Microsoft Prefers Flash To Silverlight

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.'"

re-development cost

It's a bit of a no-brainer - MS still has to pay for development somehow. They have existing flash code and developers, why would they re-write and re-train?

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

It's a bit of a no-brainer - MS still has to pay for development somehow. They have existing flash code and developers, why would they re-write and re-train?

That, and the fact that Silverlight won't run on their developers' Ubuntu boxen. The top of the pyramid may be crap, but the bottom is still pretty sharp from what I understand.

Re:re-development cost

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?

Meh

Seems more like they're taking their time on this one. More than likely, they'll wait long enough to include it as a default update push and once its ubiquitous on their platform THEN go ahead with changing across their sites. Of course, they'd have to be careful to avoid another anti-trust row.

The last thing they want is people going "wtf, microsofts site is broken!" because they don't realize its silverlight.

Re:Meh

The last thing they want is people going "wtf, microsofts site is broken!"

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!

Maybe they're waiting for SP2

I know I would...

the obvious

Microsoft Prefers Flash To Silverlight

Who doesn't?

JavaFX.com is Java-free

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....

I'm pretty sure I read that Microsoft is in the middle of migrating over to Silverlight for most of their sites, since it is one of their biggest platforms for promoting and getting people to install it. I think the same article said the Olympics site was also going to be a big showcase for Silverlight.

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

"Microsoft still has not adopted Silverlight, and uses Flash all over it's 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."

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

IMO, Adobe is actively against MS. Acrobat is still not fully Vista compatible. Flash crashes my IE7 daily, and there are no x64 plans that I know of (they made a vague announcement a long time ago).

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

uhhh.... news flash, there is an OS X and Linux runtime.

Re:Silverlight is insignificant

uhhh.... news flash, there is an OS X and Linux runtime.

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.

Re:Silverlight is insignificant

And as wikipedia says: "but as a lot of work still needs to be done[7], no firm date has yet been given on the Moonlight website."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_(runtime)#cite_note-status-6 [wikipedia.org]

Re:Silverlight is insignificant

The SWF format isn't open.

It IS open.

On May 1, 2008, as part of its Open Screen Project, Adobe dropped all restrictions on the SWF and FLV formats.

Re:Silverlight is insignificant

Newsflash: getting silverlight (moonlight) to actually install on Linux takes a team of experts, and even if you manage that it'll fail on most pages. It's no more accurate to say that there's a silverlight for linux than it is to say that all windows programs run in linux thanks to wine.

Re:Silverlight is insignificant

Perhaps someone can illustrate to me why I'm wrong and it really is good for application development and I'm just missing something every time I come to look it it (perhaps because the books and documentation are almost all aimed at animators+designers, not developers?).

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.

Re:Silverlight is insignificant

>

That's why Microsoft is introducing Silverlight. Flash is threatening to become an OS-independent application platform which could make Windows irrelevant.

I have a feeling people said the same thing about Java, and it hasn't exactly made Windows irrelevant. What makes you think Flash will be more successful than Java?

Re:Silverlight is insignificant

Basically though, I think Flash has just gone too far down the wrong route, as application development in it seems like a hack. Perhaps someone can illustrate to me why I'm wrong and it really is good for application development and I'm just missing something every time I come to look it it (perhaps because the books and documentation are almost all aimed at animators+designers, not developers?).

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.

It's the sloppiness + the abusiveness.

The problem is not that Microsoft is trying to introduce a new technology. The problem is that Microsoft is extremely adversarial toward customers, sometimes, in my opinion. For example, Microsoft will soon begin FORCING people to install Silverlight if they want to download files from microsoft.com/downloads/ [microsoft.com].

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.

Re:Silverlight is insignificant

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

Re:Why not 3D for the web?

Silverlight will have 3D eventually. The biggest problem to get around is supporting hardware acceleration equally across the targeted platforms.

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 .NET runtime with relevant APIs and zero fat. The install footprint is a little over 4megs and thats not likely to change much until version.next.

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

This story is idiotic.

I am going to come right out and say, whoever posted this story was an idiot. (notice they posted it anon..)

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.

Re:This story is idiotic.

Don't expect them to adopt some new technology like silverlight on every single public site they posess in a heartbeat

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".

Re:This story is idiotic.

Why is that if Adobe has a monopoly on a web item that in the end will be monstrously profitable that it's perfectly ok? If Microsoft wants to move in and give them competition it's a mortal sin. Slashdot really is starting to lose it's credibility lately, it seems like every article in the past 2 weeks has been completely and utterly anti-Microsoft. I know people here have a bias against the company, but it's gotten especially bad lately, almost every comment has been likewise...I guess you have to appeal to your audience even if it loses you credibility...it's the Fox News mantra.