Microsoft Silverlight takes aim at Adobe Flash
(Credit:
Microsoft)
Today, Microsoft announced the first public versions of its Silverlight application for creating and experiencing rich, interactive applications online. There are two different versions of the cross-browser plug-in: Silverlight 1.0 beta (download for Windows or Mac) and Silverlight 1.1 alpha (download for Windows or Mac).
The big difference between 1.0 beta and 1.1 alpha versions is that the 1.1 alpha allows developers to create Silverlight applications using .NET technologies such as C#. If you don't care much about that new advancement, you probably won't be too excited about some of the sample Silverlight applications that have been created.
To be fair, the downloads of the client only went public today, but the Silverlight gallery of applications is quite slim--eight for the 1.0 beta and seven for the 1.1 alpha, several of which are identical. The two that jumped out at me were the Grand Piano (for 1.0 beta) and Chess (for 1.1 alpha) applications. Grand Piano lets you play a full octave of a virtual piano via keyboard or mouse, and Chess provides a gaming environment with pluggable AI and two gameplay algorithms in both C# and JavaScript.
The Grand Piano application lets you tickle the ivories with your keyboard.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Aside from the sample applications in the gallery, there's also a sleek 20th Century Fox movie player built with Silverlight that's currently showing trailers for Fantastic Four, Pathfinder, and Live Free or Die Hard.
One big question about Silverlight is whether or not it will support Linux. Adobe caught a lot of flack from Web developers for being too slow to release a version of Flash 9 for Linux, which essentially forced Web site managers to maintain different content for Linux users. If Silverlight doesn't hit all the major platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux), it may be difficult for site managers to adopt the technology.
It's obvious that Silverlight is a play by Microsoft to make a dent in the market share for Adobe Flash, which is the undisputed leader in the field of rich Internet applications. Considering that Flash has more than a 10-year head start on Silverlight, the new kid has his work cut out for him.
What's not obvious about Silverlight is whether or not Microsoft will take the same route as Adobe Flex and make any of the code open source. There have been rumors to that effect for months now, but the software giant has definitely not confirmed anything yet.
For further demonstration of the possibilities of Silverlight, check out a video of a prototype Netflix online-movie service in a Webware.com report from Microsoft's Mix 07 conference.
Vista is a waste, and I don't trust anything from Microsoft any more.
In the product's License Agreement, you must also agree that Microsoft can sell and distribute to third Parties your personal information, feedback, user experience, and and any other private information that Microsoft collects about you. <-- Adolf Hitler (aka., Microsoft) strikes again -->
Once again, before you assign Microsoft your birth rights to your next borne by using this product, you had better read the License or you'll become the victim of a Microsoft lawsuit.
Stick with Adobe multi-media products (Flash and Shockwave) for a safe and secure online experience. Microsoft should be shamed for asking people to give up thier personal Rights -- like Adolf Hitler.
2) C# on the client side?! That's awesome. The chess program comes in both C# and JS versions. The C# version calculates moves about a THOUSAND times faster than the JS version. Sure it's a rather staged comparison - but it's really quite obvious that it's much faster. And now all those .Net C# programmers can code client side functionality that works better AND is all in the same language from end to end. There are going to be a lot of very happy programmers out there.
3) Runs in IE, FF and Safari! That's brilliant. You can't even do cross browser JS! This could be the end of AJAX and all of those JS libraries that try their hardest to make JS suck a little less.
- Just What We Need -- NOT
- by rbiz July 24, 2007 7:01 AM PDT
- Yet another MS proprietary online utility. I just don't get it - or maybe I do
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(4 Comments)get it
and don't want to deal with it. I hope that, by now, everyone realizes that the
only reason MS gets away with slipping us all deeper and deeper into their
collective is because we all keep using Windows.
All I can say to web developers and admins is, Don't do it, don't do it, don't
do it. We need to compel MS to develop on already established, truely
universal standards, especially for online use, and the only way to get that to
happen is stop incorporating every squishy, cutesy little device their
developers hack together and try and get us stuck on.