Microsoft's SkyDrive Drops Silverlight

mikejuk writes "Microsoft's SkyDrive, a web service that provides cloud storage for end user files, has just acquired a revamped user interface — and it is HTML5 based. Yes, another Microsoft website has dropped Silverlight. How can Microsoft expect independent developers to base their future on Silverlight when Microsoft itself is abandoning it like a sinking ship? Whatever happened to 'eating your own dog food'? It seems that now Microsoft would rather eat dog food made elsewhere..."

Comments

MS hate

[cgeys]

So Microsoft starts using standards compliant HTML5 instead of Silverlight on their sites and you bash them for it? Seriously?

And regardless, HTML5 was nowhere to be seen when Silverlight came out. It was needed back then, if only as a competitor for Flash. Have you noticed Silverlight hasn't even had the same security concerns and exploits as Flash?

This is a good thing from Microsoft, not bad. Stop bashing them for everything they do, even if its a good thing.

Re:MS hate

[The MAZZTer]

Have you noticed Silverlight hasn't even had the same security concerns and exploits as Flash?

You have to be fair; noone will exploit a plugin nobody has installed or uses.

Re:MS hate

[Richard_at_work]

This is a perfect example of "damned if they do, damned if they don't".

Oh, and typical Slashdot bullshit :)

Re:MS hate

[pandrijeczko]

Yep, they can have a pat on the back for this one... though I still haven't forgiven them for the 1997 bailout of Apple.

Re:MS hate

[ron_ivi]

> So Microsoft starts using standards compliant HTML5 instead of Silverlight on their sites and you bash them for it? Seriously?

No, we bash them for pushing one technology on their customers for the sake of getting them locked in, while internally they know those technologies suck and they use better stuff for themselves. The way Bing uses Hadoop is another example. And the way they're soon to be a big postgres shop (skype) yet another.

They know what the right technologies are. But they keep selling their developers on other stuff.

Re:MS hate

[Kamiza Ikioi]

How is this an example of "damned if they do, damned if they don't"? Microsoft made Silverlight, pushed a lot of sites to use it at the displeasure of many (Netflix), now they are dropping support?

This is rather an example of MS making crap, MS pushing crap, and MS not being able to support their own crap, but still wanting everyone to use it. That's not damned if you do or don't, that's just everyone saying "It sucks, stop pushing it when you can't even use it."

I.E. - Windows Vista

Re:MS hate

[Tetsujin]

Almost every company that has worked with MS has gotten stabbed in the back.

Look on the bright side. At least you get to keep the knife.

Re:MS hate

[Fjandr]

Captive audience for PC users. It made their service worse, an I stopped using it on a PC unless I had no other choice.

I will rejoice when Silverlight dies the death it deserves.

Re:MS hate

[Un pobre guey]

Investing in MS technologies has always been foolhardy. This is just one more episode in a long history of them pulling the rug from beneath their customers' feet in order to make them buy yet another full line of "new" software development tools. It has happened before, it will happen again. It's a suckers' game, and it's baffling how so many people fall into it again and again, especially in the presence of a large, diverse and stable palette of FOSS development tools that evolve in a generally orderly and predictable fashion. Has this ever happened to Perl, Python, PHP, or Ruby developers?.

Re:MS hate

[dhavleak]

Microsoft made Silverlight, pushed a lot of sites to use it at the displeasure of many (Netflix), now they are dropping support?

1. How did Microsoft "push" Netflix?
2. When did Microsoft "drop support" for Silverlight?

Re:MS hate

[athmanb]

When Silverlight 1 came out in 2007, there were three competitors for it:
- ActiveX which was a horrible 90s idea and is unable to function in a world where you can't trust people not to try to build exploits
- Java which was so bad at doing what it was supposed to do that it went from almost 100% market share to almost 0% with the rise of Flash.
- Flash which did the job it was supposed to do but had horrible development tools and literally hundreds of security problems since then due to shoddy product quality

Microsoft created Silverlight to solve these shortcomings and they did a pretty good job at it. Programming web code in Visual Studio is a leaps better than Flash and the Netflix probably saved millions by not wasting their developers' time with the horrible Flash UI and code oddities.

Only now, four years later, is HTML5 beginning to come to a point where it can be a proper tool to do what you used to use one of the above plugins for.

And by the way, IT changes fast in general, no developer can honestly expect to code in the same language from college to retirement. HTML5 - and the languages that you actually write code in like JQuery - are in an extreme prototype state right now, going to change radically several times in the next years before people figure out that they completely screwed up some important paradigms and start parts of the standard from scratch for HTML6. Everyone will have to keep relearning their languages if they want to stay current.

Re:Netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

So that I can use it on linux?