Flashcomguru.com: Why I'm Tired of Hearing About Silverlight

Why I'm Tired of Hearing About Silverlight

Posted At : March 3, 2008 2:59 PM | Posted By : Stefan Richter | Related Categories: Off topic

Goodness me, what is it with Microsoft that makes me like them so very little? Not a single day goes by in which I don't read about Silverlight and how it's apparently the next best thing since sliced bread. First it's 'Wait until Silverlight 1.0 is out', then it's 'yeah but Silverlight 1.1 is the real thing' and not so long after that 'Silverlight 2 is going to be flippin huge, everything before it was only half baked'.

I wish the talk could now stop and we could all get back to actually producing some real applications. Who could really be so naive and think that Silverlight is even marginally ready when even Microsoft's own properties are still pushing Flash video (and successfully so apart from the runtime errors I'm getting)? Seriously, let's cut the BS and let the technology speak for itself. I'm not particularly anti Silverlight either, I'll give any interesting technology a shot, but we still haven't seen anything from Silverlight that would benefit end users or is even remotely different from Flash applications that have been around for years. And yes, I really do care more about end users than about your latest codec or developer workflow. Someone explain to me what Silverlight brings to the table TODAY please? And no, I haven't given the Silverlight development environment a good spin - I wanted to but can't as I develop on a Mac...
Let the flames begin.

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Silverlight 2.0 is the same as 1.1. Microsoft decided to change the version number a few months back because they thought it was a bigger step than a minor version change.

# Posted By Jun | 3/3/08 5:14 PM

Why can't you simply choose to see the "Silverlighting in every cloud".

# Posted By G | 3/3/08 6:22 PM

thanks Jun - do you see know what my moan was about :-) It's a lot of marketing bull - let's call it 2.0 to make it look oh so mature...

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 3/3/08 6:46 PM

I enjoyed that a fair bit :) hehee... but if you are sick of hearing about silverlight, than you absolutely not click <a href="http://malocite.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/silverlig..." >here</a> Microsoft actually GAVE the library of congress 3 million bucks to convert their exhibits, and website over to silverlight :)

# Posted By malocite | 3/3/08 6:49 PM

First let me say that for obvious reasons, I am a bit biased to Flash. However, in the interest of what's best for the end user and the developer, I don't see how Microsoft intends to overthrow Flash in this arena. Adobe has a long history of supporting both PC's and Mac's when it comes to development, and Macromedia laid the groundwork of ubiquity and backwards compatibility long before they merged with Adobe. Microsoft, on the other hand, has a history of abandoning other platforms that compete with Windows. They often find cop out solutions for spanning multiple platforms; case in point, look at Windows Media and Flip4Mac. The hybrid graphics designer/programmer are few and far between and in most large scale environments, you have your programming team and your graphics team. Silverlight is more targeted towards the developer and I don't see many graphics designers embracing this unfamiliar territory. Adobe Flex, which is also targeted at a developer, has a head start and the upper hand because Adobe can seamlessly leverage workflows across all of their products. MXMLG and AIF(Hydra) are prime examples of this. Competition is good, but when it comes to PDF and Flash, you can bet Adobe is going to fiercely protect its market's in these areas. When you get down to brass tax, Adobe is really about enabling the developer and end-user. If they weren't, Flash wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today.

# Posted By Brad | 3/3/08 6:55 PM

I think I'm in the minority when I say I like Microsoft. With that, I'm also tired of hearing about Silverlight. The only large-scale app I've seen for Silverlight has been a photo gallery on NBA.com and it was far from impressive. I've seen much better things done with Flash and Flex. The thing is Microsoft knows how to market their products and get them out there. Even if there are better alternatives, people talk about MS products b/c the seed has been planted.

# Posted By richalot | 3/3/08 7:16 PM

malocite, I think that just shows how desparate Microsoft is. The library of congress is not the only institution that has received money to adopt SL. Having to give money away to pursuade someone deploy your technology says something about your technology, doesn't it?
MS has the financial muscle but they lack the cool factor. Let's see whether or not SL will be to Flash what the Zune was to the iPod (I'd have a Zune any day if they'd pay me!).

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 3/3/08 7:34 PM

I find it amazing that LC would adopt SilverLight for their site, although 3 mill is a big sum of money for anyone.

Now the LC site will be limited to windows machines only?! How can a public organization do that?

# Posted By Tony Fendall | 3/3/08 7:48 PM

Well, I'm a bit biased as well, but let's face it: Adobe has had a monopoly on interactive multimedia content in the web for years, so it's good that there actually seems to be some competition - even if it's Microsoft ;-) They are pushing Silverlight quite much, so I think it's there to stay. I assume that they will get their piece of the cake, and what's so bad about it? Sites like Youtube (which is Google) will never switch to Silverlight, and that already means a lot for the market.

# Posted By Jan Petzold | 3/3/08 7:51 PM

Tony, SL is cross platform. You're excused for not knowing ;-)

Jan, I am all for competition. It's the way they go about it that annoys me too much. Hype hype hype, then pay actual dollars to get adoption? Oh yeah, and leave Linux development to others - they must be truly committed to cross platform support (the plugin is the only thing that's cross platform btw, you cannot build SL apps on a Mac). Yet they want to attract the design crowd? But hey at least it's 2.0, right? *shakes his head*

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 3/3/08 8:02 PM

Regarding development for Silverlight: it doesn't matter if you're on a PC or on a MAC, since the Expression Studio needed to build for Silverlight isn't really useful software yet. To make decent SL app, you'll have to revert to a code editor or IDE (TextMate on the MAC works fine with me, also for the XAML). Don't jump into any of the Expression stuff, but download the Silverlight SDK instead. In there is a great helplibrary, which is the only source of Silverlight support you need. It has an intro, some howto's and a reference.

Regarding 'real-life apps' for Silverlight: totally agree that there's not much out there yet. Even the videoplayers bundled with Expression Encoder are impractical to use, since they don't have support for basic stuff like not autoloading videos.

If you don't mind me plugging a bit here, I'd like to point you to a small SL videoplayer I've written from scratch instead. It's basic, but useful for guys who still have WMV files to show. IMHO it's a decent solution for showing WMV through Silverlight on your site TODAY:

http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_WMV_Player

# Posted By Jeroen Wijering | 3/3/08 8:07 PM

thanks for the comment Jeroen.
I saw your SL player - nice effort. However I can imagine coding XAML in Textmate as much as I can imagine coding MXML in it - which is not at all. I'm too used to a good IDE these days.
Ive heard a lot of good things about Expression Studio but I simply cannot get myself to fire up Vista again. Not yet, the pain is still too great ;-)

# Posted By Stefan Richter | 3/3/08 8:27 PM

Just a note: I did a medium-sized SL app using Eclipse IDE a few days ago. Works like a charm, since it's Javascript, and therefore Adobe has a magnificient plugin called JSEclipse. See how things come together here ;-)

I'm admitting though that the layout had to be done in Expression Blend...

# Posted By Jan Petzold | 3/3/08 9:31 PM

Actually I was just having a conversation with a co-worker today about how Silverlight made such a splash initially but I've heard bupkis since. Granted I am probably one degree away from the day-to-day of the video 'wars' but I watch a number of tech industry feeds and there's not been much in the way of press on SL. That could change if/when it starts getting bundled with Windows o/s products but I don't see a ton of developer enthusiasm for it. I'm kind of surprised actually. MLB.tv works well and the stuff they demoed at Streaming Media West last year were hot.

# Posted By Jim W | 3/4/08 2:22 AM

"Having to give money away to pursuade someone deploy your technology says something about your technology, doesn't it? "

Agreed. As with Sony paying a certain Hollywood studio $400 million to adopt Blu-Ray.

# Posted By Norm | 3/5/08 10:14 AM

Looks like M$FT just partnered with Move Networks to use Silverlight. I haven't seen a better delivery method for streaming video on the web then Move's. I hate M$FT.

" Microsoft is partnering with Move Networks, who will use Silverlight 2.0. Move Networks offers a publishing system for encoding and streaming video on the Web. Guthrie says the total cost using Silverlight is less with version 2.0

http://www.betanews.com/article/Live_from_the_MIX_...
BetaNews | Live from the MIX 08 keynote with Ray Ozzie

# Posted By TMD | 3/5/08 7:10 PM

The official M$FT PR

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080305/aqw096.html
Microsoft Unlocks the Power of the Web for Connected Customer Experiences: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

# Posted By TMD | 3/5/08 7:28 PM

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