I was on the MS download page looking for somethign else, and saw the big old splash screen to download something called “silverlight” from Microsoft. I can’t seem to find any info on it, but it appears to be something like a flash player from MS? Any one have the SD on this?
The one-line version is “you’re right: it’s MS’s answer to Flash.”
Ther’s not much need to download it. If you find a website that uses it (not many yet), the browser will prompt to download the required infrastructure then.
The rest of the story told at a layman’s level …
The big idea behind Flash, which matters more to software developers than to users, is it offers the hope of using one common UI and one common platform for both browser-based applications and for desktop applications.
For business software that is a huge productivity difference. Right now we in the software business have to use two very different toolsets for building websites & for building desktop apps. And users have to get used to to very different ways of working; a browser-based app just doesn’t feel like, say, Excel.
The minimum acceptable level of UI sophistication for browser apps just keeps climbing, and the old programming model of html, augmented with script, plus now AJAX is stretched to the breaking point.
It’d be better for performance and for UI glitz to use desktop apps for everything, but that means a maintenance nightmare; imagine every time Yahoo wanted to improve their website everybody who visits Yahoo had to download & install a new gizmo? Which might be incompatible with their anti-spyware, or with some spyware they already had?
A lot of business apps are web-and-browser based simply to get around the installation / maintenance monster, even though the browser approach is a gross time- & productivity- waster for the user.
Silverlight (along with a couple other under-theo-hood MS technologies) offers the hope of getting the best of both worlds. And, oh by the way, making it ever harder to use non-MSFT products, particularly in big companies.
It’s too early to tell whether Silverlight will deliver the technological goods, or prove popular in the marketplace. The early returns on the technology are favorable though.
See here Microsoft Silverlight - Wikipedia for a somewhat more technical discussion.
So.
Another attempt by Microsoft to entice/seduce/force you to use a proprietary Microsoft product on the web.
And a replacement for Flash, too. I never look at Flash pages, and leave websites if that’s all they offer. Do people still design webpages with Flash? That’s so 1994 design mode!
So I see at least 2 reasons to not download Silverlight (or to delete the version that Microsoft Update has already dumped onto my machine).
Silverlight is a browser-based .NET implementation, stripped down and implemented as native plug-ins for IE, Firefox and Safari on Windows and OS X (with Linux support via Novell’s Moonlight project). It offers a significant superset of the functionality of Flash, along with much better integration with JavaScript. However, it suffers from a far smaller installed base (meaning that Silverlight deployments are likely to cause their customers to have to download and install the plug-in).
As well, it is unlikely that Adobe will fail to make dramatic and long overdue improvements to Flash in the face of Silverlight’s roll-out. Even if they start by fixing the huge laundry list of bugs, it will go a long way to placating their long-suffering developer community.
Silverlight attempts to be flash but better. Flash suffers from a whole host of horrible user experiences, largely due to it’s legacy and it’s not easy to see how it could remedy them without completely gutting the system and starting over (which is what Adobe is trying to do with AIR).
There’s currently somewhat of an underground mini-war going over the future of web apps It hasn’t really hit the consumer sphere yet but expect it to start becoming relevant over the next 3 years.
I personally do not see a lot of Flash-only websites any more. However, I do see Flash used a lot for website intros, games, jokes, videos, and ads. IIRC, Google’s stock quotes use Flash as well. As LSLGuy said, there is still a need for Flash or an equivalent solution.
Well, let’s see:
[ul]
[li]website intros – just a waste of my time, I skip 'em.[/li][li]games – another time-waster, I don’t play 'em, leave 'em for younger people.[/li][li]jokes – I find plenty of jokes in plain text.[/li][li]videos – very few are worth the time it takes me to download & watch 'em.[/li][li]ads – obviously nothing useful for me, just for the advertiser. I use AdBlock & similar to avoid them.[/li][li]Google’s stock quotes – I don’t own any Google stock. And the stocks I do own are long-term investments – I review them 4 times a year; a plain text listing works fine for that.[/li][/ul] So despite what you and LSLGuy said, I see no need at all for this technology, for me.
If advertisers & others trying to take advantage of me need it, that’s their problem.
Okey-dokey.
Feel better?
Flash is very popular for streaming video, because not only does it have a good balance of speed and quality, it also allows you to do some cool and useful things with interface design, all without needing to download a whole new app. They all will work their own way with the same single plug-in. Though admittedly you may need to upgrade to the latest version, it only takes seconds to do so.
Outside of that, apart from some fancy interactivity for simple applications, it is mostly superceded by other more flexible languages. But it does offer all that it can do in just one package, which is a plus.
The big thing about Silverlight is that the Flash-like video stuff is just the barest beginning of the surface of the thing’s capabilities.
It’s all the rest of the stuff it does (or enables) that will be really interesting, enough to get t-bonham to stop using IE v1.0
Imagine using web-based email with a UI that looks just like Outlook & where the menus, right-clicks, toolbars, etc. all work the same as they do in Outlook. Imagine buying stuff from amazon without ever clicking “submit” & waiting and waiting and waiting for teh next page to load.
That’s where we’re going. It’ll make the current CNN-style web site design look & feel as obsolete as the 1997 mostly text & link style looks today. The future has a lot more functionality in addition to a lot more eye candy.
The marketing flakes love the eye candy & the press loves to coo about it, but the meat is in the functionality & the new kinds of apps it enables, not in how much glitzier the chrome becomes.
Embedding snazzy video in the UI is the least of it.
Like it or not, the consumer internet is driven by the same commercial imperitive as the movies: sell crap to 12-27 year olds. At least the consumerweb is 60+% female, unlike the movie audience which is 70% adolescent male, with all the dramatic pathology that brings.
And? It’s attempting to replace another proprietary format, so what’s the big deal?
Seriously, what’s with the opposition to proprietary products on the web, anyway? It’s not as if the objection isn’t ridiculous on the face of it - this messageboard is running proprietary software!
Just because it hasn’t been mentioned yet, here’s Adobe’s platform for Rich Internet Application development (which has been around longer than Silverlight, I believe):