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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

#101

Post by cpeterso »

feintruled wrote: post #67
hello_moto wrote: post #11

Wonder what will happen to NetFlix for web. Fallback to Flash I'm guessing...

They already have a HTML5 client, created for the PS3: http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/why-we-choose-html5-for-...

Are Netflix's streaming videos DRM'd? On a closed system like the PS3, an HTML5 video player might be possible, but how would they protect their video in a HTML5 video player on a desktop computer? DRM'd desktop video seems like a good opportunity for Flash and Silverlight since HTML5 is unlikely to offer might DRM support.

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

#102

Post by rhplus »

zbuc wrote: post #75
WayneDB wrote: 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

It won't even run on OS X so that's a pretty big plus for HTML UI components, given that modern web UI frameworks are all pretty reliably cross-browser.

FWIW, Silverlight does run on OS X[1]. The demo link above was for WPF. The Silverlight version is here: http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/Get-Started/Install/...

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

#103

Post by dos1 »

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

You've obviously never used the Telerik components. If you want to build the thing in their demo the controls are fabulous. If you want to build anything else you'll suffer more than you can imagine. I've had the misfortune to use several revisions of the Telerik for ASP.NET controls, and the Telerik for Silverlight controls. The Silverlight controls were atrocious.

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

#104

Post by ConstantineXVI »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #61
JonoW wrote: post #38

Damn, we're getting ever closer to Atwoods law! "Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/08/all-programming-is-...

I don't know what Silverlight does under the covers, but the event handling language in Flash is Actionscript, which is a dialect of Javascript. So in that sense we're already there.

Silverlight is just C# (or theoretically any CLR language) with XAML layouts and a specialized set of libraries.

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

#105

Post by ConstantineXVI »

cpeterso wrote: post #101
feintruled wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already have a HTML5 client, created for the PS3: http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/why-we-choose-html5-for-...

Are Netflix's streaming videos DRM'd? On a closed system like the PS3, an HTML5 video player might be possible, but how would they protect their video in a HTML5 video player on a desktop computer? DRM'd desktop video seems like a good opportunity for Flash and Silverlight since HTML5 is unlikely to offer might DRM support.

Just because your app is HTML5 doesn't mean you have to run it in a browser. Just like on phones, drop a WebView in and you're set. IIRC, Spotify actually uses Chromium in some capacity on their native client.

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

#106

Post by arctangent »

mweimer wrote: post #28
arctangent wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why require your developers to learn another set of technologies? Much better IMHO to just have a good web development team who can make internal applications too.

I think most corporations already have people with C#/XAML skills.

The odds are much higher that they have some in-house web developers.

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

#107

Post by lallysingh »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #23
hkarthik wrote: post #10

I'm curious what Netflix has in the works to move off of Silverlight. I remember reading that their biggest problem with HTML5 players was the lack of good DRM options to please the studios.

Why would they want to move off something that works? The plugins will be getting security updates after all.

.. fixes for OS updates? Comparability with newer drivers?

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

#108

Post by nobody3141592 »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #23
hkarthik wrote: post #10

I'm curious what Netflix has in the works to move off of Silverlight. I remember reading that their biggest problem with HTML5 players was the lack of good DRM options to please the studios.

Why would they want to move off something that works? The plugins will be getting security updates after all.

One code stream for obsolete windows a different one for new windows, another for iPhone/OSX, another for Android......

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

#109

Post by pseale »

nobody3141592 wrote: post #94
jongraehl wrote: post #89

At Microsoft you have a bunch of brilliant programmers who are forced to follow "strategic direction" from above. Even if they wanted to, there's no way they can continue working on a mothballed project they still believe in. People who relied on the Silverlight plugin certainly cannot continue to develop it, either. Long-run, there's more security in relying on software created by a sufficiently large and capable co…

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 * Windows Phone 7, but maybe Win Phone 8 will look more like the Win8 Metro XAML (I don't think they've said anything yet)

Metro is now promoted for:

* Win8 tablet apps * Win8 native apps(? who cares I guess?) * possibly Win Phone 8 apps

I don't know what apps you write, so I don't know what your specific roadmap may look like. I've leaned toward recommending web apps over "client" apps for .NET devs the past few years, and will heavily lean that way going forward. ASP.NET MVC skills translate easily to open source/competing web frameworks. WPF or Silverlight developers can't say the same thing.

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

#110

Post by Luyt »

nobody3141592 wrote: post #94
jongraehl wrote: post #89

At Microsoft you have a bunch of brilliant programmers who are forced to follow "strategic direction" from above. Even if they wanted to, there's no way they can continue working on a mothballed project they still believe in. People who relied on the Silverlight plugin certainly cannot continue to develop it, either. Long-run, there's more security in relying on software created by a sufficiently large and capable co…

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…

"they don't have an API for writing native code apps on Windows"

I'm still writing to the native WIN32 API (albeit via Borland's C++Builder which uses the VCL 'Visual Component Library', the same library that powers Delphi) and that stuff still runs on Windows 7.

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