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Microsoft may halt development work on Silverlight plugin after next release

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121–130 of 142 posts

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

#121
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…

XAML worse than HTML/CSS? What about the fun task of hacking your HTML/CSS app to look the same across browsers?

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if data can't leave the room and it's on your network, you are in violation of that policy whether you have an intranet or an internet.

security policies like those are stupid, and an artifact of a time before networks. we shouldn't have to build our networks around outdated policies, security policy should be built to accommodate the technologies of the time.

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

#123
post #121
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…

XAML worse than HTML/CSS? What about the fun task of hacking your HTML/CSS app to look the same across browsers?

Wait, you're looking to Silverlight for cross OS/browser support? ha!

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

#124
post #81

What will Microsoft do for 3D on the web, then? They've said the won't implement WebGL and Silverlight 5 + XNA was supposedly their solution.

If I were a betting man, I would guess "build some new proprietary technology", but they may just go back to WebGL now that they are committing to HTML5.

I really do hope they decide to go with WebGL.

Keeping a fragmented ecosystem with a 'WebDirectX' or some other proprietary new tech will just slow overall progress in this area. For web developers doing 3D it means "This site requires IE/This site doesn't support IE" unless you can support two parallel codebases.

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

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the web plugin. No evidence of it going away on WP7 or Windows 8.

That isn't what I've heard (from people still at Microsoft). Everything points to Silverlight and WPF being frozen because the teams are pretty much broken up at this point. Also, this is pretty clear as well: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17254070

There were updates made to WPF in the recent .NET 4.5 beta that was released at BUILD. Not immense updates, but non-trivial ones either.

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

#126
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

I assumed that XAML was the silverlight team (why duplicate effort) and if silverligth is gone how much core knowledge stays in XAML?

Personally I stuck to C++ and moved MFC->wx->Qt !

.Net is interesting for the way it allows things like Ironpython and F# in as first class languages and wpf is fun to play with, but if you can't write something like Office or photoshop in it then it's just a toy.

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

#127
I have been working on a silverlight app for almost 2 years. We started in silverlight 2 and are now on silverlight 4. There have been a million twists and turns but our business demanded things that simply are not practical from HTML/JS.

People within both Microsoft and Google use my app, and I recently heard from our division president that they were "blown away".

With this news the mandate came down to prepare to "rewrite in python". How is that for marching orders. Makes no sense but management is so anti-Microsoft at this point they are irrational.

As a developer I have sunk years of time and effort into this. I guess I can take my XAML knowledge and build windows 8 LOB apps down the street.

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if data can't leave the room and it's on your network, you are in violation of that policy whether you have an intranet or an internet. security policies like those are stupid, and an artifact of a time before networks. we shouldn't have to build our networks around outdated policies, security policy should be built to accommodate the technologies of the time.

We don't have anything like that here - we don't do top secret stuff - but, in that case, the machine wouldn't be on the network.

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

#129
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't see anything particularly remarkable there. http://www.trirand.com/blog/jqgrid/jqgrid.html

The trirand grid that you linked to doesn't even get keyboard or mouse focus right. It doesn't even get row selection right.

If you think that's a good grid, I don't expect you to see anything remarkable about the grid I posted.

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything particularly remarkable there. http://www.trirand.com/blog/jqgrid/jqgrid.html

The trirand grid that you linked to doesn't even get keyboard or mouse focus right. It doesn't even get row selection right. If you think that's a good grid, I don't expect you to see anything remarkable about the grid I posted.

The most remarkable thing about the grid you posted is that it won't run on my computer. In fact, it won't run on any of my computers.

Looking around my office, I gather it would run on about four or five computers out of the about 50 here.

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