Microsoft launches Silverlight; how will it compete?
Microsoft has renamed the WPF/E component of their Windows Presentation Foundation framework into Silverlight. The official presentation was held, and the blogosphere is, of course, buzzing about it.
I’ll point out some of the more important features of Silverlight, taken from Microsoft’s Silverlight page:
- Seamless, fast installation for users, thanks to a small, on-demand, easy-to-install plug-in that is less than 2 megabyte (MB) and works with all leading browsers.
- Stunning vector-based graphics, media, text, animation, and overlays enable seamless integration of graphics and effects into any existing Web application.
- Enhance existing standards/AJAX-based applications with richer graphics and media, and improve their performance and capabilities by using Silverlight.
- Based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Silverlight enables developers and designers to easily use existing skills and tools to deliver media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web.
- Simple integration with existing Web technologies and assets means Silverlight works with any back-end Web environment or technology. No “rip and replace� required. Silverlight integrates with your existing infrastructure and applications, including Apache, PHP, as well as JavaScript and XHTML on the client.
- Unified media format that scales from high density (HD) to mobile with Windows Media Video (WMV), the Microsoft implementation of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) VC-1 video standard, as well as support for Windows Media Audio (WMA) and MP3 audio.
Now, Silverlight has been touted as an alternative to Flash, but I think that WPF together with Silverlight are more of an alternative to Adobe’s Apollo. Furthermore, I’m not quite sure that it will be inferior to Flash, which undoubtedly will have the advantage of being around longer, but also the disadvantage of having several quirks which annoy end users (no matter how many times the developers repeat that ‘Flash can do anything’). I guess we’ll just have to see what phrases like “seamless integration” exactly mean for the developers and for the end users. I hope we’ll soon be able to do a roundup of Silverlight-based apps/services so we can get a real feel of how it works.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:43 am
My major problem with Silverlight is the fact that the website doesn’t demo it in anyway. You’d think that if they had this great new product they’d want to show it off? But instead we get some message telling us that the Silverlight enabled site will be available soon.
What did their development team run a little behind schedule, so they couldn’t have the site ready for the product announcement? Doesn’t that kind of worry people that there only team can’t develop in this new platform well enough to stick to a deadline?
Or maybe its the broswer plugin(s) perhaps they aren’t ready yet, (doubtfull as how would they be developing their new site?)
Maybe I’m missing something - but if I am then they are not making it obvious enough. I looked round the site and nothing?
So I’m not going to get excited about it yet. And to be honest I don’t think I ever will. Even if it does turn out to be the greatest thing ever, with oodles much functionality than Flash the fact that it comes from the same company whos previous forrays into the internet and web development have brought us IE and *shudders* Frontpage will be enough to keep me away….that and I hate .NET _yuck!_
April 16th, 2007 at 11:45 am
@Aaron: very true. Microsoft tends to do that. However, we’re talking platforms here, so a couple of days behind schedule won’t matter in the long run.
April 16th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Your right, a couple of days probably won’t effect the mass appeal or any kinf od take-up of Silverlight, the only people who will even know about it at the moment are developers and those interested in that area. ‘Joe Public’ won’t know and won’t care, and rightly so. They just want a site to do what its suppoused to - they don’t care if it uses Flash, Flex, Silverlight, AJAX or whatever new technology comes along….as long as it does what its suppoused to.
My only fear as that it won’t do what its suppoused to. Oh it might make a good show of it (IE) while making designers/developers cry. I’m just very wary.
Adobe already makes a very good product with good browser penetration, and to be honest they have the ultimate point going for them…they are not microsoft.
Now I know that might sound unreasonable to judge them so quickly but going back to my last point, 2 words IE and Frontpage
Their contribution to thw web development community has been anything but stellar so far you have to agree? And it will take alot for me trust any development/design product they produce.
Oh and am really looking forward to seeing the first secuirty holes that popup in the browser plugin, cause we all know there is going to be plenty
April 17th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
If I can’t see their demo in Firefox, it’s not going to take off. Things need to work gracefully and they need to see Firefox as being an important browser.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:35 am
We just need to see the first batch of applications using Silverlight; then we’ll be able to give a sensible judgement. But, generally I do agree that Microsoft isn’t that good at pushing these types of things (if they can’t push them through Windows).
April 24th, 2007 at 2:32 am
[…] It’s also great to see interesting people come out and talk about RIAs.The always good basement.org has a post, Scoble mentioned the new Adobe Media Player, Richard MacManus took on the space, Stan Schroeder, who has a good blog also talked about it. […]
May 10th, 2007 at 6:50 am
seems that their demo doen’t work in firefox
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