Posted on 05/08/2011 2:33:00 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
We just reported on Microsoft’s early previews of IE10, where the core concepts centralize around improving the browser’s”new web standards” approach and compatibility. This means that CSS 3 and HTML 5 are both going to be smoother, faster, and simply better as Internet Explorer continues development. However, pushing for these new web standards also has a peculiar drawback for Microsoft: it threatens other company products, such as Silverlight.
As HTML 5 becomes far more capable, Silverlight becomes far less necessary; while the unique advantages (such as smooth streaming and digital rights management) of the Microsoft alternative to flash were once crucial, they are now being made redundant. Microsoft’s awareness of this fact became painfully clear and Mix2011 when Giorgio Sardo gave a presentation on HTML 5 designed for current users of Silverlight.
It wasn’t simply the nature of the presentation, however; it was that Sardo himself was unable to give Silverlight his full support. He tip-toed around the subject for some time, making statements such as, “I’m sure you know your customers better than anyone else,” and, “I’m not going to judge which [Silverlight or HTML 5] works better.” However, Sardo did continue to state that HTML 5′s maturation over the past couple of years have made it a more versatile and capable development platform. “I believe HTML5 is ready,” said Sardo. “I think Microsoft is ready for HTML5.”
That pushes Silverlight into a more confined development world: that of offline development. While this does mean thatSilverlight will still have numerous uses (such as in tablet, smartphone, and desktop applications, or in enterprise programs such as Microsoft SharePoint), it will also be second best when contrasted with modern web standards. While Microsoft is defending the current but more limited uses of Silverlight, it’s clear that this once “on the cusp” technology is taking its back-seat position without too much complaint.
More here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/14/silverlight_kinect_armchair/
Silverlight’s star shines in Microsoft’s HTML5 show
By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco
Microsoft has announced that the beta of Silverlight 5 is now available.
That announcement, made by Redmond’s corporate developer division VP Scott Guthrie during his MIX conference keynote on Wednesday, won the .NET faithful’s biggest applause – more than the news of multitasking or access to smartphones’ cameras in the next release of Windows Phone.
Silverlight 5’s release to manufacturing is scheduled to occur at the same time as the next generation of Windows Phone, code-named Mango. That’s not a coincidence, because Silverlight is the development platform for Windows Phone and also used in the runtime. Mango is expected in September.
Last year, Microsoft kicked Silverlight aside and announced that HTML5 would become “the front-end” for PCs and other devices – phones and tablets – connected on the web. Hearing that, those who’d committed to Silverlight were incredulous. And so they should be: HTML5 is not even finished – and it won’t be for another four years.
Six months later, Microsoft is fudging the issue of whether devs should use HTML5 or Silverlight because it knows HTML5 only goes so far – but it’s now tied to the standard following last year’s coming out.
The company’s awkwardness was on display during MIX, when one of its evangelists repeated what’s now the party line when asked if devs should embrace Microsoft’s closed and proprietary plug-in or the web’s open-but-less-fully-featured HTML5. Senior technology evangelist Giorgio Sardo told the MIX crowd: “I’m sure you know your customers better than anyone else. I’m not going to judge which works better.”
For once, Microsoft reckons that devs know what their customers need better than it does, so it won’t dare to preach one technology over the other. Except when it’s Silverlight as an alternative to Adobe’s Flash Player, which is something it has emphasized during the last three years.
Silverlight had been Microsoft’s answer to Flash for the .NET set. But now that Flash is wobbling under the weight of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs’ hype, however, Silverlight’s fortunes have also changed, and Microsoft continues to build new versions.
What’s packed into Silverlight 5? Hundreds of new APIs, apparently. The headliners? Video decoding can now be done on the PC’s GPU for improved quality and performance, there’s Trickplay to speed up video without getting chipmunk voices, vector printing, XAML debugging, 3D APIs, COM automation in the browser tying Silverlight further into Windows, data binding, debugging, and support for 64-bit chips.
Silverlight 5 didn’t get the biggest overall applause of the event, however. That honor went to Microsoft’s decision to give every single MIX attendee a free Kinect hands-free controller for Xbox.
Also getting some adoration was the news that the Kinect Windows beta SDK will be released “this spring”. There will be tools for skeletal tracking, building advanced audio capabilities for things such as four-element microphone arrays, and APIs to measure the distance between an object and the Kinect camera.
Microsoft released the SDK after it decided to harness the hacker ethos of those who’d broken the system last year. In a nod to that spirit, the SDK will be available under a non-commercial license. This won’t last, though: a commercial license is planned for the SDK.
There was applause, too, for a computer-powered armchair steered using a handset free Kinect.
Judging by the boisterous clapping that erupted when a grinning Guthrie switched to talk about Silverlight 5, though, Silverlight clearly continues to hold its own among the Microsoft faithful not only against the newer stuff but also against some Apple-style HTML5 hype from Microsoft.
Heh... I was gonna say, people actually used Silverlight?
HTML5 made this inevitable. And the fact that IE is being jettisoned for Chrome, Foxfire and Safari by many Windows users forces MS to adopt it in IE.
Competition is a wonderful force.
BTW, I am running Firefox right now (Ubuntu).
I’ve been very happy with IE9 on Windows 7. It’s extremely fast, and has plenty of features.
I went to Chrome a while back. Too many web pages failed to render on IE7 and IE8.
I just started using IE9 this weekend. So far, so good. I think I still prefer Chrome but I’ll give IE9 a fair trial. And I work in a MS environment.
Most of my machines run XP. Only one Windows 7.
I have used Firefox for several years, now out of fear of vulnerabilities. IE has come a long way.
Haven’t tried Chrome.
well netflix uses it and I’m sure a fair number of adult oriented video streaming websites do as well. Not that I’d know.
I agree with you on IE 9 and Windows 7. The days of the message that Interner Exployer has stopped working have seemed to come to an end.
Chrome: Give it a try. It’s not like you have to buy it.
Can’t beat free. :) Thanks.
Chrome is very lightweight, loads fast, and is the most secure of the browsers. There was a competition this year with security guys racing to hack the various browsers. Nobody would even attempt hacking Chrome.
“I agree with you on IE 9 and Windows 7. The days of the message that Interner Exployer has stopped working have seemed to come to an end.”
IE 8 (Windows 7) stopped working a few times but always resumed in seconds. No stopping on IE9 so far.
Very good news.
A story:
I was at a meeting with a really smart guy who was giving us a pitch on the standards that we were going to use for some project we were working on. Here is an exact quote from this smart guy that I will never forget:
“The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from”.
Sad but true. Goodbye Silverlight. One less ‘standard’.
Rumor — heard that some companies were blocking Google TV and Chrome? Don't know how Chrome is affected, if at all.
for me, who usually has about 75+ more tabs open daily for things i am working on or regularly visit, or want to (and plenty of bookmarks) i find Firefox, with its extensive customization, far better than IE.
With the former, and using TabMixPlus, i can get multiple rows of tabs, and reduce the width, use different themes (PitchDark theme the best for me), and with Colorful Tabs it will auto render tabs different colors, or you choose a set color for individual ones. With Session Saver you can save multiple sessions, with SaveWithUrl you can save web pages with the url embedded. With Converter you can easily change mertric to standard, with WordCountPlus you can count how many words in a text box, etc. And with the GoogleBar you have lots of search options.
And the about:config option allows more customization for techies.
None of which you can do on IE8, which is as high as MS allows for XP, and is more than Chrome or Opera enables.
Thanks God for Firefox, which is also more like free enterprise, rather than Gov. issue.
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