remove since it came preinstalled, but I did disable its plugins in my Mozilla's SeaMonkey v2 web browser installation. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Mac, everybody else, divides the other five percent. It's not the Gorilla in the room, it is the whole room, Gorilla, man, woman, child. The dust and riff-raff is the rest.
About a month ago I went to a Microsoft presentation on its new technologies, one of them being IE 9.
According to the speaker:
- The HTML5 standard is the future of the web, plain and simple. And any reasonable web browser will need to support it. (He then gave some pretty cool examples of HTLM5 in action.)
- Silverlight is not competing with HTML. It's not even meant to compete with HTML5. Apparently that conflict is based on a common misconception. Silverlight is meant to go beyond HTML5 capabilities. So Silverlight is meant to be used in combination with HTML5.
So, according to the speaker (and he made this very clear) if you can do something in HTML5 then do so. But if there's something that cannot be done in HTML5, then use Silverlight, until HTML standards have caught up.
Of course, we are talking Micrsoft here, and I'm old enough to remember how Microsoft fought the Browser wars. So my take on this, is that Silverlight is Microsoft's way of "guiding"/"being ahead of the curve" in web standards (and in the process trying to lead HTML standards to Microsoft's advantage).
Still, if that's true, then it might also be true that Microsoft is telling the truth about Silverlight not actually competing with HTML5.