Some may argue that this is not a big deal - you win some, you lose some - but MLB.com is no small fry. Cnet describes it as 'the Web's most successful subscription service' serving half a million (!) subscribers.
What went on behind the scenes is now starting to emerge as - according to Cnet - Microsoft points the finger at 'a series of glitches and conflicts between the companies'. Moreover, the lawyers are now apparently involved which sounds like a major fallout to me. MLBAM's CEO is even heard talking about an 'ongoing dispute with Microsoft'. Oh dear. Can it be worse than Adobe and Apple banging heads over Flash on the iPhone? Maybe.
I guess we'll have to see how things progress for Silverlight, but I still fail to see the real advantage of the platform, at least from a user's point of view. Sure, it must be great being a .NET developer now being able to hack away at a new platform, using new (and existing) tools, but what problem is this plugin really trying to solve? What does it offer that Flash hasn't been doing for years? I'm a developer myself and naturally curious, but so far I have had next to no urge to even install the Silverlight development tools (which ideally require you to run Windows as you desktop OS).
I know I keep asking this, but where are the impressive Silverlight apps built by the Silverlight community, I mean those that did not make the showcase pages (yes, we;ve seen the Olympics now. And Netflix. Next?), and why does it seem that all the existing showcases are built around a video experience? It's not all about video you know!?
Let's revisit this topic in a year. What do you think the RIA playing field will look like then?
For example, we've been developing Flex solutions that require an IFrame hack to correctly display HTML documents in a Flex application, which is very inelegant and has some serious usability problems (for example, if the user accidently displays the security settings dialog behind the iframe). This would also come to bear in content management systems, where you would want to display and interact with standard HTML content, or in medical applications, which often require interaction with scanners or other physical devices.
I understand that there are strategies and hacks to make things work in Flex, but I think Silverlight positions itself to more effectively deal with these types of problems.
I'm not saying Silverlight is the magic bullet; it has its share of problems. As a primarily Mac user, a lack of effective development environment for OSX is killer. Weak ubiquity of the player. Etc, etc. Additionally, I love working with Flex / Flash and I'm excited to see (and be involved with) where Adobe is going to push the Flash Platform. However, I am also keenly aware that Silverlight has some serious strategy behind it. It has a huge corporation backing its development. Silverlight is not going away, and personally, I think it should be taken very seriously by anyone in the RIA development space.
Whatever microsoft is doing to get these big name sites to SOLELY use silverlight, I wish they'd stop. Remember the good ol' days when you had tons of video options and THEY ALL WORKED?
Microsoft is just doing what they've always done to the internet. Screwing it up. (CSS anyone?) I hope they fail. Not because I'm a <insert company/media type here> fanboy. But because I like to ENJOY my internet experience and Microsoft has proved over and over again that they can't deliver that.
I won't comment on the MLB vs Microsoft saga, I've blogged my thoughts and personally think its a lot of PR and not a lot of substance (notice we never got asked to respond? by the said journalist :D)
Why Silverlight? A lot of reasons and I for one have been in the Flash trenches as long as probably yourself, but at the end of the day millions of .NET developers just didn't like ActionScript and simply ignored it - thus probably why Adobe/Macromedia eventually gave up on the natural .NET support for Flash.
Silverlight to these folks is long over due as they've always wanted us to take the SmartClient concept to the next level along with enhancing their existing WebForm/WinForm skills.
We not only decided to answer this demand, but we wanted to do something beyond our normal comfort zone by bringing in all developers, so we put the DLR also in play. This allows any language to jump into the Silverlight ethos.
It also provides the existing .NET ecosystem a much easier position to bring creative back to the table (sorry no more developer art). That was also a reason for ensuring we have a creative story going forward.
RE: Video only. We've had many Silverlight wins but in reality the press are more lazer focused on Video than the other pieces. If Adobe Flash powers Nike's website next year, it's "meh" yet if Flash scores a big video deal it's suddenly headline news. As this is currently the hot topic in the business atm.
It's all a really weird and surreal game to be part of in the end.
-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
@Darman: I hear you.
@Scott: Thanks for the comment. You do emphasize the developers again and this is one of the problems I have with Silverlight: if the platform caters for developers above end users then it may be a flawed strategy. I can't see what problem it is solving for end users and so far their feedback seems to be very mixed to say the least. They ask themselves 'why install yet another plugin' and that question has not been compellingly answered.
As far as the focus on video goes, I would not blame the press here. You guys seem to talk primarily about video sites yourselves.
At first developers are the main source of adoption for Silverlight, given we've got a swarm of .NET developers it only makes sense these folks will be the first to take the leap.
Here's the thing though, those developers need design, it's been somewhat missing from the workflow until we released WPF/Silverlight (ASP.NET aside). This in turn creates a new market place for designers to tap into and become apart of.
End users will install anything that gets them to a compelling experience. Flash is proof of this today, and to assume all end-users online can separate Flash from another plug-in is somewhat a leap of faith. 350million people disagree with your thoughts here.
We can't choose the stories, we can only respond to what questions the journalists want answered. We at times draw their attention to other parts of our strengths, but sadly it doesn't get printed.
You'd be surprised how much of an interview gets printed vs questions that actually get asked.
-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
One more personal thought on the subject: as much as I welcome a new technology that offers new and useful features (and that makes Adobe work harder just to keep up), I seriously fear that this might go the same route that a few other Microsoft ventures have done in the past:
Seems to me that whenever Redmond notices that the pioneering work of anpther company has finally brought some success they try to become the leader in that field.
There is nothing wrong with that - as Steve Jobs said in the mid 90'ies: "tehy have earned their success For the most part".
It's just that in some of those cases Microsoft simply ceases to invest in the technology once they have crushed the competition. At that point developers and users alike are left behind (IE and CSS was mentioned in another post on this page already)
Adobe is certainly not the best example when it comes to good developer relations, but they have in fact shown a lot of appreciation for them in the past couple of years as far as the flash platform is concerned.
We've included Silverlight via the Windows Update.
We've also just shipped IE8 in March? it takes a lot of time and planning to produce a browser that 2/3rds of the world uses.
Take sites like VendorRate where we score at 74 whilst Adobe scores at 64. Our customers still enjoy our technology and whilst sure it would be great to see higher sats with non-Microsoft developers it could be argued in reverse for Adobe to non-Adobe customers?
We've seen an uptake in Silverlight.NET forums from 0 to 50,000+ members whilst FlexCoders has had only a 2,000+ growth in the same period?
Indeed.com see's Silverlight trending significantly higher than both Flash/Flex at the moment as well?
*shrug* I could go on all day. I get Adobe community members are feeling somewhat threatened by our posture in the market, it's mostly out of fear that we'll "crush the competition" as you put it. The reality is both will co-exist, and creativity and debates like this will continue for quite some time.
-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
If you believe recent press (I know Scott doesn't) then it's Microsoft which needs to be worried about its success in the RIA space, not Adobe. I could go on all day...
Which i'd say is reverse and Adobe would agree, given Adobe LiveCyle, AIR & Flex are targeted towards Enterprise and aside from Creative Suite tools is why they get up in the morning.
Not sure I understand your logic on the "worried" part. Again, we've got strong growth in verticals and we've not let off the gas in terms of success?
-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
Yes, visibility is important because you can put out press releases and case studies all day long (and throw in unofficial statistics if you like) but unless you prove real adoption both by end users and developers then you are fighting a losing battle. Even decent penetration on the client won't help if the content isn't there. Have you convinced the design crowd yet?
You are probably thinking I'm making this up, but I've already seen major clients evaluate Silverlight only to go back to Flash, and that was with the inclusion of a lot of help from Microsoft. I quote "Their evangelists were doing a fantastic job'. In the end though it wasn't enough.
Furthermore, I just can't believe your that naive to think that in order to have absolute adoption success some random public facing website gives you proof of life that content and developer/designer adoption is in place?
As in that case, Flex/AIR fall into the same category as Silverlight in which case - actually no, I'm just utterly confused by your logic.
We've only been in the market 2 years and already we've had 350million downloads - which would put us in the fastest growing plug-in category. Still not enough.
We're seeing Job (Demand) trends spike to be in some cases on par with Flash/Flex and beyond. Still not enough.
We're seeing success in large video streaming deals that are breaking records in average viewing times. Still not enough.
We've got approx a 4:1 lead in .NET developer mind share than Flash/Flex and still nope, that's not enough.
In the end, it comes down to what I'll now call the "Stefan Richter" barometer.
"It must be visible or else its failing"
Cool, well then let's agree to disagree shall we as we seem to do the same dance when it comes to Adobe vs Microsoft - never a change in outcome?
-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
Stefan Richter barometer? I like it. Guess Richter scale was taken.
But I have the privilege of being able to express my personal opinions here whereas you are representing your employer. Maybe you do actually believe everything you have posted above, but somehow I have my doubts as given your experience you should know better.
You won't find me throwing around statistics unless it can't be avoided.
I also try not to make stuff up or bend some corporate statistic into shape to fit my argument.
To wrap up, yes I would equate SL's success with its visibility on the web. Once it's highly visible it must be doing something right. And vice versa.
for my current employer doesn't fit our needs.. but only in 1 arena.. player adoption. the flash player is wide spread and silverlight player is not; not yet.
if m$ gets silverlight player adoption then businesses like ours will undoubtedly move from flex and flash to silverlight. m$ has a chicken-egg problem.. once the chicken (adoption) exist it will lay plenty of eggs.
both will exist for a while.. especially if google buys/merges with adobe!!
Still that can change in the coming years. What I am really concerned about is what I stated earlier: what will happen if MS someday leads the ria market? Let's not forget that the silverlight plugin is not a product that people pay money for. So it is a similar situation as we saw it with Internet Explorer: once they had driven Netscape out of the race MS practically stopped all development in that area. (to be honest Netscape did their part of messing up then, so it wasn't only MS's superior technology that brought their victory in the browser wars).
Just tell us why MS would act differently today once they have driven Adobe out of the ria arena? And in their heart of hearts i believe MS developers know this. It may be a great place to work. But MS doesn't really care about their customers if they don't have to for competitions sake.
IE team have been on a 2 year production schedule for the last 2 releases - granted in 2001-2006 at Microsoft we had a dark period where even Windows Vista took 5 years to make given a lot of the legal battles etc we all went through.
IE8 is more stable then the rest of the releases, and it's got good momentum behind it.
Silverlight has been in play for 2 years and we've already made high impact? I mean the fact you guys are haggling over data right now indicates the impact is there right?
To be also fair, Flash has had slow growth until Silverlight made itself known, so Adobe/Macromedia have had total marketshare but it was to their way or the highway (flex had poor pricing models, .NET developers were abandoned etc).
If anything it's began to light new fires in the Flash team, one that i've not see since the MX Days so for me being participant in this game and life beyond Microsoft one day, I'm actually confident that there won't be an outright winner for quite some time. As ultimately both products face the biggest challenge of all - AJAX.
RIA is still at the very very early infant stage of life.
-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
Is it fair to say you're not representive of the world audience in this regard?
Who's to say that when someone does approach you for work that choice has already been made?
What about hybrid solutions? Is all your solutions 100% Flash?
Last night i was amazed at how fantastic mint.com is as an experience driven solution. I got a response like "Flex made that" and I was amazed to hear that as 80% of the actual heavy lifting for that solution was done by AJAX. The rest was Flex but only in a charting capacity.
Technically the entire app could fair well inside Flex, nothing indicates that this would be a bad thing either? So the question remains, why does solutions like mint.com opt for a html/js + flash implementation instead of the whole thing?
Why did MTV.com switch back from 100% Flash to html/js model? Why did EAGames switch out from a 100% Flash to html/js model.. so on..
Don't underestimate the power of HTML/JS in todays economic climate. Good enough is a strong contender :)
-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
However I also never had AJAX come up as an alternative to the Flash content, quite simply because it cannot deliver most of the features that customers are requesting.
"Is it fair to say you're not representative of the world audience in this regard?"
That attitude stinks. I'm about as representative as you are. If you are hoping for me to throw mud back at you then I have to disappoint you.
I have no clue as to what your annoyance is now. You keep flip flopping around the issue and appear from my view to be in an argumenative mood.
Flash/Silverlight have the capabilities and more of AJAX today. Yet people still continue to use it correct? Therefore it's still a contention point for both plug-ins no matter what and so assuming a given plug-in has the marketshare dominance in RIA is way to early to even predict. AJAX still has a stronger foothold on that discussion.
As for representive of the world audience, it's reality. You are primarly optimised towards what I would call a "Flash lense". You see things in that light, others in the AJAX space may see things differently - not to mention other platforms (Silverlight, Java Webstart, SWING, Curl etc).
Just because you don't have customers knocking on your door asking for xyz to be done in abc technology doesn't provide enough data to declare a point i mad valid or invalid.
The reality of this conversation is it's simply just opinions, as without data it then becomes emotional. Until you have data, emotion will always lead the conversation as it's more about "i think" and less about "I know".
-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.
But if you ask around in the web developer community you find that it is almost impossible to get hold of a single soul who was not annoyed beyond compare by Internet Explorers poor performance when it comes to web standard compatibility.
This is not due to a lack of decisions within MS but to the very decisions that were made with the goal in mind to sabotage standards.
Of course that is no news to anyone. I just feel at times it is necessary not to forget these things. MS has always been very competitive, trying to drive other software businesses out of the way. I can't blame them. That's why they are way ahead of everybody else business wise. But it will lead to very adverse effects for developers who depend on standards that were not set by Microsoft alone.
Scott I appreciate your spending time here. But In case you have been spending the last couple of years with Microsoft do not forget that there is a huge crowd of developers out there not affiliated with dot net whose worst nightmare is Microsoft trying yet to sacrifice another standard and pushing it's own technology. And I of course don't mean the flash community as flash itself is a proprietary technology.
http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1334-is-silverlight-...
Of course some will say that Silverlight is not the problem. We'll see, and should know more if ITV make the switch to Flash.
(disclosure: ITV happens to be a client of mine)