Yea, I never understood the off light either. Both my DVD player and Stereo have that and sometimes it still confuses me whether I turned it off or not because there is still a light on.
Can't so much as view their product without flash? FAIL.
When I see comments like this (often), it makes me wonder what it was like in the past when we made the switch from plain text to HTML. Were a lot of people complaining about HTML then? I think I was active on the internet when people started worrying about images being on sites..when everyone was on 28kb modems:).
By the way, do you happen to have a link to the article? I wouldn't mind taking some time to argue it out instead of speculating. I'm curious what exactly they found better or if it is just a general "it's better" thing...
Well, I would guess the main reason I hate on it, is because as a programmer I'm not looking forward to yet another type of technology learning required to do the same thing I could do with flash. It's just annoying that when new technologies come out and a company goes to a keynote speech or tech meeting and they come to me and NEED to have this on their web-page. If it was something innovative I would be all over it, but if it's just another company trying to do the same thing already done then to me it's just more hassle and wasted time. Our browsers are already flooded with crap and I don't see the need to add more weight to it....but maybe that's just me.
"From what I've read (I'm a shitty web designer who only barely knows PHP and CSS) scripting in Silverlight is easier and more efficient than in Flash."
God-Damn it's actually working! When I first found out about silverlight, I did a google search to find opinions on it, and the top few sites I found were blog entries and/or comments of people comparing it to flash and saying how much better/easier it was. But.....these looked very suspicious as they sounded like an ad since the writers talked it up TOO much and said no good things in comparison about flash.
Anyway, the main problem with every article I have found praising silverlight so far, is they are comparing it against VERY EARLY flash versions. Most make claims at things silverlight can do that flash 4 cannot. I have yet to find one article to a comparison of Flash 9 VS silverlight, but since Flash 9 is older or at least the same year as silverlight, it's the only fair comparison....and programming in AS3 with support to save all animation in XML files is waaaay different than any other version of flash.
Ok, sorry to rant, but it seems Microsoft is paying people to blog post, and comment on the internet to make it difficult for anyone to search and find a non-bias review of it. Can't say I know EVERYTHING about silverlight, but from what I have seen I'm not impressed...and it crashed IE multiple times for me. I say leave it to the experienced people who have been fine tuning flash for years....Microsoft has to 'try' and do everything better (Javascript, JAVA, Flash, etc) and usually make it worse with more bugs BUT still end up outselling the (sometimes free) competitors.
Heh...thanks for pointing out my paranoia. This is actually the first time I have been this paranoid, but I think I have good reason. Here is the first link on a good search for "flash vs silverlight"
http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2007/05/03/silverlight-vs-flash-the-developer-story.aspx
Maybe the guy writing this is all up in arms over silverlight and clueless about flash, but it just seems too damn fake. And like most comparison's he is comparing earlier (actually the first beta!) versions of flash with silverlight.
Anyway, regardless of my paranoia, to say silverlight offers "more" or is "better" is not a fair comparison. There is sooo much you can do with AS3 that is different from silverlight that you can't say one is more or better than the other.
I'm sure it is nice to be able to program in your language of choice. However, just like ASP that allows you to choose a language, I find most people us VB just to have some kind of consistency between users.
With flash you are forced to program in AS3 (or use Flex with drag and drop components), however you are not limited to backend languages to connect to. Adobe didn't get a slashdot article for every backend language it supports, because it supports pretty much ALL of them. Not ONLY windows platform specific built in. And if you want integration INTO the platform, then you can use flash remoting or Flex. Now it's not asp.Net + Silverlight, the integrated development for those is coldfusion + flash...same diff really though. Just Adobe is not the owner of.Net. And of course with either of those you can go straight into code if you want and connect to any script you want.
There are very few AS3 programmers out there as I look on flash forms and see people still asking AS2 questions so I think that is where most of the comparison against silverlight is coming from. But if you are going to have to learn something new anyway, it might as well be AS3 with years of experience to fine tune their program language. Did you know you can animate everything within an XML file instead of coding in AS3? You can also use dynamic XML to change anything you want...you are not shoehorned into anything in the newest flash and that's what I think the beauty is. ok ok...etc etc.
I've wrote too much. Next comment.
While it offers more than Flash does I don't know where people keep getting their ideas on "more" than flash does, but I'm suspecting it is from some dirty marketing campain from microsoft. You know if you search for silverlight you will find at the top of a google search are blogs about silverlight vs flash, but after reading a couple paragraphs you realize that it is no more than a commercial for silverlight...they even sound like a scripted commercial...and they compare flash from 15 years ago to silverlight instead of flash from today. Then after more digging I've found the comments for sites that write about silverlight are scripted half the time too. I've even found comment sections on articles written by microsoft staff in defense on their product so you know they are spending many hours searching the net to try and make sure anything within the first few pages of a search is biased.....it's annoying because it seems to be working, although very little people have actually used both silverlight and flash extensively, hearing a random person say "it is better" leads them to believe it. (END RANT)
Your comparing apples and oranges here. Think of this a second.
Would you rather your child:
Kill someone or Do Drugs
Kill someone or Overindulge in Sex
Kill someone or Over-eat
Kill someone or Make fun of other people
Kill someone or Be depressed
All these things can lead to an unhappy life in a person in different ways, but just because one is worse than the other does not justify the latter!
Just in case anyone wanted to try something like these. You can make a similar interface with a webcam and lighted fingers and surf google earth with it. Intructions are here: http://atlasgloves.org/
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, yes. Very true.
Yea, I never understood the off light either. Both my DVD player and Stereo have that and sometimes it still confuses me whether I turned it off or not because there is still a light on.
http://www.wildcharge.com/index.cfm?CFID=14618980&CFTOKEN=57894540 This looks like a neat little charging pad. Just drop your device down to charge. Will have to wait until they support more devices though...
Can't so much as view their product without flash? FAIL.
When I see comments like this (often), it makes me wonder what it was like in the past when we made the switch from plain text to HTML. Were a lot of people complaining about HTML then? I think I was active on the internet when people started worrying about images being on sites..when everyone was on 28kb modems :).
Brilliant! That is one of the best devices I have seen in a long time! Glad I found this article!
By the way, do you happen to have a link to the article? I wouldn't mind taking some time to argue it out instead of speculating. I'm curious what exactly they found better or if it is just a general "it's better" thing...
Well, I would guess the main reason I hate on it, is because as a programmer I'm not looking forward to yet another type of technology learning required to do the same thing I could do with flash. It's just annoying that when new technologies come out and a company goes to a keynote speech or tech meeting and they come to me and NEED to have this on their web-page. If it was something innovative I would be all over it, but if it's just another company trying to do the same thing already done then to me it's just more hassle and wasted time. Our browsers are already flooded with crap and I don't see the need to add more weight to it....but maybe that's just me.
"From what I've read (I'm a shitty web designer who only barely knows PHP and CSS) scripting in Silverlight is easier and more efficient than in Flash." God-Damn it's actually working! When I first found out about silverlight, I did a google search to find opinions on it, and the top few sites I found were blog entries and/or comments of people comparing it to flash and saying how much better/easier it was. But.....these looked very suspicious as they sounded like an ad since the writers talked it up TOO much and said no good things in comparison about flash. Anyway, the main problem with every article I have found praising silverlight so far, is they are comparing it against VERY EARLY flash versions. Most make claims at things silverlight can do that flash 4 cannot. I have yet to find one article to a comparison of Flash 9 VS silverlight, but since Flash 9 is older or at least the same year as silverlight, it's the only fair comparison....and programming in AS3 with support to save all animation in XML files is waaaay different than any other version of flash. Ok, sorry to rant, but it seems Microsoft is paying people to blog post, and comment on the internet to make it difficult for anyone to search and find a non-bias review of it. Can't say I know EVERYTHING about silverlight, but from what I have seen I'm not impressed...and it crashed IE multiple times for me. I say leave it to the experienced people who have been fine tuning flash for years....Microsoft has to 'try' and do everything better (Javascript, JAVA, Flash, etc) and usually make it worse with more bugs BUT still end up outselling the (sometimes free) competitors.
Heh...thanks for pointing out my paranoia. This is actually the first time I have been this paranoid, but I think I have good reason. Here is the first link on a good search for "flash vs silverlight" http://weblogs.asp.net/jezell/archive/2007/05/03/silverlight-vs-flash-the-developer-story.aspx Maybe the guy writing this is all up in arms over silverlight and clueless about flash, but it just seems too damn fake. And like most comparison's he is comparing earlier (actually the first beta!) versions of flash with silverlight. Anyway, regardless of my paranoia, to say silverlight offers "more" or is "better" is not a fair comparison. There is sooo much you can do with AS3 that is different from silverlight that you can't say one is more or better than the other. I'm sure it is nice to be able to program in your language of choice. However, just like ASP that allows you to choose a language, I find most people us VB just to have some kind of consistency between users. With flash you are forced to program in AS3 (or use Flex with drag and drop components), however you are not limited to backend languages to connect to. Adobe didn't get a slashdot article for every backend language it supports, because it supports pretty much ALL of them. Not ONLY windows platform specific built in. And if you want integration INTO the platform, then you can use flash remoting or Flex. Now it's not asp.Net + Silverlight, the integrated development for those is coldfusion + flash...same diff really though. Just Adobe is not the owner of .Net. And of course with either of those you can go straight into code if you want and connect to any script you want.
There are very few AS3 programmers out there as I look on flash forms and see people still asking AS2 questions so I think that is where most of the comparison against silverlight is coming from. But if you are going to have to learn something new anyway, it might as well be AS3 with years of experience to fine tune their program language. Did you know you can animate everything within an XML file instead of coding in AS3? You can also use dynamic XML to change anything you want...you are not shoehorned into anything in the newest flash and that's what I think the beauty is. ok ok...etc etc.
I've wrote too much. Next comment.
Your comparing apples and oranges here. Think of this a second. Would you rather your child: Kill someone or Do Drugs Kill someone or Overindulge in Sex Kill someone or Over-eat Kill someone or Make fun of other people Kill someone or Be depressed All these things can lead to an unhappy life in a person in different ways, but just because one is worse than the other does not justify the latter!
Just in case anyone wanted to try something like these. You can make a similar interface with a webcam and lighted fingers and surf google earth with it. Intructions are here: http://atlasgloves.org/