Microsoft's Silverlight

mkmurray wrote:Sounds somewhat like Microsoft's XAML? Of course, note Microsoft always comes out with it second!

Today Microsoft announced Silverlight, their "Flash-killer", XAML-based rich internet application (RIA) platform that is similar to Flex and Flash. It looks interesting.

And comments are already flying across. Adobe's CEO talked about his view on it. (News article at http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/ ... nse_1.html for those that are interested) and of course it is built on the .NET platform which makes me wonder how "cross-platform" it really is. (If just the server portion is cross-platform or if the client needs .NET or Mono installed too)

Anyway the MS Press article can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/pres ... PFEPR.mspx if you want to read more about Silverlight.

thedqs wrote:And comments are already flying across. Adobe's CEO talked about his view on it. (News article at http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/ ... nse_1.html for those that are interested) and of course it is built on the .NET platform which makes me wonder how "cross-platform" it really is. (If just the server portion is cross-platform or if the client needs .NET or Mono installed too)

Anyway the MS Press article can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/pres ... PFEPR.mspx if you want to read more about Silverlight.

From the conferences some of our guys here at work have gone to, it is a downloaded deliverable just like Flash is. They guarentee it compatible with Firefox and IE on Windows & with Firefox and Safari on Mac right now, and they are working on Firefox for Linux (no guarentee for that yet).

Adobe isn't standing still either. With the Apollo platform (desktop Flash apps) they are gunning for the other desktop media players. http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-6176056 ... &subj=news

haledn wrote:Adobe isn't standing still either. With the Apollo platform (desktop Flash apps) they are gunning for the other desktop media players. http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-6176056 ... &subj=news

This link goes into some detail about what Microsoft is doing and also what Adobe is doing:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199000964&cid=nl_IWK_BTL

NOTE: It's not Microsoft-biased only; it qualifies with what Adobe is countering with (or doing despite Microsoft).

Well, now when silverlight is 'officially' released, maybe you've been waiting for that "RC" label to go away. okay, no more excuses, time to start digging in. what better way to do that then cuddle up with a few of your closest unknown friends and hack away, barcamp style! some fine folks have organized a SilverlightDevCamp in two areas and they are free to attend and get some SWAG, some learning, and make some connections. designers, developers, people with macbooks, everyone is welcome.

Well now that I have it installed, time to get working on learning this new platform.

Also for others don't forget to get the Silverlight SDK which is at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/de ... s.aspx#4_1 otherwise you might have some trouble programming in silverlight.

The real interesting thing with Silverlight will be the 1.1 version. 1.0 is mostly a media delivery platform, however, once Microsoft releases 1.1 with the .Net clr in the browser, some very interesting possibilities will open themselves up.

The only gotcha right now is the lack of controls in silverlight. You basically have to code your own in XAML and add all the code behind them. Hopefully they'll get them added in in the future.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the end of javascript and HTML... This Silverlight thing has a ton of potential.

Lot's of discussion about Silverlight on this forum as well as Flash. The trouble with Silverlight and Flash is that they are non-standard proprietary solutions and that's not where the web is going. Now Google has released Chrome which runs JavaScript 22 times faster than JavaScript in IE. The idea is that Chrome is Google's application platform for RIA of the future. This all means that Silverlight and Flash are very vulnerable to the new JS engines like V8 and others that can run code at C++/C# speeds. Firefox 3.1 and Safari are also slated for superfast JS engines. For a good overview of this, see http://hackosphere.blogspot.com/2008/09 ... e-yet.html