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MS To Push Silverlight Via Redesigned Microsoft.com
Posted by
kdawson
on Thursday January 03, @10:45AM
from the bye-bye-html dept.
from the bye-bye-html dept.
Marilyn M. writes "It looks like Microsoft is getting desperate about the dismal rates of Silverlight adoption by consumers and developers since its release earlier this year. According to NeoSmart Technologies, Microsoft is preparing a fully Silverlight-powered redesign of their website, doing away with most HTML pages entirely. With over 60 million unique users visiting Microsoft.com a month, Microsoft's last-ditch effort might be what it takes to breathe some life back into Silverlight. The article notes: 'At the moment, very few non-Microsoft-owned sites are using Silverlight at all; let alone for the entire UI.'"
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Developers: Silverlight Released, Linux Version Coming 462 comments
Today Microsoft announced the release of Silverlight 1.0 for Windows and Mac OS X. This cross-browser, cross-platform browser plug-in is fully supported and competes directly with Adobe Flash. Included in this release was the promise from Microsoft to support the 100% compatible Linux version, called Moonlight.
Firehose:Microsoft to Push Silverlight via Redesigned Site by Anonymous Coward
MS To Push Silverlight Via Redesigned Microsoft.com
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Breeze to Program (Score:5, Insightful)
The nice thing about Silverlight is that it is a breeze to program and work with.
I think, once the initial knee-jerk anti-MS crud is past, people won't mind. Just like any web/presentation technology, it has it's pros and cons. But look, to work with Silverlight, to create Silverlight, you don't need an expensive suite of tools.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a piece of crap. [slashdot.org]
When I finally got it up and running, I had as many problems with the API set as I did with the documentation. Mono is junk that gives people a false impression that
Re:bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Mono is a piece of crap on its own merits. I apologize if I gave any other impression.
Your argument of deliberate X11 incompatibilities is nice (though difficult to accept at face value), but ignores the fact that 90% of my rant centered around the craptactular development environment that is shipped as "Mono". It's decidedly developer-unfriendly, and using it on a Mac was not the cause of that.
On a system where Java is installed, things are easy to build and run. I can run "ant all" and everything magically compiles. I can look at the documentation and understand what every class and method does. If it runs on one system, I can expect it to run on the rest. Dependencies are clearly defined and easy to resolve. (And explicitly clear when tied to a given OS due to JNI dependencies.)
None of that describes Mono. Mono is a piece of crap that simply perpetuates a poor state of dependency hell, while wrapping your core software in a semi-portable bytecode that provides no real-world advantage in portability.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Informative)
Silverlight isn't open source, but you are not restricted to
Also, although still not open source, the source code for
And you are not limited to a single platform to develop on although it is currently difficult to do so on a platform other than Windows
And Silverlight 2.0 will be available on Mac (and, via third party, Linux).
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Interesting)
Miquel de Icaza is working on an open-source version of Silverlight for Linux. See here [gcn.com].
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Funny)
Just in case there was any doubt... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Informative)
If you don't know who Douglas Crockford is, there's a very good chance you have no idea what Javascript can be.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is this ISNT just another web technology, this is a MICROSOFT technology, which historically has always ment you need to run a Microsoft Enironment to get the benefit out of it. Microsofts not evil, but they're not exactlly open either.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Informative)
There are lots of tools for Flash-compatible SWF files out there besides Flash. Flex is one. HaXe [haxe.org] is another. Laszlo Systems [laszlosystems.com] has a proprietary product and an open version called Open Laszlo, which IIRC is built on Java. There are probably more I'm forgetting.
HaXe is its own language from the guy who designed the Neko VM. It run on the Neko runtime, and it targets Neko, Javascript browser DOM with its own Ajax libraries, or Flash. I haven't done anything huge with it, but it was pretty quick to pick up for a couple of small projects.
There are also graphical Flash authoring tools besides Flash and Dreamweaver. They range from Swish Max which is meant to be a full Flash replacement for most people down to specialized things like animated banner creators and photo gallery creators. There's also a lot of royalty-free and even some Open Source components you can download and reuse.
Flash isn't as open as JavaScript and HTML, and it is dominated by one company. It's not exactly useful only to people who buy Flash, though.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Informative)
You really only need Flash if your more of a designer than a coder.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Insightful)
Silverlight works with Firefox, Safari, and IE.
You know the spec for HTML? Which one? Transitional HTML 4.01? Strict HTML 4.01? XHTML? I highly doubt you actually *know* the spec for HTML. What you know is how to write HTML that works. Other people know how to write Silverlight code that works. Your arguments for Microsoft cutting support for Linux don't make any sense. Mono is an open source GPLed project, which happens to have some Microsoft backing and support due to their own desire to see Silverlight succeed and the agreement they have with Novell who is backing Mono. However, it's still an open source GPL project. Saying "what if Microsoft changes everything" doesn't make sense. You could make the same argument against Samba (prior to the recent release of the SMB documentation after many years of reverse engineering).
The fact is, once Moonlight is up and rolling, there's no need for Microsoft's support to continue keeping it up to date. If they add some new function blah(x,y) they have to document that function in order for Silverlight users to actually make use of it, which means writing your own version of blah(x,y) from scratch wouldn't be that big of a deal. Open source projects like Samba have been doing this for years with NO documentation.
Considering Microsoft's very early support for multiple platforms and for an open source implementation, and the years it took to even get a crappy version of Adobe Flash for Linux out of Adobe, it's really funny that you consider Flash the lesser of two evils.
It's also really funny that you're so hot on the standards body for HTML and how great it is to have one true standard, when the whole HTML "standard(s)" and all of the commercial implementations of it are in shambles. No disrespect to the W3C community, but right now the par for a good HTML rendering browser is "whatever is better than Microsoft's support". We have 3 rolling standards, of which there is no actual implementation of 100% of the standard. I'm pretty sure Flash renders 100% compatible Flash, and Silverlight renders 100% compatible Silverlight. If you look at the same HTML on Windows and Mac, you'll get different output on many web pages, but if you look at Silverlight on Windows and Mac, you'll get the same output.
With HTML you do have to worry about what kindness an organization provides, because you have to worry about how much of your HTML "standard" (and which one) they choose to support, and how much of it they choose to support. You're just as dependent on browser implementations as Silverlight and Flash people are on their plugins. There's no difference anywhere except in your mind.
Oh, and both Silverlight and Flash are filing to become standardized specifications under standards bodies. Look at
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, something I can probably reverse engineer is not a substitute for something that is open. By this logic Wine [winehq.com] should be a perfect replacement for Windows and GCJ [gnu.org] should be interchangeable with the Sun JVM. I respect both of these efforts but the fact is that they are not in control of the specs they are implementing.
In the case of Silverlight there's no compelling reason to move from standards we have to this new specification.
MS already dropping support for platforms (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Informative)
Except that basically everybody has a flash player running already, there are tons and tons more resources and libraries available to developers, and it works on every significant platform.... There are even open source players.
Flex/AS3 development is pretty damned easy. How much easier can Silverlight possibly be to justify deploying to a platform with significantly lower market penetration?
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft's plan is to replace Flash as the Flashy web UI of choice. As a UI developer, I am ambivalent. I fail to see how being in Adobe's pocket is any better or worse than being in Microsoft's. Actually, I prefer Silverlight as it does not require that hideously expensive Flex dev environment.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Informative)
There is no reason to put the SDK on your Windows partition, so if you didn't have 54MB free, you could still install it on, say, a USB stick from the trash outside a convention center or something.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also the benefit of being able to use any
Yes, the newest version of ActionScript is a lot better than previous versions--and better than any other derivative of ECMAScript I've seen. But it's still no match for the VisualStudio +
Honestly, I'm not a huge Microsoft fan. Over the last year I've spent more time developing in PHP than any other language.
But c'mon... Silverlight does have some compelling arguments.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Insightful)
Or how about the fact that the
Or how about the fact that your
Or how about the fact that you can mix multiple languages in a silverlight project (like ALL
Or how about an entire eco-system of tools and generators and add-ons for Visual Studio and the framework?
Of course, with flash, you get...
well...
None of that.
Re:"There are open source players"? (Score:4, Informative)
With nspluginwrapper (configured automatically on OS install) Flash Player 9 works as expected in 64-bit firefox. If I didn't know how the system worked behind the scenes I wouldn't even realize there was a 32-bit plugin being used, or that there was a potential for issue.
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Breeze to Program (Score:5, Interesting)
We went to a full-day demo on Silverlight, given by a Microsoft developer. What they did in about 500 lines of Silverlight code was a pretty nice picture slideshow with smooth image transitions. What we did in about 500 lines of Flex was equivalent, but supported images of any size, allowed you to zoom in, supported a film strip mode, and carousel mode, as well as the standard fade-in, fade-out image transitions. Ours also is able to attach to ANY other language that is capable of delivering web services in a wide variety of formats (XMLRPC, SOAP, WSDL, flat XML, etc), and it only requires 1 line of code to change (or a switch statement if we wanted to support them all at once). Ours is more featureful, easier to read, understand, and maintain than the very best that Microsoft could produce in the same amount of code. It also performs better.
Seriously, I have seen both of these things in action, Silverlight is a long, LONG way away from being able to compete with Flex on both an install base perspective as well as an ease-of-development perspective. There is a reason people aren't adopting Silverlight, and install base is only a small part of it (though of course it itself is significant).
Microsoft is doing their usual bang-up job of supporting the minimal features to look competitive, then cramming it down people's throats until they forget there are better options out there. And well they should, they should be scared silly. Flex is poised to overthrow the desktop monopoly in a way that AJAX and Google Apps can't (wouldn't be surprised to see some Google apps on Flex in the future). To boot, you can convert these browser-based apps to offline desktop apps with about 30 minutes of work, and an Apollo redistributable.
Nothing has been this big of a threat to the desktop monopoly since Java. And Adobe has the gumption, power, and pocketbook to follow through. This is the source of the recent interest in Flash 9 on Linux. They don't care whether Linux users can view pretty animations, they care whether Linux users accept Flex, and being given access to Flex is the first step toward acceptance. They are also courting the open source community more and more (notice that the Flash Remoting spec was recently opened, which is actually a pretty big deal since it enables features that only they are able to deliver today), realizing I think that a lot of these Linux geeks are also IT decision makers.
Adobe is working on a version of Photoshop for the web, which from what I understand will be a combination of HTML/Ajax, Flex, and server-side processing. They are bringing levels of desktop functionality to the browser never before possible, and it has Microsoft bricking in their pants.
Over the coming months, expect to see Microsoft cramming Silverlight down your and anyone else's throat as rigorously as they are able to. It will be hidden in Windows Update files, it will be required to do various things on the Microsoft website, it will be bundled with software. They will make many applications in Silverlight which are better suited to other existing technologies (for example, the Microsoft website!!), because they want to make it as mandatory as they can without hitting anti-trust legislation.
Re:They're already spamming us (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point. People on /. should stop trying to talk about how great Linux and MacOSX are. I mean, if they were so great they would be dominant already.
New products always need advertising. But what I'm really curious about is how is Silverlight not great? I haven't examined the issue yet (I thought it was still in Beta, so I don't consider their advertising excessibe), but you obviously have carefully weighted all the pros and cons, so I'm interested in your view. Or maybe your logic was "Boo, hiss, MS is the devil."
Re:They're already spamming us (Score:5, Insightful)
It's Not Great for the same reason Flash is Not Great: it almost always results in a worse user interface than using normal
For the developer the site is The Thing. It's important that the site has clean code, looks cool, and is easy to maintain. Maybe Silverlight makes that possible.
For the user the site is likely just one stop on a journey tied together by a web search. It's important that the site behaves similarly to all others in certain respects: that the browser's navigation facilities work, that the browser's text search works, that input behavior for these are the same as on all other pages (keeping in mind that key bindings, mouse bindings, context menus, etc. vary from browser to browser and user to user). Flash breaks this, and if Silverlight doesn't do the same I'll be shocked.
For the developer it's tempting to think the site is a book to be read from start to finish. But users are more likely to look in the index, tear out a few pages, and glue them into collages of their own creation. The developer can use the introductory chapters to lay out unusual notational conventions that will apply throughout the text but the user, not having read from the beginning, is only confused to see them used in the middle. If you're tempted to cry and bitch about this as a developer, get over yourself: users have more important things to do in life than figure out this super cool new interface to your web site.
A big part of the reason the web took off is that its limited facilities for UI design forced sites to mostly follow the same conventions. If you want to do something better, more complicated, something that people have to learn, then write a damn desktop app.
(Yes, there are useful and good things that can be done by embedding Flash/Java in web pages. Nifty videos and games, no-install VNC and ssh clients... as long as they stay self-contained and aren't part of the page's navigation or textual information presentation, knock yourself out).
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft wants to make HTML irrelevant (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft plans to use its website to push Silverlight technology adoption.
I remember when MSDN and other Microsoft sites were available only with IE. This was bad for who worked on Linux or used Netscape/Firefox but had to support Windows hosts. They finally changed their sites to be standard compliant (or at least, closer to that).
Now that they're losing market to Firefox and they're having to go standards compliant on HTML, they'll try to push a "better" technology to try to make HTML irrelevant and keep their monopoly.
If you look at it, OOXML is just the same, its integration with Sharepoint is another try to make HTML irrelevant and keep their monopoly on the web.
In the end, it doesn't matter if Silverlight is cross-platform and supported, because Microsoft will always own the format, lead its development, and introduce new incompatible features. Everyone will have to keep following them forever, not to mention that probably they'll start adding patented features or DRM. They've been doing this with every program and file format they have.
Firefox... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait... it does. Just kidding - still not interested.
Re:Firefox... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it doesn't work in Firefox, I'm not interested.
I will add, if it does not work with Firefox/Linux, not interested.
Re:Firefox... (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably 0....
So in other words they don't care about your situation because most likely you are not going to visit it. Makes completely logical sense actually.
Not that I think their strategy is great...
Re:Firefox... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Firefox... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure if I just give them this one more chance, they'll be fine, just this last chance, this is going to be the one that works out... I know it, I just know it.
Re:Firefox... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wether Microsoft likes or not, the world isn't all Windows anymore; and no, running on Windows and OS X is only 'technically' cross-platform. HTML/Javascript/Ajax IS cross-platform. I do a lot of my surfing on my iPhone, many people now do that on their PS3, or using mobile Opera. Make technology that doesn't work on all mobile platforms at your own peril, IMHO.
Re:Firefox... (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, it's a problem. I rarely run Windows myself, and pretty much never use IE. However, I support both Windows XP desktops and Windows 2003 servers, so I often have to use Microsoft's Knowledge Base. The KB already breaks a little in non-IE browsers (which is insanely stupid), but if they put it in Silverlight, it will become inaccessible to me.
I think this is a shitty thing to do to your customers. They're going to punish me for using some of their products but not all of their products. Since I'm not going to use all of their products, this is exactly the sort of move that makes me want to get rid of them entirely, and run a completely Linux/OSX office.
Re:Firefox... (Score:4, Insightful)
I will add, if it does not work with Firefox/Linux, not interested.
For those interested in Linux/Silverlight info, the Linux version is called "Moonlight" [novell.com] and is being developed by Novell with Microsoft's help.
Re:Firefox... (Score:4, Insightful)
Opera... (Score:4, Informative)
Not interested.
Earlier this year? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
The semi platform independence of Flash is actually pretty good. It's available on the Nokia N810 which runs Linux and has an ARM CPU. Not exactly a PC-like device.
And that's without mentioning the open source implementations.
So, Microsoft, please provide a very compatible, well supported implementation of Silverlight on the Nokia N810 and a couple of other similar devices and we will consider it. If not, why bother? Flash is ubiquitous, works well and is becoming less proprietary every year if I believe the news.
News flash! (Score:5, Interesting)
Film at 11.
Seriously? Wouldn't it be a bit more suspect if the *didn't* use it?
Re:News flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about them using it themselves.
It's about them leveraging an existing product to force the adoption of a new product.
Re:News flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
This [adobe.com] site doesn't force me to use Flash.
Re:News flash! (Score:5, Informative)
I have a Panasonic camera. They could have developed a proprietary memory format like Sony did, but it uses plain old cheap SD cards.
They could have made the lens threads a weird size so they could sell their own teleconverters and filters, but it's plain old 55mm, and people have quite happily screwed Olympus, Nikon, Minolta, etc. stuff onto them.
Some companies do just make useful stuff and sell it, but they're not the ones that make the news as often, since they mostly stay out of the spotlight and just sit around making stuff and money.
In the computer world, Logitech is sort of like this. They've not tried to integrate their speakers with their mice (Microsoft would find a way to do this!), and instead just try to make useful products that stand on their own merit.
Re:News flash! (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, this will only effect me when someone points out something stupid Microsoft did on their sight and I get to check it out for a good laugh. Those who are Windows users are mostly clueless of how they are being manipulated and attempts to open their eyes regarding this is pretty useless. But I still try every now and then.
LoB
MSDN Library (Score:4, Insightful)
If it wasn't required to visit windowsupdate.com, it would be the nail in IE's coffin.
Let's make MS Help EVEN Worse (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, Microsoft help is already terrible enough. MSDN right now is such a mishmash, that, when I took the survey to improve MSDN, the survey itself crashed. Like, I don't even bother with Microsoft.com anymore, or msdn.microsoft.com. They broke F1 == Help in Visual Studio... what more incompetence do you need?
Re:Let's make MS Help EVEN Worse (Score:5, Funny)
And yes, I'm completely aware of the irony.
WARNING: Incredibly Morose Statement Following (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WARNING: Incredibly Morose Statement Following (Score:4, Funny)
Silver Light is actually pretty damn cool (Score:5, Interesting)
-Rick
Re:Silver Light is actually pretty damn cool (Score:5, Informative)
Hi, to get the best user experience from this product, you need to install the
I know, I've just been doing that on the new server, getting it ready... 300 MB of download and 3 reboots (that's no counting the rest of the windows updates I needed to get).
Note that the runtimes are optional components in WU, so many of your potential customers will not have the latest and greatest versions (which, naturally, will be required) including those customers running Vista.
Re:Silver Light is actually pretty damn cool (Score:4, Informative)
on MS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#Standardization_and_licensing [wikipedia.org]
Google search for these components and MS Silverlight showing ties between them:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=silverlight+%22Windows+Forms%22+%22ADO.NET%22+%22ASP.NET%22 [google.com]
LoB
The real value of Silverlight (Score:5, Insightful)
History repeating (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when Netscape introduced frames, they changed the netscape.com website to use them. It lasted a few months, then they realised how silly they were and changed their website back.
Silverlight may be good for embedded applets and for applications, but it's ludicrous to use it for an entire website. I expect that Microsoft will shortly figure this out.
Re:History repeating (Score:5, Insightful)
At that point you can't even call it a website any more; it's just a graphical .NET application that happens to be delivered over HTTP.
And yes, the same is absolutely true for pure-Flash websites, too. But this is made slightly less onerous because Adobe provides versions of the Flash plugin for Linux and OS X that are ostensibly on par with the Windows version, and Adobe doesn't lock you into a single platform for developing Flash apps -- unlike Microsoft, Adobe's end game is not to create a sea of de-facto "standard" applications for which the company's own operating system is the best, or only, choice.
Keeps crashing. I have pulled it. (Score:5, Informative)
Bullet Point Three (Score:4, Insightful)
That bit, the third numbered bullet, is what matters. They aren't doing something special, they are just forcing their technology on others because they can. Now I'm kind of interested in seeing what happens, because frankly I think MS's current site is a mess (I can never find what I'm looking for). But if they are going to push something like this they should go all out and demonstrate what it can do, not just use it in place of JavaScript (which they tried to replace with VBScript and failed) and AJAX (which they invented, to a degree).
Yeah but (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WTF is Silverlight? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, wait...
search engine issues? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know about anyone else but I use Google to find KB articles.
More anti-competitive behavior? (Score:3, Interesting)
Desperate? (Score:4, Insightful)
Come on... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just about as ridiculous as it gets. Let's at least get 'facts' out of the way.
Face #1, The final version of Silverlight 1.0 was released just a couple of months ago. Even the designers (Blend, etc) haven't had full final version native support for over a month. Do you really think MS is 'desperate' that in a month or two every web site in the world hasn't converted?
Fact #2, MS already has a large following of providers preparing and starting stream and video based web video content sites based on Silverlight. Since it can do things like flip channels as fast a TV, etc companies looking to provide multi-stream content are going with Silverlight as it is the only viable solution - let alone the only multi-platform solution.
Fact #3, a majority of Video pushed over the web is already in VC1/WMV format, yes this sounds strange with all the flash/Tube sites, but Windows Media is still either at the very top or close. Silverlight natively uses the same content, so for any site using WMV content already, they will flip to silverlight, as it will increase their user base.
Fact #4, Silverlight is about a 2mb download, I see posts where people seem to think this is a big issue, are these people still using 2400baud modems?
Fact #5, The major version of SilverLight is Version 1.1, and can be downloaded by developers/end users. Version 1.1 is the major version as 1.0 is only the graphical and video portion of the technology with limited UI abilities. (1.0 is the basic drawing and compatibility layers, and MS doesn't expect most people to consider Silverlight until 1.1, that is why the 'standard developer version they offer is 1.1, not 1.0) Silverlight 1.1 adds in the UI basic interface technologies like simple control events, additional hit testing, etc. Without 1.1.
The Microsoft Download site has been Silverlight based for a few weeks, but it is a conceptual site, and it is demonstrated to developers of multiple page content areas can interact beyond a single SilverLight Control.
Fact #6, a Silverlight based Website does not mean the entire page is based on Silverlight or the page is shown in only one Silverlight control like Flash based web design is. Silverlight is light enough that each Image element can be replaced with a Silverlight Object instead, and when needed, Silverlight Objects can use standard client/server scripting for communication and functionality between the Objects.
It would be easier to think of Silverlight like a 'fancy' image object that can be scripted, take events, and talk to the client/server and other image objects on the page. This is what makes silverlight ahead of Flash, even before v1.1 is released.
Now with facts out of the way, this makes a freaking difference in the OSS world how? One proprietary company/product is competing against another that is just as nefarious, and they are BOTH winning against ALL OSS solutions.
Maybe OSS should actually be pushing for Silvelight to win, as you can at least create Silverlight content in notepad for free, and aren't forced to buy a massive Adobe illustration package just to put a few pretty buttons or videos on your site.
Back to the anti-Microsoft goose-stepping...
Even MS partners dislike Silverlight (Score:4, Informative)
It was very enlightening. They left me with the one final note that, in a year, their opinion may change as Silverlight matures. But based on the examples they gave me, there's just no reason for anyone to ever adopt Silverlight.
Going into the political aspects here... this is exactly what Microsoft does well - they clone something, pay people to adopt it, and use their gigantic Windows Update distribution system to put it on 90% of the desktops around the world. Flash's days will be numbered when we get to the point where Microsoft starts to introduce Flash compatibility. That's the embreace-extend-extingush approach, and we should run for the hills when that happens. It's too bad that Microsoft can't just compete by using the open standard instead of flooding the market with an incompatible clone and cramming it down people's throats.
Enough is enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, Microsoft is only changing their download area to use Silverlight. In other words, surprise surprise - a kdawson article that is simply false. It's amazing, I know.
Isn't that a Flamewar Title? (Score:3, Insightful)