Posted on 11/02/2010 10:26:53 AM PDT by WebFocus
Rumors have been swirling throughout the industry that Microsoft may be finished with Silverlight. A recent PC World post challenges those rumors and features a reference to a blog post by Microsoft’s (News - Alert) servers and tools division chief, Bob Muglia, that describes the company’s future with Silverlight as bright and promising.
"Make no mistake; we'll continue to invest in Silverlight and enable developers to build great apps and experiences with it in the future," Muglia wrote in the post.
It seems Muglia was using the post to respond to reactions of an earlier interview he had done with Mary-Jo Foley of ZDNet. In the interview, he referred to Silverlight as a development platform primarily to use for Windows Phone (News - Alert) 7.
He was quick to downplay the company’s cross-platform capabilities and promoted HTML5 as the tool of choice for cross-platform developments, noting that Microsoft’s strategy had shifted.
Silverlight was originally developed by Microsoft as a platform for building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) and could be used as an alternative to Adobe Flash and Flex. Silverlight could be used to build applications that would run – with a plug-in – across different browsers and offer capabilities HTML could not provide.
As powerful as this platform appeared to be, Foley and others were keeping Silverlight’s profile very low, while praising HTML5’s cross-platform capabilities. There are many who believe this downplay is an indication that Silverlight’s future is in jeopardy.
Contributing to the rumors was the fact that Microsoft has not yet announced a release date for the next version of Silverlight, version 5. A former Silverlight produce manager has been speculating in widely ready blog posts and Twitter updates that Silverlight is losing favor with Microsoft, due in part to the potential threat it presents to the Windows desktop dominance.
Muglia is trying to dispel the rumors that he is partly responsible for creating. He wrote: "The purpose of Silverlight has never been to replace HTML, but rather to do the things that HTML (and other technologies) can't, and to do so in a way that's easy for developers to use.”
IDC (News - Alert) analyst Al Hilwa believes Silverlight is very important for Microsoft as it could be the company’s best way to take the native client development for Windows into Web architecture. When the company released Silverlight, it did not anticipate that so many different mobile platforms would be available in such a short time.
Silverlight still has a strong presence in the market and presents a competitive differentiator for Microsoft, which is under increasing pressure to maintain its dominance in markets that are being challenged by new developments.
-- Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com.
That is what they used to let people watch Sunday Night Football online, right?
This story reads like a software engineering version of speculation on North Korea’s political landscape.
Maybe some of the Silverlight workerbees should know about
New Startup Jobs.com where my son found his new job!
Not sure, but I had to install it to use Netflix watch now.
Oh, I didn’t know that.
So I suppose those XBoxes use it for that too?
As a platform, Apple is more closed than Windows and I can't stand the arrogance of Apple zealots. I used Unix for my first 15 years in the industry, so I like Linux, but from a mass market point of view, people seem to want everything for free. So MS is right for me at this time.
That being said, Microsoft stepped in it and now they are trying to backtrack. They pushed Silverlight big time. Now they want to change their mind?
I chose Silverlight to do a development project I am currently working on, as many others have. Now they seem to want to shift focus away from it after pushing it. There are a lot of people pissed about this.
It's not that suprising - again, as much as I generally support MS, they do have a way of pushing a technology then just tossing it aside in favor of the "new way".
I look back and think about the countless hours I could have spent (and know others who have) learning various technologies that they just cast aside. Just recently, LINQ to SQL was going to be the "big thing", but then they decided that Entity Framework is the "right way".
Some changes are understandable because the world of technology dictates a change, but others frustrate you because they push and push a technology as the "next big thing" or the "right way" and then just abandon it in favor of something else - almost not realizing that people spent time and resources because of their PR and advice.
According to my Linux laptop: Netflix makes use of it to stream movies. And Mono doesn’t help on the laptop, so I’m SOL there.
So I just stream Netflix to my iPad or Mini instead.
RE: Just recently, LINQ to SQL was going to be the “big thing”, but then they decided that Entity Framework is the “right way”.
Hey, don’t tell me Microsoft is now planning to let LINQ go by the wayside? I just spent money on a LINQ book and spent weeks trying to master it and now you’re telling me my hours spent to make myself more marketable in the IT world is all in vain ?
Which is the major reason I switched to OS/X and now do nothing but web development with standard languages and tools. I still like SQL Server and its related products, but I don't want to get trapped by any more of Microsoft's for-profit paradigm shifts.
What about C#, SQL Server and ASP.NET? Good Lord, these are my bread and butter for the past 3 years ( I spent $6,000 on a 2 1/2 month, 4 hour, M-F class trying to learn them and found employment after that ).
I’m going to kill someone if they do away with this ( figuratively of course ).
As Ann Coulter used to say, “If the Death Penalty does not deter murder, why is Michael Moore still alive and I am not in Jail?”
Kewl. But, how do I get apple stuff to work on my PS3 that is connected to my new Sony 50". I am getting netflix shows in Hi Def loaded almost instantly with new upgraded Cable I'net. Or on the WII that is fueling the 40 incher Hi Def Toshiba in the bedroom?
That’s the trouble with computers - most of what I ever learned has become obsolete. I should have been a barber, or a lumberjack.
Of those, C# and SQL Server should be around quite a while.
But I already see some cracks in what most people consider ASP.NET.
For the last several years, the push was a more visual development experience with ASP.NET Web Forms and Visual Studio, where you could drag and drop ASP.NET controls onto a page, put some code in a code behind and run it. Much improved over classic ASP. It's a pleasure to use to code web apps IMHO.
Now the current fad is ASP.NET MVC (now at version 3) and the Razor engine. They tell me it's better - not sure where I see that it is.
It all looks like it is going back to classic ASP... No visual design, coding HTML by hand with code intermixed. It doesn't even have Intellisense yet!
I've invested almost ZERO time in ASP.NET MVC. I'm still at the point of waiting to see what may stick.
Look what would have happened if I committed to ASP.NET MVC a few years ago... within that time, they've gone from ASP.NET MVC 2 and now ASP.NET MVC 3. Now your ASP.NET MVC 1 code is no good.
Well, I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay ...
LINQ will stay, but they seem to want you to use Entity Framework instead of LINQ to SQL for database work.
See this as an example.
They seem to only want you to use LINQ for internal object collections, but the momentum to use LINQ for other external things (like SQL) seems to have slowed.
That part of the profession appeals to me - I like learning new things every so often - keeps things interesting.
What I don't like is starting a project and having the paradigm change before I even get it finished...
There’s no reason for Silverlight to be in any trouble. It has the momentum of all the MS development subplatforms (.Net etc), by being part of the MS dev kit there’s a bunch of people that will code for it because it’s functionally free (they’re going to buy Visual Studio one way or the other). Add to that the fact that only Apple seems to actually support HTML5 and everybody is pretty sick of what an unstable pig Flash is, on the use side the world is ripe for Silverlight to strike.
Aha! You took the bait. That didn’t take long. You were set up, my FRiend. :-)
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