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Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

theverge.com

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Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#51

Post by jonpaul »

d4nt wrote: post #12

Until a year or two ago there was a stalemate as far as "rich web" development technologies goes. Neither flash, Silverlight or HTML5 was the clear winner. I remember people being incredulous that the iPad didn't support Flash, saying that while it might be ok for the iPhone to not support it, nobody would take the iPad seriously if it didn't support Flash. In a way, I think it might be the combined weight of the iPh…

I am/was a Silverlight fan. When Microsoft made it clear that they were focusing on JavaScript (I realize it's not standard's compliant) with Windows 8, I finally spent a lot of time considering the situation. Apparently a lot of the Silverlight team quit or was moved to other divisions. The wriitng was on the wall.

For the last three years, I'd find anyway to build a RIA in anything but JS/HTML. I'd use GWT/Cappuccino/Silverlight/Flex, etc. After Microsoft's move, I finally just embraced JS/CoffeeScript; I love every bit of it.

Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#52

Post by AndrewDucker »

jeswin wrote: post #27
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The branding might be going away, just like the Zune brand, but the core technologies are already part of the Windows 8 SDK.

Forget silverlight, .net itself has a questionable future on windows client. WinRT went back to C++. .NET is being positioned a server side technology.

WinRT works just fine with .net.

Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#53

Post by frou_dh »

WayneDB wrote: post #45
rbanffy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have very rich HTML+JavaScript+JSON interfaces here that make me orders of magnitude more productive than I was in the 90's, but that may be me. OTOH, you may be tied to IE6 and unable to see all this.

Please, show me your best HTML UI components and we will compare them to the native ones or even the Silverlight ones that are available (from Telerik, DevExpress, Infragistics, ComponentOne, etc) Can you even get a data grid that is half as powerful or has as robust an API as something like this? http://www.telerik.com/products/wpf/gridview.aspx

It does look powerful, but the font rendering is dire. So the browser gets at least one plus.

Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#54

Post by MatthewPhillips »

moonchrome wrote: post #24
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The branding might be going away, just like the Zune brand, but the core technologies are already part of the Windows 8 SDK.

What core technology - XAML & .NET ? AFAIK WinRT is a rewrite and is not compatible with WPF & Silverlight. Silverlight (cross-platform RIA plugin) seems dead.

So the namespaces have changed, but the techniques remain the same. XAML remains the same. I can't imagine anyone expecting their WPF application to compile for a new interface with different metaphors.

Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#55

Post by dos1 »

Good riddance! I spent the last 5 months at a gig working on a massive Silverlight 4 application. I've been a web guy forever, but I took this job thinking it would be good to learn how the other half lives. After experiencing the pain and drudgery of working with Silverlight, I couldn't be happier that it's going away.

The most maddening part of working on a Silverlight app was that things that are dead simple with HTML/JS/CSS are tons of work with SL. I was always amazed at the gymnastics required to get even simple UI functionality to work.

Xaml itself was a problem. Why in god's name to we need another superset of XML? Especially with all that atrocious binding syntax.

And also, every time you want to see a UI change you have to build the XAP. When you have tons of Xaml is takes forever to compile to see a minor change!

Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#56

Post by MatthewPhillips »

jeswin wrote: post #27
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The branding might be going away, just like the Zune brand, but the core technologies are already part of the Windows 8 SDK.

Forget silverlight, .net itself has a questionable future on windows client. WinRT went back to C++. .NET is being positioned a server side technology.

WinRT supports .NET applications.

But to your point, I'd wager that .NET is already used more on the server side than on clients apps as its use in enterprise line-of-business is massive.

Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#57

Post by jonpaul »

dos1 wrote: post #55

Good riddance! I spent the last 5 months at a gig working on a massive Silverlight 4 application. I've been a web guy forever, but I took this job thinking it would be good to learn how the other half lives. After experiencing the pain and drudgery of working with Silverlight, I couldn't be happier that it's going away. The most maddening part of working on a Silverlight app was that things that are dead simple with…

Interesting... I as a Silverlight dev now learning JS/HTML/CSS would say the complete opposite. I find it very difficult to create similar layout functionality like DockPanel and friends. Any tips?

Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#58

Post by loarabia »

dos1 wrote: post #55

Good riddance! I spent the last 5 months at a gig working on a massive Silverlight 4 application. I've been a web guy forever, but I took this job thinking it would be good to learn how the other half lives. After experiencing the pain and drudgery of working with Silverlight, I couldn't be happier that it's going away. The most maddening part of working on a Silverlight app was that things that are dead simple with…

I see your gripe with the REPL loop and binding but . . .

Would you be willing to share what was easy with HTML/CSS/JS that was tons of work with SL and what gymnastics you had to go through? I'm genuinely curious.

Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#59

Post by d4nt »

beagle3 wrote: post #41
d4nt wrote: post #12

Until a year or two ago there was a stalemate as far as "rich web" development technologies goes. Neither flash, Silverlight or HTML5 was the clear winner. I remember people being incredulous that the iPad didn't support Flash, saying that while it might be ok for the iPhone to not support it, nobody would take the iPad seriously if it didn't support Flash. In a way, I think it might be the combined weight of the iPh…

Stalemate? Two years ago, flash was the only game in town; Good HTML5 implementations were no where to be found, and Silverlight adoption was a joke. It's not like you could HTML5 an equivalent to flash on an iPhone OS 3. I agree that things started changing rapidly two years ago, with the introduction of iOS 4. But there was never a stalemate -- Flash was king; then there was chaos; and now HTML5 is winning (for the…

I guess I mean that for people who were considering which platform to build their rich internet app on, there was not a obvious choice.

EDIT: I admit, there was a time when Flash was the only option, but as early as 2003 I recall "Ajax" being used in preference to Flash for web user interfaces that needed an element of richness. So, I think there has been dissatisfaction with Flash for longer than you imply.

Re: Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

#60

Post by rbanffy »

WayneDB wrote: post #43
rbanffy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as your browser supports the SL plugin.

Incorrect. Silverlight runs out of browser.

Oh... You mean using Silverlight for intranet applications without a browser...

That's an interesting idea. Allow me not to take part on it.

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