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Microsoft Killing Silverlight?
SharkLaser writes "Silverlight 5 might be last version released by Microsoft. Several industry insiders and partners for the last few weeks have heard from their own Microsoft sources that there won't be new versions released after Silverlight 5. Status on service packs and support for Silverlight is unclear, as Microsoft haven't yet released lifecycle support end date even for the previous Silverlight 4. By their support page they will give full year head-up before ending support. With Adobe ending development of Flash for mobile browsers and Microsoft ending development of Silverlight, HTML5 video looks a lot more promising. But will content providers be able to give out their material without DRM and how does HTML5 perform with non-video side of Flash and Silverlight?"
Flash and Silverlight represent the mid-1990s way of doing things with third party browser addons. Back when we needed crutches like these, they were useful. The leg has healed, though, so it's time to throw the crutches under a bus.
Content producers should just suck up and use non-DRM video streams. They should all know by now that both Flash and Silverlight video "protections" have been circumvented just like Blu-Ray, DVD, etc and that there is really no technological recourse against this.
Really? Do tell how exactly those Silverlight protections have been circumvented. Unless you are talking about a streaming media recorder which simply records the stream as it plays on your PC, I am not aware of any way to defeat Silverlight DRM. The use of separate protected streams for audio and video is fiendishly clever and I've never heard of a successful way to crack it. A video forum where I regularly participate gets posts all the time asking how to record Netflix streams and nobody has ever suggested anything but a streaming media recorder.
"... wank wank, yank yank, this that, rant rant, piss piss " -> This is the reaction we get EVERYtime we tell that microsoft will probably kill this or that service/product that they think they are not benefiting from enough. not 4 months ago when it was almost evident that they would drop silverlight, zygotes here were flaming us when we suggested that, citing this or that reason. 'silverlight is used widenly in *insert niche application here*', 'it has a strong community' this that. what happened ?
.net, and when those articles appeared here, the same people lambasted anyone suggesting that microsoft may ditch .net people too, even while .net users were in a stampede in their own forums over questions over future of .net.
there has been numerous news regarding how they were wavering about
microsoft is a private company with american corporate morals. they will not hesitate from ditching all of you when they see it fit. 'they' here means whichever product/technology manager at that time is dominating the policy. and it varies.
Read radical news here
In this case that would be a step in the right direction. Flash is much more widely available than Silverlight is at present.
Much as i don't like flash at least flash sites are accessible from Linux. I have been told that a few Silverlight sites work with moonlight but have not found any myself
Sorry. You're just wrong about the progressive download thing. And it's not in the scope of HTML5 to define bitrate or fragmented delivery. Fragmented delivery is turf for HTTP and bitrate is for the browser or embedded player.
Read:
14.35.2 Range Retrieval Requests
HTTP retrieval requests using conditional or unconditional GET methods MAY request one or more sub-ranges of the entity, instead of the entire entity, using the Range request header, which applies to the entity returned as the result of the request:
Range = "Range" ":" ranges-specifier
Please read the HTTP 1.1 RFC
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html
Adobe Flash was like having another proprietary browser inside the browser. Nothing the browser makers could do would lock it down (except for unloading the plugin). The advantage of HTML5 is that Mozilla/Google/Apple/Microsoft can place restrictions on how subfeatures are implemented. Out-of-tab & off-page animations can be halted. Storage can be blocked for cross-site requests. Video can refuse to play automatically. Canvas can require explicit permission. Shaders can be statically verified & limited to a stricter subset of GLSL. Etc.