Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 116 posts

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#11

Post by reitzensteinm »

RK wrote: post #9
reitzensteinm wrote: post #3

I was about to answer no, but apparently I do: http://www.silverlightversion.com/ Does it install with Windows Update automatically or something?

Firefox 3.6 on Ubuntu 10.4 and the site said: Your installed version of Silverlight is: 0.0.00000.0 So I'm guessing no...

I do not understand what's going through the mind of a developer who makes a site to display a software version number and does not have a special case for not installed. Incredible.

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#12

Post by moe »

Every time the "install silverlight?"-prompt comes up, I consciously refuse it.

My reasoning goes like this:

1. It happens very rarely (less than once a month) and is usually triggered by some embedded eyecandy that I don't want to see anyways. I have not yet missed out on anything because I didn't have silverlight.

2. I have suffered through flash with all its browser-crashes, security problems and other annoyances for a decade. I strictly refuse to support the adoption a new plugin-technology that would only cause me more of the same pain.

3. Silverlight being a Microsoft technology, Microsoft being the company that makes my life miserable with MSIE, doesn't help my sympathy either.

Thus, I know I'm just one little datapoint in everyone's server-logs, but I take care to ensure this datapoint will always read "Silverlight not available".

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#15

Post by jasonkester »

There are just so few sites that require Sliverlight that I find myself mildly offended when I come across one that tries to make me install it. Who are you, telling me to install something just to view your website? Good day, sir.

Funny that that's never been my experience with Flash. Flash sites are horrible and I avoid them if I can, but Flash can socially engineer its way onto my machine through cool little in-browser games, whereas Silverlight just wants to "enhance" my viewing of MSDN.

I think Microsoft's BizSpark site actually requires Silverlight, so once every year or so, one of my machines gets to install it so that I can renew my MSDN subscription and get the latest version of VS.NET. That's enough of a reason for me, since it's something I absolutely can't do without, but I couldn't imagine expecting my users to install it just to visit my website.

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#16

Post by acqq »

weel wrote: post #8

I have Moonlight installed on Linux, so I checked "Yes" for lack of a "sorta" option. Moonlight seems to be good enough to get to the few Silverlight sites I need (several European TV broadcasters...)

...and not good enough to play the Feynman lectures billg bought and now serves in the Silverlight-only form. I think the reason is that there's no DRM handling in Moonlight. I expect that a lot of Silverlight content will remain inaccessible in Moonlight.
Post reply on HN