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Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#71

Post by rue »

warp wrote: post #28

Video streaming performance of silverlight seems better compared to flash, on those sites which support it (e.g. on demand viewing of dutch public tv, omroep.nl). So I have it installed on the machines I use to consume online media. I do not have flash nor silverlight installed on my development machines, because I can live without the distractions :)

Yes, I have a similar experience with Eurosport's player. On my regular Macbook Flash streaming is somewhere around 80-90%, Silverlight manages at about 50%.

I probably would not have subscribed to it if Silverlight had been a requirement at the time, though. I have no use for it otherwise.

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#72

Post by generalk »

avar wrote: post #52
jasonkester wrote: post #15

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-br…

Bing Maps requires Silverlight for some features. I found that out when I tried Bing recently, but found that Microsoft is more interested in pushing their own technology than pushing their search engine. Microsoft also recently did a project with NASA that requires Silverlight. Thanks, Microsoft.

To be fair, if you wrote a browser plugin like Silverlight, wouldn't you do the majority of your projects in it?

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#73

Post by robryan »

jasonkester wrote: post #63
robryan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a .net developer, using silverlight to tie into things they already have makes a lot more sense than flash which would result in a somewhat parallel code base in something completely different. I guess if silverlight was the accepted plugin and flash was the newer player your feelings would be reversed.

Ah, but as developers our opinions don't matter at all. It's all about what our end-users want, and they clearly don't wan't to install Silverlight. The fact that it's 10x easier for me as a C# guy to write my thing against Silverlight has exactly zero bearing on my decision to build a product in it. Users won't install it, so it's just bad business to build software for it. And yes, naturally, if the other thing was…

I guess in a way it's aimed at enterprise custom stuff, a company running a .NET app can get it turned into a web app far cheaper with silverlight. That's the only place I have been exposed to it while interning. I personally wouldn't use it for anything but am happy to install the plugin as long as it doesn't noticeably degrade performance.

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#74

Post by Kadrith »

I do my best not to use any external plug-ins. If I find a site that looks really compelling I may consider it, but there is a lot that can be done without plug-ins.

If someone isn't willing to put in the effort to create a native web site why should I put in the effort to install a plug-in?

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#75

Post by mseebach »

jasonkester wrote: post #15

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-br…

Ryanairs route map requires Silverlight. I wonder if whatever Microsoft paid for that is more than lost revenue from customers exploring potential destinations.

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#77

Post by rodion_89 »

simonw wrote: post #13
barrettcolin wrote: post #5

The Steam hardware survey: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey now includes software, which includes Silverlight.

I'm impressed that 3.21% of Windows users with Steam installed don't have the Flash Player.

On both my Windows and Mac machines, I use Chrome which comes with Flash. So I didn't do a system wide install for Flash at all and thus Steam doesn't see that I have it installed anywhere even though I do.

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#78

Post by richardw »

My bank has an online trading environment that uses Silverlight. It's a fairly closed environment and the banking industry here is an oligopoly, so they get away with it.

Frankly, I think that's how many of these things go. Intranet -> closed community -> specialist websites -> general web.

Re: Poll: Do you have Silverlight installed?

#79

Post by kihlasht »

pornel wrote: post #34
dagw wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I honestly don't recall installing it, but apparently I must have at some point.

Flip4Mac (WMV codec) installer comes with persona non grata.

This must be fairly recent; I have Flip4Mac installed but do not have Silverlight installed.
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