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Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

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

#111

Post by bostonpete »

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…

> nobody would take the iPad seriously if it didn't support Flash

That sounds like revisionist history to me. Plenty of people complained about the lack of Flash and speculated that Apple might eventually have to give in and allow it, but I don't think any significant number of people suggested or believed that the iPad wouldn't be taken seriously without it.

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

#112

Post by nobody3141592 »

pseale wrote: post #109
nobody3141592 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to know what Microsoft's strategic direction is. While announcing lots of C++ love for Visual Studio and promises of C++11 compliance they don't have an API for writing native code apps on Windows The 'official toolkit' is WPF and whatever managed C++ is called today. But with Silverlight dead what future does it's under regarded cousin have? So no problem we all switch to it's new tablet/phone OS. Only…

The 'official toolkit' Metro is XAML + (C++ or .NET or MSHTML5). I've been told by a (true) Silverlight/WPF expert that the Win8 XAML most resembles the Silverlight API. Silverlight used to be promoted as: * Flex/Flash compete * Public web compete (I never recommended it for such) * line-of-business (not publicly available) apps * (recent) Windows Phone 7 Silverlight is now promoted as: * line-of-business apps * Wind…

If all the Silverlight team have been taken out and shot does XAML have a future?

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

#113

Post by Volpe »

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 don't think that's true.

Canvas tag was in safari (both desktop and mobile) and Firefox. Flash (at it's core) is just a canvas you can draw on.

2 Years ago, Flash (or Flex) was immature (for RIA), had poor tools, and poor runtime support (i.e half implemented exception handling, memory leaks etc), impossible to test.

HTML by comparison had a lot of tools for interaction models, and was only immature around canvas (animation/effects). Was easy to test etc.

They were kind of the inverse of each other. Flash was definitely not king. The company I worked at, was working on one of the largest flash apps around, and we constantly had problems with flash, to the point where a silverlight or HTML5 port was considered. (Not sure what they ended up doing).

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

#114

Post by rbanffy »

WayneDB wrote: post #87
rbanffy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh... You mean using Silverlight for intranet applications without a browser... That's an interesting idea. Allow me not to take part on it.

You're allowed. I'm also allowed to not be held hostage by a "standards committee" that never gets anything done.

You know you are hostage of a company that may discontinue the technology you depend on any moment they want, right?

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

#115

Post by rbanffy »

notatoad wrote: post #95
viggity wrote: post #15

I "get" it when it comes to silverlight for public facing websites. Really. I do. The general populace doesn't want to have to install a plugin. But what about intranet apps? Silverlight is so incredibly easy to work with (compared to html/css/js) that there are lots of companies that have built intranet apps with it because they control the end point. I really hope this isn't true.

an intranet is the sign of a lazy IT department. put that stuff up on the internet, let employees access the resources they need wherever they are, from whatever device they are using. every discussion i've ever seen about advancing the state of the web, the sticking point has always been "what about intranet/corporate networks?". well, if you run an intranet, fuck you. stop using the idea that you control the endpoi…

Not that simple. There are tons of rules and regulations businesses may have to follow. Some data may never leave company premises. Some data may never leave the room it exists.

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

#116

Post by nitrogen »

nitrogen wrote: post #71
pornel wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had true bytecode in the browser already, it was called Java. VM isn't necessarily going to make things better. JS execution speed increased by orders of magnitude (it's getting close to decoding H.264 in real time!) It's more likely that ES6 and future versions will make JS more palatable and easier to optimize. Currently it's the DOM that needs work: it's full of messy, needlessly complicated C++-derived interfa…

Currently it's the DOM that needs work: it's full of messy, needlessly complicated C++-derived interfaces and DOM speed didn't get as much love as the raw JS. What I'd like to see is a layer of abstraction somewhere between canvas/SVG and the DOM: you have mostly-rectangular objects, with Swing- and Qt-style layout managers used to specify their positions. The container object's CSS specifies the layout used to arran…

So apparently people are highly opposed to the idea? What would be a better alternative for creating and laying out web apps without the overhead of the full document object model?

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

#117

Post by pseale »

nobody3141592 wrote: post #112
pseale wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'official toolkit' Metro is XAML + (C++ or .NET or MSHTML5). I've been told by a (true) Silverlight/WPF expert that the Win8 XAML most resembles the Silverlight API. Silverlight used to be promoted as: * Flex/Flash compete * Public web compete (I never recommended it for such) * line-of-business (not publicly available) apps * (recent) Windows Phone 7 Silverlight is now promoted as: * line-of-business apps * Wind…

If all the Silverlight team have been taken out and shot does XAML have a future?

If from a developer's viewpoint, XAML looks identical to Silverlight, and there are the same number of people working on XAML for the Windows team as there used to be working on Silverlight for DevDiv, does it matter?

But I bet you're feeling betrayed. I understand. I felt a little betrayed a few frameworks ago. Post-betrayal, I stick to focusing on transferable skills and JIT learn the rest of .NET. I'm on a WPF project now, have not studied WPF deeply.

My advice: if you have any say in the matter, try to work with ASP.NET MVC as opposed to the .NET alternatives, so your skills transfer.

Footnote: I don't know how many worked on Silverlight/WPF/WP7 versus how many work on XAML now. I assume XAML will march on. But no one will care unless/until the Windows tablet is successful.

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

#118

Post by watty »

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…

HTML5 support still sucks. I work with companies daily who are forced to use old versions of IE. So, we're forced to use plain HTML to build our business on, technology is going backwards.

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

#120

Post by j79 »

watty wrote: post #118
beagle3 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

HTML5 support still sucks. I work with companies daily who are forced to use old versions of IE. So, we're forced to use plain HTML to build our business on, technology is going backwards.

HTML5 support doesn't suck. Check out http://caniuse.com, and you'll notice that non-IE browsers are doing a rockin' job supporting HTML5. If you develop for iOS or Android, HTML5/CSS3 has been a joy. Sure, there are hiccups, but support is far from "sucking".

It sounds like your companies upgrade policies suck! OR, their decision to support/build around proprietary web technologies, hindering their ability TO upgrade. That sucks.

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