Silverlight 5 Released

New submitter CaptSlaq sends word that Silverlight 5 has been released. Microsoft has not revealed whether it will be the last version. "New features in Silverlight 5 include Hardware Decode of H.264 media, which provides a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU; Postscript Vector Printing to improve output quality and file size; and an improved graphics stack with 3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU for drawing vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives. In addition, Silverlight 5 extends the ‘Trusted Application’ model to the browser for the first time. These features, when enabled via a group policy registry key and an application certificate, mean users won’t need to leave the browser to perform complex tasks such as multiple window support, full trust support in browser including COM and file system access, in browser HTML hosting within Silverlight, and P/Invoke support for existing native code to be run directly from Silverlight."

Comments

Maybe we'll get lucky

[WiiVault]

and Silverlight will go the way of mobile Flash. Plug-ins simply must die for the web to thrive in the future.

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[thedonger]

and Silverlight will go the way of mobile Flash. Plug-ins simply must die for the web to thrive in the future.

Silverlight is actually a pretty cool way to handle data in ways tedious or unwieldy in HTML or Xml/Xslt. And if you work for a company totally wrapped up in Microsoft technology and you find you have this requirement for an internal application, I say run with it. I do agree, however, that requiring plug-ins for end users, particularly infrequent or uneducated ones, is a bad practice. But give the browser market two or three years - in which time I expect a radical shift in consuming web-based content - and plug-ins may be a moot point.

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[Spy Handler]

Except things like Netflix... if Silverlight or Flash didn't exist, you couldn't watch Hollywood movies or TV shows because the studios simply will not allow their content to be shown on the web without some kind of a DRM.

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[slapout]

It's not necessarily that plug-ins must die -- they push the web in new directions. It's that HTML should take the good ideas that plug-ins come up with and make them part of the standard.

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[bonch]

Oh, well fuck his opinion then.

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[WiiVault]

Agreed, but the existence of these plug-ins, their ubiquity, and the prior monetary "support" provided by their creators has certainly slowed the growth and widespread interest in developing an open standard. Remember up until recently Adobe and MS were not big HTML5 supporters, despite being some of the key companies tasked with creating the standard. Its not a stretch to think they crippled it as much as they could to support their own products.

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[petsounds]

1) Plug-ins are a part of the HTML5 standard. The committee understands the two can co-exist and thrive.
2) The web has been thriving for many years now with plug-ins. I think it'll do just fine.
3) It was Flash that kept the progress of the web moving forward, when standards committee progress turned glacial. Go read about the history of Javascript. It's a sad tale, and that language is still 10 years behind Actionscript even though they are both based on the root ECMAScript language. Eventually Adobe had to go their own way with Actionscript because nothing was getting done.

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

As of about 2 years ago Flash was our main development platform for web applications. We still have clients that demand IE 6 support so in those cases Flash was always the better option to ensure a fast development cycle that works on 90%+ of browsers. Especially since each version of IE counts as a separate testing platform.

Now, however, we're moving away from flash at a *rapid* pace. Why? Mostly Mobile. Flash is *terrible* on mobile, where it's supported. My opinion is that Flash is only on mobile to allow adverts.

Our Clients are a demanding lot, and they demand Mobile support for their applications now. They also still ask for IE 6 support. Now we say to them: You can have Mobile, or IE 6, not both. We develop websites for mobile, we develop using Javascript only, no more flash. It carries over well to the full site too (really, the only differences between mobile and desktop is the layout and the CSS), and while it'll technically work fine on IE6, it will be slow as molasses and look terrible. Our clients love the shiny, and when they see IE 6 doesn't do the shiny, they're actually more inclined to just say 'screw it, so long as it runs, it can run as slow as it wants, it's the users fault'

We're up to our eyeballs in Microsoft tech here too. IIS, ASP.net, Visual Studio, Azure Cloud. But we've only used silverlight for 2 applications, and that was just to try it out. It does video better than flash, but it's low penetration really rules it out of larger projects. With our move away from flash we won't be ramping up silverlight.

Certainly, the main reason we stay with flash is for Video playback. We've got one client with a video library site that requires an encrypted streaming server. So far we've not found a way to make that work in Javascript alone.

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[hairyfeet]

But you are missing the big IF here friend and that is IF MSFT can get people to take Windows 8, and from the now 170 customers I've shown it to I have gotten NOTHING but hate. they don't like it, they don't want it, they wanted to know if they got stuck with a Windows 8 machine " can you put Windows 7 on it?". hell the closest i got to an endorsement of Windows 8 was this: "That's a nice looking cell phone screen, is that Android? i heard its quite nice...what do you mean Windows? Windows what? Well that is just stupid! Why would i want a cell phone on my computer?"

Frankly I think Ballmer is gonna get a pink slip when he finds out that like Vista you can't just ram crap down folk's throats anymore, MSFT just doesn't have the pull. The PCs being sold now that run Win 7 are frankly so insanely overpowered that most folks could keep them for a decade or more and not care. Does anybody think Suzy the checkout girl is gonna stress an AMD quad with 4gb of RAM? of course not. So when Ballmer's Folly comes out I predict we'll hear a giant "Yuck!" and folks will stick with win 7. if he tries to quit selling 7 to force people the pirates are gonna have a field day as Win 7 is beyond trivial to pirate.

As for TFA just one more tech Ballmer will most likely sacrifice on his altar to Steve Jobs and mobile. I swear for a CEO the man is retarded, trying to stick Windows on ARM? What a fucking disaster! they should stick with X86 on windows and just keep improving WinPhone for ARM. From what I've been told silverlight is pretty damned powerful, after all it'd have to be to make an entire OS in a browser. I'd love to see someone try to hack something that impressive together with just JavaScript!

But instead of helping Moonlight and making it a solid multi-OS framework Ballmer is probably gonna piss it all away trying to be Jobs. I can just imagine his "pep" talks "And with this we'll be as hip and cool as Apple! Yes we will! We really will! STOP LAUGHING AT ME!" followed by chairs flying.Oh and if there are any Apple guys here? I was one of those that made fun of you when the pepsi guy was running the company you depended on into the ground and I just want to say...I'm sorry alright? Its not funny anymore! I don't want to spend two damned years wiping Windows 8 like I did Vista!

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[InsightIn140Bytes]

SilverLight is open. All the specs are out there and you're free to make your own implementation. There would be better Linux version too if someone would just actually maintain it. Microsoft isn't trying to stop anyone from doing so, in fact they have helped the project too.

Re:Maybe we'll get lucky

[hairyfeet]

If you HONESTLY think they are gonna gut the ENTIRE UI before release day? here is a cookie to go with the koolaid you have been drinking. as for why show it to them? well to generate buzz dummy! With the win 7 Beta I had plenty of customers asking me all kinds of things, like "How fast is it? Does it have cool stuff? Is it worth it?" and when RTM hit I had 5 new builds, more than a dozen installs waiting,it helped generate more buzz!!

But I'm sorry if your a fanboy but win 8 is such a trainwreck its gonna make Vista look like win95. Hell even with Vista people were interested...until they actually played with the beta machine i had set up and saw what a buggy slow POS it was. With the Win 7 beta I was showing them the cool tricks like slamming windows on the sides to fit two apps (they love that one BTW, its great for having a chat and another app at the same time) or the breadcrumbs. with Win 8 it was unanimous, they all said "its a cell phone" and promptly hated it. folks PUT UP with their cell phone, most don't sit there caressing the thing and they sure as hell don't want to spend their day in front of it!

multiple window support

[Trepidity]

won’t need to leave the browser to perform complex tasks such as multiple window support

Is the intent to support a whole desktop environment inside the browser?

Only one question...

[laughing rabbit]

...why?

Re:Anyone uses Silverlight?

[the linux geek]

The multi-ton elephant in the room is Netflix.

Re:Anyone uses Silverlight?

[Deltaspectre]

You don't know anyone that streams Netflix on their computer?

Re:Anyone uses Silverlight?

[iONiUM]

The BI platform used by Dundas Data Visualization, Dundas Dashboard, is in Silverlight. I use it on a daily basis. However, they are now offering HTML5 as well. But having a dashboard designer, in the web with a very rich experience, is one example where Silverlight has an advantage. But of course, as HTML5 improves/adopts, that advantage is going away, making plug-ins no longer needed.

Re:Anyone uses Silverlight?

[Bitsy Boffin]

I was asked to evaluate a website (for a large and well known company) only 3 days ago with a view to "taking it over".

Let's say my review was less than favourable when I found that if you didn't have silverlight you were not able to use the site, the home page simply told you that without silverlight you could not continue to use the normal site and pushed you to a crappy antiquated mobile phone design of the site as an alternative.

And the reason they had silverlight as a requirement? As best I could tell it was because they had bad low resolution videos in the background of some pages.

Even with silverlight enabled, the site was disastrously slow, not to mention unnavigable by search engines (not even real URLs for products etc).

Like I told them, who ever had the good idea to make that site, should never be allowed to have any more good ideas.

Yep, it's Microsoft.

[pushing-robot]

a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU

So it's great for everything you don't use Silverlight for.

Re:Big security hole

[DeathFromSomewhere]

You forgot 2 steps:
Convince the user to install your certificate (admin privileges needed).
Convince the user to change a setting in group policy or hack the registry (more admin privileges needed).

Version 5 supported until 2021

[Rogue Orion]

According to this: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean45#sl5
Silverlight 5 will be supported for 10 years. Not many software vendors are prepared to do that.