Microsoft releases "Silverlight" to compete Flash

The real problem is for the end user who has to deal with this mess and install countless codecs, plug-ins and updates to codecs and plug-ins in order to access the content.

Ever heard of FFDSHOW?
 
What? 2? What else is seriously competing with Flash? I'd much rather have 2 products in the field than have one go on unchallenged for years.

I'm sure they'll all be pleased to know that they can just deal with it.

You just don't get it do you? What is the point of having two or more "standards" (or more accurately non-standards since they are mutually incompatible) to do the same thing? As an end user would you like two standards for HTML, one for Microsoft and one for other OSes and having to switch between the two in order to access Internet content. What is required is a single open royalty free multi-vendor standard like W3C compliant HTML from IETF.

This would add 1 installation, if I understand it correctly. Silverlight would have to be installed, but after that, it would use all the existing codecs, formats, etc. that other technologies use. I don't understand how 1 more than what we have today is "countless." It's not like you have to install WMV for each program that uses it.

Are you suggesting that Silverlight will be compatible with Flash which is the major format at the moment and currently gaining market share over WMV and MOV formats? I don't think so. Are you suggesting that Silverlight will be available on other platforms? Pretty unlikely considering Microsoft's current activities which got it fined $1 billion in Europe.

From the customer point of view the scenarios are as follows:

Open fully documented multi-vendor royalty and restriction free format available from many independent vendors - Best scenario

Adobe Flash, a single vendor, proprietary, OS neutral format - Bad scenario

Market split between Adobe Flash and MS Silverlight, a proprietary, single vendor, single OS format - Worse scenario

Market monopolised by MS Silverlight, a proprietary, single vendor, single OS format - Worst possible scenario
 
SPM, since when did Silverlight turn to "single OS"? It's for Windowses and Mac OS X's atm, that's already more than one [wink]
And as stated already in this thread, some people are already working on Linux version of Silverlight even though it's not 100% sure yet that MS wouldn't release one themselves.
 
Flash has >95% penetration, Javascript close to 100%. No one seriously launching a B2C venture is going to opt for Silverlight and hope users will install it. This is is dead on arrival. .NET isn't really a success either if you measure it against J2EE deployments, or LAMP.
 
SPM, since when did Silverlight turn to "single OS"? It's for Windowses and Mac OS X's atm, that's already more than one [wink]

As soon as Microsoft perceives Mac as a threat to Windows monopoly. At the moment it sees Linux as the main threat, presumably because it runs on the same comodity hardware as Windows.

And as stated already in this thread, some people are already working on Linux version of Silverlight even though it's not 100% sure yet that MS wouldn't release one themselves.

Reverse engineering it? That will be a couple of versions behind Microsoft's version and incompatible with most sites which will run the latest version of Silverlight - just as Microsoft wants. In addition if the open source version becomes too good, Microsoft no doubt has patents on Silverlight "technology" and can shut it down quite easily.

Compare Silverlight with Flash which can run on Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris and HP_UX. No contest for which is multi-OS.
 
Like to see what Silverlight is capable of?

A company called Metaliq created a sample video edition application that runs as a silverlight application (i.e. as a browser application using the silverlight plugin).

Video can be found here. Very, very cool stuff. The sample was reportedly created in just a month.

Now try putting together something like this with Flash. Good luck. :devilish:
 
You just don't get it do you? What is the point of having two or more "standards" (or more accurately non-standards since they are mutually incompatible) to do the same thing?
We already have one "standard" in Flash. This would be a competitor, so it would be adding 1.

As an end user would you like two standards for HTML, one for Microsoft and one for other OSes and having to switch between the two in order to access Internet content.
As an end user, I would get both (if available). Both would be in-browser, so I have no switching to do. Why is this an issue at all?

What is required is a single open royalty free multi-vendor standard like W3C compliant HTML from IETF.
That would take years, if it ever happened, would likely not offer all functionality and would suffer from variable implementation anyway.

Are you suggesting that Silverlight will be compatible with Flash which is the major format at the moment and currently gaining market share over WMV and MOV formats? I don't think so.
I don't know how Flash streams video. If it is layered on top of existing codecs, this is a non-issue as Silverlight will do the same. If it's based on a proprietary Adobe codec, why are you not flaming Adobe for creating their own standard? At least Silverlight is not doing that.

Are you suggesting that Silverlight will be available on other platforms?
That has nothing to do with what I said.

From the customer point of view the scenarios are as follows:

Open fully documented multi-vendor royalty and restriction free format available from many independent vendors - Best scenario

Adobe Flash, a single vendor, proprietary, OS neutral format - Bad scenario

Market split between Adobe Flash and MS Silverlight, a proprietary, single vendor, single OS format - Worse scenario

Market monopolised by MS Silverlight, a proprietary, single vendor, single OS format - Worst possible scenario
From the consumer point of view, there's basically no difference between your best and bad scenarios. Consumers don't give a rip who designed, implemented, etc. what they're using. They just want it to work, and it already does that.

Also, each consumer is likely to only have one platform. So if Silverlight is available on his platform, a market split is ineffectual since he'll just install whatever he wants just like he installs Google apps, toolbars, Flash, etc. If Silverlight is not available on his platform, he doesn't care because he has no choice.

A market dominated by Silverlight is so far out that there's no need to hypothesize about it.

Another good outcome would be if Adobe saw Silverlight or Gash as such a threat that they released it as an ISO standard like they did PDF, or GPLed it like Sun did for Java. The latter is unlikely though because Flash is pretty strong now with Google, Youtube and a lot of others using it and I doubt if Silverlight will have much of an impact soon.
Silverlight is a solution to a much bigger problem set than Flash. It's unlikely that any other company can hit the same problem set. That is, IMO, its biggest strength and I hope it improves the technology we use whether it be directly or indirectly.
 
Remember: COMPETITION IS GOOD!

Who cares if Silverlight is a complete failure? It's competition to Flash so if it causes Adobe to make Flash better, it's a good thing it's here.
 
I love it.
Because it's microsoft people assumes the worst and don't actually read up about the format.

Sheesh.




Thinking about it...
Being able to write cross platform applications that run at native-code speed, in a website, without an ugly control box, having hardware accelerated UI capable of 3d, and proper scalable vector graphics, one of the best video codecs out there, the .net framework with its class library and security, the HD photo image format (I'm pretty sure), all written and in your choice of language in visual studio or whatever ide.
Yeah. Competition is terrible! :p
 
I love it.
Because it's microsoft people assumes the worst and don't actually read up about the format.

There are multiple elements to this I think. Some people just hate Microsoft full stop end of story...

Being able to write cross platform applications that run at native-code speed,
... others are just worried about whether this will actually come true in the fullest sense of the term "cross-platform". I run Windows, OS X and Linux, what are my chances of getting the same experience under all of them (running Firefox...)? Will MS be releasing the relevant code and/or documentation to allow a decent Linux implementation on a decent timescale? Or even release a Linux version itself? How rapidly is the Silverlight spec going to evolve? Will the Mac version keep up with this evolution? Or will it "keep up" like Office for Mac keeps up? These are just unanswered questions IMO.

I'm no lover of Flash, given what it does to my browser on regular occasions (on all three platforms). I'm not that fussed about having to installed two plugins instead of one (so long as it's just a few clicks). I'm more fussed about plain end-user aggro when trying to navigate sites on the platform of my choice. Flash "works" on all three, anything less is a retrograde step to me. If it works, fully, cleanly and without trauma on all three platforms, bravo Microsoft well done have a cookie. If not, well then it hasn't really advanced consumer choice very much, has it?!
 
Thinking about it...
Being able to write cross platform applications that run at native-code speed, in a website, without an ugly control box, having hardware accelerated UI capable of 3d, and proper scalable vector graphics, one of the best video codecs out there, the .net framework with its class library and security, the HD photo image format (I'm pretty sure), all written and in your choice of language in visual studio or whatever ide.
Yeah. Competition is terrible! :p


People have been able to do this for years with Java. Java has superior execution performance compared to .NET as shown on various benchmarks like SciMark and LINPACK, Java's native graphics canvas 'Java2d' has been much more capable than Windows for over a decade and delivered cross platform capability. It is for this reason that most SVG implementations are in Java. WPF may have caught up, even surpassed J2D in some cases, but the reality is, Flash is 'good enough' and has reached a level of resource requirements vs capability that is the sweet spot for what most people need.

The cross-platform IDE market for .NET solutions pales in comparison to Java. Leaving aside the fact that Visual Studio sucks ass compared to IDE's like IntelliJ and Eclipse, you've got IntelliJ, Eclipse, NetBeans, JDeveloper, providing top-tier better-than-Visual-Studio capability for Java development on Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD, Solaris, even AIX and HP-UX. Microsoft simply isn't going to win in a cross platform war. Linux users will shun them. OSX users will virtually ignore them.

Also, the memory and download footprint of both Java and .NET disuades web developers from using it. Flash got huge uptake in the market because of tiny resource requirements, and it is for this reason, that Silverlight will fail just like Java Applets failed.

If there's even going to be any competitor to flash, it's going to be in the form of Javascript + JIT (ala Firefox/Flash JIT) plus a high performance SVG and SMIL implementation. If someone produces a small, fast, SVG+SMIL plugin for IE, and Firefox 3.0 reaches adequate performance, you might see update on SVG installations, and UIs start to use SVG elements.

As a guide, look at uptake in the browser <CANVAS> and XMLHttpRequest features. The latter has huge penetration now, and the former is being actively by many, even Google.

The key driving force for getting Web developers to adopt features is to deliver small, simple pieces of functionality, not huge megalithic platforms.

Microsoft is a massive failure on the internet, a distant third despite huge spending volumes, and continues to fail to capture the hearts and minds of web developers and even web users, and the reason is, Microsoft's culture still doesn't "get" it.
 
As a guide, look at uptake in the browser <CANVAS> and XMLHttpRequest features. The latter has huge penetration now, and the former is being actively by many, even Google.

The key driving force for getting Web developers to adopt features is to deliver small, simple pieces of functionality, not huge megalithic platforms.

Microsoft is a massive failure on the internet, a distant third despite huge spending volumes, and continues to fail to capture the hearts and minds of web developers and even web users, and the reason is, Microsoft's culture still doesn't "get" it.

I think your are under valuing Microsoft's impact on the internet. XMLHttpRequest was developed by Microsoft in IE5. In addition Microsofts implementation of DHTML in IE4 was significantly better than Netscapes and is significantly closer to the standard. If it weren't for Microsoft's developements where would we be today? Of course Microsoft still has the majority browser share. New technologies will not get used if they are not supported by IE... and of course XMLHttpRequest has been in IE the longest so it's no surprise that it's being used. Obviously sometimes they do "get" it.
 
XMLHttpRequest was a failure until Google adopted it. Prior to Google, about the only 'widely deployed' use of it was Microsoft's Outlook Web Access. Prior to XMLHttpRequest, people just used hidden iframes, JSON, applets, or Flash bridge, or other tricks. XMLHttpRequest is in fact, ratherly poorly designed, which renders it largely useless for mashups and many sophisticated cross domain deployments, which is why most of the major portals are introducing JSON versions.

If it hadn't been for Google, most likely XMLHttpRequest would have never made it. It's true that Netscape Navigator 4 was terrible and IE4 DHTML was a step ahead. But since IE4/5, Microsoft has done nothing to advance the state of affairs.

Their CSS is broken, they still don't implement huge swaths of CSS1 and CSS2. They avoided SVG, SMIL, XForms, and every other W3C effort to create cross browser standards, except to stall and sabotage the working groups. (I speak as someone who sat on the XHTML, CSS, XForms WGs)

So today, we have Safari, Opera, Firefox, and several smaller players, implementing less buggy, standards compliant CSS, XHTML, and newer technologies like SVG, <CANVAS>, etc.

And what has Microsoft done in IE7? Almost nothing. They don't support <CANVAS>, SVG, (only crappy VML), CSS2, and don't even fully support DOM Level2.

So from that sense, they don't "get it" Web Developers don't want proprietary solutions. They want Microsoft to get on board, fix their piece of shit browser, and stop making life hard for people.

But if you want to count XMLHttpRequest as their one success, go ahead. Meanwhile, I'm counting all their numerous failures, Blackbird, AFC, WFC, and now, crossplatform WPF (what a joke)
 
Like to see what Silverlight is capable of?

A company called Metaliq created a sample video edition application that runs as a silverlight application (i.e. as a browser application using the silverlight plugin).

Video can be found here. Very, very cool stuff. The sample was reportedly created in just a month.

Now try putting together something like this with Flash. Good luck. :devilish:
:oops: Wow, that was a pretty good video. Before seeing it, I didn't think SL had a chance, not anymore. It might take a while to break Flash's grip, but its quite possible.

epic
 
Flash has >95% penetration, Javascript close to 100%. No one seriously launching a B2C venture is going to opt for Silverlight and hope users will install it. This is is dead on arrival. .NET isn't really a success either if you measure it against J2EE deployments, or LAMP.
Most people have to download and install a Flash plugin on a new PC when they want to see Flash content. I don't see how this is an insurmountable barrier for Silverlight. It will have good content if Microsoft manages to show significant advantages to content creators. And if it has good content, people will install it. It's the same way Flash got popular.
 
Most people have to download and install a Flash plugin on a new PC when they want to see Flash content. I don't see how this is an insurmountable barrier for Silverlight. It will have good content if Microsoft manages to show significant advantages to content creators. And if it has good content, people will install it. It's the same way Flash got popular.
Microsoft will probably include Silverlight in Vista SP 1 and XP SP3 and/or push it through Windows Update. I estimate that SL will have 80%+ penetration for relevant user groups in about a year.
 
People have been able to do this for years with Java. Java has superior execution performance compared to .NET as shown on various benchmarks like SciMark and LINPACK, Java's native graphics canvas 'Java2d' has been much more capable than Windows for over a decade and delivered cross platform capability. It is for this reason that most SVG implementations are in Java. WPF may have caught up, even surpassed J2D in some cases, but the reality is, Flash is 'good enough' and has reached a level of resource requirements vs capability that is the sweet spot for what most people need.
Good Joke! :LOL:
 
Good Joke! :LOL:

Keep Laughing...http://blogs.sun.com/dagastine/entry/sun_java_is_faster_than1

(Yes, there is no comparison of most recent version of Java6 to most recent .NET 2 compilers, but for most of its lifetime, .NET performance sucked compared to Java, and even with .NET 2.0's recent improvements, I don't think they will beat a highly tuned Java6 VM, especially on throughput. And if you count multi-platform, you'll really lose out)

BTW, Sun has an open-source competitor to Silverlight called JavaFX, see here: https://openjfx.dev.java.net/. Probably the best demo is the StudioMoto demo.
 
Microsoft will probably include Silverlight in Vista SP 1 and XP SP3 and/or push it through Windows Update. I estimate that SL will have 80%+ penetration for relevant user groups in about a year.

Yeah, the magic "Microsoft will win because they will force install it to all Windows machines" didn't help prevent IE marketshare from falling, didn't allow them to win with MSN, MSN Messenger, PassPort, or Live. Amazingly, most people ignore the preconfigured and preloaded Microsoft internet stuff and still go to Google and Yahoo.

Maybe if Google or Yahoo uses Silverlight, Microsoft will have a snowballs chance in hell of overcoming bog standard AJAX and Flash.
 
Keep Laughing...http://blogs.sun.com/dagastine/entry/sun_java_is_faster_than1

(Yes, there is no comparison of most recent version of Java6 to most recent .NET 2 compilers, but for most of its lifetime, .NET performance sucked compared to Java, and even with .NET 2.0's recent improvements, I don't think they will beat a highly tuned Java6 VM, especially on throughput. And if you count multi-platform, you'll really lose out)
No, I was not laughing about the performance part of your post. That's because I think it's pretty irrelavant if Java is x% percent slower or faster than .NET for environments like Silverlight. *) BTW, I have some annotations about the benchmarks you cited. **)

I was not laughing about the Java2d part more capable as well. I have been doing Java for over seven years (1.0.2-1.4), most of the time as my preferred development environment. Now I use .NET/C# for various reasons. So I have a pretty good grasp what Java2d is capable of and what .NET 2d is capable of and Java2d is simply not "much more capable".

Now for the funny part of your posting. You write that Flash is "good enough". It's not. Unless you want to do some very simple things, like play a streaming video. In fact Flash is a real mess. Anyone who has done some serious development and was forced to do something in Flash knows this. It's an animation format that can play video and audio with a JavaScript engine bolted on and a bad developemnt environment. To suggest Flash was anywhere near Silverlight in terms of maturity, features and development environment is a real cracker. Why don't you go to the Adobe site and download the test version and try to develop something a bit more advanced yourself? If you have been spoiled by Java you will be pulling your hair out in no time.

BTW, Sun has an open-source competitor to Silverlight called JavaFX, see here: https://openjfx.dev.java.net/. Probably the best demo is the StudioMoto demo.
Nice! Let's see how it develops. Personally I would have preferred a self-contained VM (like Silverlight) to a full-blown JRE, but maybe I'm splitting hairs here. Anyway it's always good to have some more competition. Competition and choice is a good thing.

*) That reminds me of countless discussions I had with self-acclaimed C++ gurus year ago (well before .NET was born) when I was doing mostly Java. They told me that Java was poised to fail because C++ performance was superior. Go figure.

**) About those benchmarks: David Dagastine is using Hotspot for his benchmarks. That's fine when you want to compare server performance. But there are two problems with this. In a environment like JavaFX the ClientVM will be used and he is apparently not using the server gc for .NET (quote from MSDN website: "Server garbage collection should be the fastest option for more than two processors." Plus for fastest performance you would probably un-ngen the system assemblies). So the comparison is not totaly fair and not really applicable for Silverlight/JavaFX performance.
So let's take a look at the ClientVM vs. .NET performance. In the same post David Dagastine refers to another SciMark benchmark comparison. Now look at this picture. You will see that .NET is mostly ahead of Java/ClientVM in SciMark. So I think we can conclude that Java performance is not really superior for client application scenarios.
 
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