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Microsoft Prefers Flash To Silverlight
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sat May 10, 2008 10:39 AM
from the recoding-takes-time dept.
from the recoding-takes-time dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft still has not adopted Silverlight, and uses Flash all over its websites. 'Despite all the controversy over Microsoft using Silverlight to take over the rich internet market from Adobe Flash, the software giant seems to be not even trying. In fact, even most Microsoft web sites are using Flash instead of Silverlight.'"
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Firehose:Microsoft Prefers Flash to Silverlight by Anonymous Coward
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Miguel talks mainly about Mono 2.0 and .Net 3.5 compatibility, enhancing the collaboration with Microsoft over Silverlight ('Moonlight' in Mono), and the larger political situation of Mono and Moonlight. When the interviewer asks whether Moonlight is only validating Silverlight on the web, Miguel gives a quite detailed answer that includes a possibly well-deserved swipe at Mozilla ..."
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re-development cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Give it some time before making these stupid accusations. Just because they themselves have existing code and developers doesn't mean they are suggesting new development elsewhere shouldn't use the technology and be "ahead of the curve". I'm not saying silverlight is better - just that MS's lack of use of it doesn't suggest anything at this point in time.
Re:re-development cost (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:re-development cost (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't realize that Microsoft still had developers. I sort of thought that Vista and Office 2007 demonstrated that all the developers had exercised their stock options and gone on to more interesting projects with Google, IBM, and Yahoo.
Um, wasn't that what the Yahoo deal was really all about? Ballmer trying to reclaim some of his developers developers developers?
Parent
Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
The last thing they want is people going "wtf, microsofts site is broken!" because they don't realize its silverlight.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, because Microsoft products are so insanely reliable, so robust, so rock-solid, that Microsoft could in no way afford to create the perception that perhaps something of theirs is broken. It would ruin them, I tell you!
Parent
Maybe they're waiting for SP2 (Score:5, Funny)
the obvious (Score:5, Funny)
JavaFX.com is Java-free (Score:5, Informative)
JavaFX.com [javafx.com] uses JavaScript and QuickTime to promote the benefits of JavaFX. No JVM needed.
(Of course, you still have to visit the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] for an introduction in context.)
It's only a matter of time.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to admit, some of the Silverlight sites I've seen so far have actually been kind of cool - the one that sticks out to me is the Hard Rock Memorabilia site at http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/ [hardrock.com]
Perfect Slashdot Article (Score:5, Insightful)
A perfect blurb for Slashdot. Bashes Microsoft. Claims competition is a "controversy." Mixes up pronouns. Makes up impressive sounding terminology like "the rich internet market." Shocked that different parts of a megacorporation uses different toolsets. Has no clue or firmly ignores that management of Microsoft departments are as segmented as possible for profit reasons, antitrust reasons and at the demand of the marketplace. Even gets the Microsoft-haters like me to go WTF?! and post a reply, driving up page hits.
Adobe is Poised to Lose It (Score:5, Interesting)
Silverlight works just fine on my web site and doesn't crash anything. MS is pushing a lot of content providers to try Silverlight, so the install base should go up this summer.
MS lost its edge in the OS war through complacency and slow roll-out performance. I see Adobe doing the same with Flash.
Re:Silverlight is insignificant (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Silverlight is insignificant (Score:4, Insightful)
Forgive me, I will wait until the FOSS community gets a chance to vet the code first. In the mean time, as the title says, Silverlight is insignificant and irrelevant.
Parent
Re:Silverlight is insignificant (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_(runtime)#cite_note-status-6 [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:Silverlight is insignificant (Score:5, Informative)
It IS open.
On May 1, 2008, as part of its Open Screen Project, Adobe dropped all restrictions on the SWF and FLV formats.
Parent
Re:Silverlight is insignificant (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Silverlight is insignificant (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, you're wrong.
It's a shame you spent so much effort writing all that and none on Googling, because there is plenty of information out there.
Adobe's own application platform for Flash is Flex [adobe.com]. OpenLaszlo [openlaszlo.org] is an open-source XML based programming language for developing apps in SWF. Flash itself also has a substantial component collection for app development, and finally, there are dozens of third-party ActionScript IDEs and compliers available.
That's why Microsoft is introducing Silverlight. Flash is threatening to become an OS-independent application platform which could make Windows irrelevant.
Parent
Re:Silverlight is insignificant (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why Microsoft is introducing Silverlight. Flash is threatening to become an OS-independent application platform which could make Windows irrelevant.
Parent
Re:Silverlight is insignificant (Score:5, Informative)
You're indeed missing something, because you're looking at the wrong product. Adobe's product for developing web applications for the flash player is called flex. Go take a look at some flex books (for flex 2 or 3), and be enlightened.
In my opinion flex can go toe-to-toe with any client-side web dev platform, be it silverlight, java client, java/gwt, extjs, or whatever.
Actionscript 3 is modern language that encourages good development practices. The flex framework is complete, fast, light, easy to extend, and easy to work with. And mxml, flex's xaml-equivalent, well, just check it out, it's really nice.
I see it as quite opposite. Silverlight doesn't offer a compelling featureset to lure people away from flash/flex. It doesn't do anything development-wise that might tempt flex developers, and it cannot integrate animators and designers as good as the flash / flex combination can.
Parent
It's the sloppiness + the abusiveness. (Score:5, Insightful)
At least the first 2 versions of Microsoft products usually have very severe bugs. For example, Windows XP and Windows XP SP1, and Windows Vista and Windows Vista SP1 were or are full of grief for administrators.
Customers don't want to be beta testers for Microsoft, any longer.
After Microsoft has forced a significant number of its less knowledgeable users to install Silverlight, Microsoft salesmen will begin talking about "significant market share", if the past is any guide.
"I think Flash has just gone too far down the wrong route, as application development in it seems like a hack." My experience with Macromedia is that it was always a sloppy company. Unforunately, Adobe management seems to be malfunctioning recently.
Parent
Re:Silverlight is insignificant (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess you never heard of Netscape?>
MS will simply work on the technology until they are ready to push it out as part of IE. Then, one update, it goes live to all of the IE users they can push it to. They already have critical mass, they only have to flip that switch. You have to remember MS does not move on a dime. They are slower and more methodical in their market take overs. They have time and money on their side. And they normally get what they want.
They will probably have all (or most) of their websites with a silverlight version running before they flip that switch. Then, they will push it out and the new experience will start. But, they will want that experience to be noticeably *better* before they do it.
InnerWeb
Parent
Re:Why not 3D for the web? (Score:5, Interesting)
I spoke with one of the devs working on SL, and he told me the issue is gaining access to the accelerated rendering devices. Most if not all browsers don't let plugins create a 3d surface (Maybe you can do this with ActiveX in IE *shrug*), so it'll involve a fair amount of hackery to get this working uniformly on all their targeted platforms. There are some interesting features planned post 2.0, but thats for Microsoft to divulge when they're ready.
It's interesting (but not surprising) that noone here pointed out that flash is far superior to silverlight 1.0 and 1.0 is the only version that allows sites to go live to end users.
For those who don't know, 1.0 is essentially a 2d-and-video compositor with a relatively nice API, but programable only using javascript, which depending on what you're doing can get really slow really fast.
Actionscript is much faster than javascript, and with flex is much easier to use imo. But (again imo) C# trumps both.
Silverlight 2.0 is in beta, with beta 2 coming sometime soon, and that's the tech most MS/C# web developers are interested in using. A cut down
If java applets were seemless with a 4meg footprint that installs in 20 seconds, it would've stolen the application programming market long ago. Flash has steadily gotten better instead, but again, I think C# is better
Flame on.
-DS
Parent
This story is idiotic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is a huge company with dozens of divisions, and thousands of teams. Development cycles for a company like this can last years. Don't expect them to adopt some new technology like silverlight on every single public site they posess in a heartbeat.
Moreover, just suggesting that they would re-write an existing portal (that may not even really need SL technology) simply because a new technology came out makes no sense. Programmer time is expensive, so what business justification do you have spending money to rebuild a portal that is functioning just fine in the first place?
MS does stupid shit that they deserver to be bashed for, such as the whole Open XML fiasco. Posting stories like this just destroys the sites credibility, and makes look like you engage in mindless MS bashing, rather than really looking at issues that are critical to tech savy people.
Parent
Re:This story is idiotic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainely not. But between your figure and no exposure at all (almost), there is some room, and it looks odd that did not really start some sort of significant promotion for their technology (unless I missed it).
Moreover, just suggesting that they would re-write an existing portal (that may not even really need SL technology) simply because a new technology came out makes no sense
They did that "non-sense" (in a technical point of view) in the past. Just look at the hotmail migration (attempt) on windows server for example. If you want your technology to get exposure, you need to show it in action on realife applications. Microsoft has the horsepower to do that sort of things very quickly and deeply, to the contrary of many others.
It looks strange to me because I've little doubt that the client-rich application's future is closer to FLEX/SL than the present web "standards".
Parent
Re:This story is idiotic. (Score:5, Insightful)
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