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."

Comments

Ok, I'm convinced

[BadAnalogyGuy]

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.

Re:Ok, I'm convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It looks like half a clone of iOS and Android. Microsoft saw how Apple and Google finally developed effective smartphone operating systems, copied them, and is now going to leverage its monopoly power to try to force its way into the market while secretly poisoning the pool. Is this a surprise to anyone? This has been Microsoft's strategy for the last 20 years.

It is time to reject this cynical approach. If Microsoft gets a monopoly here it is going to stifle development like it has everywhere else.

Re:Ok, I'm convinced

[pasamio]

The problem is that Apple initially released their device saying that you wrote web apps for it and that would be the way to develop for it. And everyone hated, said it was a stupid idea and practically demanded an API which Apple subsequently delivered with a controlled way of deployment. The first iPhone SDK was for web apps and bashing Apple for delivering what was requested even if now we have it we realise it isn't so much of a good idea really just gets bothersome. More importantly Apple continue to make that gateway open for developers, Android does though to a lesser extent however Microsoft seem to have the view that anything that runs on a Phone 7 device will be Silverlight or else.

Re:Ok, I'm convinced

[obarthelemy]

it seems to be "not bad" but what is GOOD about it ? ie, is there something it does other OSes don't, or something it does in a much better/easier/even just faster way ? Looking at

the product intro, my impression is: Meh: so-so hardware, closed as an iPhone, fewer apps than other OSes (which can be understood), fewer OS features... and no Unique Selling Proposition ?

Re:Ok, I'm convinced

[hedwards]

This time I don't think they will. Both iOS and Android are way too entrenched in the market for MS to muscle them out enough to form a monopoly in this space. And that doesn't even include Blackberry which is in and of itself a powerhouse in the smartphone market.

MS rarely if ever successfully competes with companies they can't buy out.

Re:Ok, I'm convinced

[Missing.Matter]

For me, yes there are a number of things WP7 does better than iOS and Android.

First and foremost is the integration with various microsoft products that I use. I realize this doesn't apply to everyone, especially Slashdot users, but it's great for me. Xbox integration is great as I can send messages between my phone and consoles, I can play games, get points, etc. It promises to be even better in the future with the possibility of multiplayer with console gamers. Also, the Windos Marketplace allows for game demos, which is a little nicer than the countless "lite" and "full" apps on the appstore.

Then there's live integration. You just sign in with your live account and you have access to your calendar, mail, messenger, and best of all skydrive. No other phone offers this kind of integration, not even Google. With skydrive I have 25GB of cloud storage, automatically, for free, to which I can upload photos I take with my phone.

Next, office integration. Again, free, and robust. It's not great for creating documents, but I've definitely edited power point presentations and excel documents on the road. The killer app here is Onenote, which allows me to take notes on the phone and sync them with my desktop notes.

Then there's integration with facebook and twitter. I don't need to access separate apps to see someone's status updates; I just go to the people hub, and they're there along with texts, emails, and other communications.

Beyond these integration features, there are some other features which stand out to me. Wireless sync is one iPhone users constantly crave, and one you have to pay for on Android. Music subscription service is great for those who love music. Then there's the Zune software itself, which I find much nicer to use (and better looking) than iTunes. I especially like how it doesn't install 20 different services.

Honestly, I think most of the negative feedback about WP7 is coming from people who never used it, and have no intention of forming an informed opinion on the device. In terms of multitasking, it does a better job than iOS circa June 2010 due to a vastly superior notification system. The only thing it's missing is the various backgrounding APIs introduced by iPhone 4.0, which really only address the needs of a small subset of applications. Cut and paste and other missing features will come shortly (~3 months) according to devs. To me, the platform is exciting and has great potential. People only need to give it a chance.

Re:Ok, I'm convinced

[Locutus]

so what's great about WP7 is that it will tie the phone to the Windows Desktop PC? Leveraging that desktop worked for desktop products but it has never worked for them otherwise. Seeing how Android is already hear and moving forward fast, WP7 without any compelling reason over the competition is a yawner.

And what's up with using Sliverlight as the "native" development platform for WP7? I would have figured it would have been MS .Net. Way to go Microsoft for looking pretty schizophrenic on the vision thing. You know, that stuff you seem to say Google has none of when spreading your FUD about other companies instead of taking care of your own house.

And they have always brought a barrel full of dollars to the table when bringing out products. They have to pay vendors to use it long enough to get people to think it really is worth using. WP7 is nothing new in this regard. IMO

LoB

I argue differently

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

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.

Silverlight as a native application ??

[whiteboy86]

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.

Re:Silverlight as a native application ??

[igreaterthanu]

From what I understand, the controls that Silverlight developers create and use in their apps can only be written in C/C++ on WP7.

Silverlight is a managed framework that runs on top of a subset of .NET. Any .NET code that runs on that particular subset can be used for Silverlight. With regular .NET, managed C++ and unsafe C# are allowed, however the subset of .NET that Silverlight runs on disallows anything unsafe, so C++ is out and so is unsafe C# (regular C# is still okay). Examples of other languages that are okay are: VB.NET, F#.

Yay!

[mr_lizard13]

This should stop that proprietary HTML5 stuff getting a stranglehold on the web.

Re:Weird thread atmosphere here

[obarthelemy]

Honestly, this is underwhelming.
1) all phone UIs are responsive, now that we're finally rid of pre-7.0 WinMob.
2) as you say "similar to iPhone", only better than.. WinMob before 7.0
3) software keyboards are just that: software. Many of my heavily-texting friends have bought a favorite one.
4) see 1)

I'm not interested by something that's better than WinMob 5/6, because pretty much anything was. I'm interested in something that's better than the defaults choices, which are iOS and Android. In which ways in WInMob 7 better than those ?

doesn't matter even if it is good

[t2t10]

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.

5 year lag for Silverlight 1

[michaelmalak]

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.

Microsoft releases Silverlight 5, nobody cares

[David Gerard]

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.

Re:Microsoft releases Silverlight 5, nobody cares

[RazorSharp]

Silverlight 1 was awful, but now Silverlight 4 is pretty good. I've been developing web applications for over ten years professionally. As I mentioned in a previous post there are a lot of things you can so in SL that you can't do very well in either Flash or HTML5. Your comment shows that you are pretty disconnected from reality and not privy to what corporate customers and end users are really looking to see in web applications these days.

It can do what? Lock you into Microsoft technologies? While I understand that, as a developer, you may see things that Silverlight can do that Flash or HTML 5 "can't do very well," what exactly does it do that those corporate customers and end users are "looking to see?" (btw -- I loved those examples you didn't provide) Those customers don't even know what Silverlight is. If they have it installed, they never meant to do it or it was just something they clicked while trying to watch the Olympics online.

Just because Silverlight has some features that you find clever doesn't mean it's good for the internet. It wasn't designed to benefit the internet or small application developers, it was designed to broaden Microsoft's control over the internet, to make it another one of their platforms. Your comment shows that you are pretty disconnected from reality and not privy to what Microsoft's business strategy has been for decades.

Re:I'm always hoping that you'll end this reign

[HermMunster]

Please Netflix.com, drop Silverlight and go with something that's open and cross platform.