Many different sources are reporting that Microsoft has unleashed the third major version of Silverlight to the masses. With 3.0 we see things like better 3D graphics support, the ability to offload tasks to a GPU, and the ability to run apps outside of the browser. "Silverlight's video capabilities have always been impressive when compared to Flash, and the new version boasts some new features that should keep the competition with Flash hot. It uses a media broadcasting technology Microsoft calls Smooth Streaming, an adaptive technology for playing the same H.264 video stream at the highest bitrate the device and its bandwidth limitations will allow. So if you've got a fast computer with an HD monitor and a wide open pipe, you'll see super high quality video at up to full 1080p HD. If you've got a dinky smartphone with mid-level data service, you'll see a constrained version of the same video."
3D graphics support does sound interesting, specially when thinking how many flash games there are out but how they lack better graphics. Maybe we start to see DirectX like games directly in web browser too.
Or more accurately, Chrome OS will push HTML 5 apps, making Flash and MS Flash (Silverlight) obsolete.
Microsoft is already targeting Smooth Streaming as the trojan horse for pushing Silverlight (and already successfully managed to force anyone who wanted to watch the Olympics or the DNC last year to download Silverlight 2). However, Apple has done an end run around Microsoft by submitting very similar technology it calls HTTP Live Streaming to the IETF as a proposed standard, patterned after SHOUTcast/Icecast HTTP streaming of MP3 (basically upgrading Internet radio to Internet TV).
And while Microsoft dutifully tries to push Silverlight out as The Only Client of its Smooth Streaming, Apple already has shipped HTTP Live Streaming in iPhone 3.0 to its installed base of +40 million active mobile iPhone/iPod Touch users, with partners Akamai and big name MPEG transport stream encoder vendors. In contrast, Smooth Streaming is designed to tie streaming only to Microsoft's streamer, IIS, and Silverlight on the client (surprise!).
Any client that can play H.264/AAC audio/video from MPEG transport streams can play content targeted to the iPhone. You can serve it from any web server. You don't need to create an iPhone App to deliver content to the iPhone, it streams right from the web, right now. That means it will be easy for vendors such as Palm or Android to support streaming video targeted to the iPhone, despite having a much smaller installed base than the iPhone. And with the release of Snow Leopard, QuickTime X will stream HTTP Live Streaming from the desktop, and presumably, Apple TV.
This tears away the primary need for Flash or MS Flash (Silverlight), paving the way open for HTML 5 to push compliant browsers (FireFox, Opera, Safari, other WebKit browsers) into the forefront and leave a dwindling minority on IE 6/7/8 with Silverlight/Flash. Best, HTML 5 can provide fallback, offering HTTP Live Streaming as the first option, H.264 progressive download as a secondary, Ogg Theora for Wikipedia hosting videos that won't play on any mobile devices outside of the desktop PC, and Flash for the Neanderthals among us.
This tears away the primary need for Flash or MS Flash (Silverlight), paving the way open for HTML 5 to push compliant browsers (FireFox, Opera, Safari, other WebKit browsers) into the forefront and leave a dwindling minority on IE 6/7/8 with Silverlight/Flash.
Streaming MPEG and HTML 5 don't play games, unless you can run a server farm and stream the game image, or you want to make something horribly convoluted and possibly unstable. Either way - Silverlight would have made a great grab at Macromedia's market share...which was what, 5 years ago?
Why would you want a security atrocity like DirectX? Aren't there enough security holes already? If anything, we should think about banning DirectX from the Web? We should also ban ActiveX.
I've never heard of any exploits targeting DirectX or someone breaking in via GPU. In a same way someone could exploit Windows sound driver via flash applet to break in. I dont think I've used any ActiveX objects for 10 years, and times have changed. Obviously security has also come up too.
I've never heard of any exploits targeting DirectX or someone breaking in via GPU. In a same way someone could exploit Windows sound driver via flash applet to break in. I dont think I've used any ActiveX objects for 10 years, and times have changed. Obviously security has also come up too.
Speaking of ActiveX, am I missing something or does that part about "apps outside the browser" sound like a more modern reimplementation of the old ActiveX? By that I mean, whether it's "inside the browser" or in a different window, this still amounts to running executable code from remote hosts. Let's hope this isn't the security nightmare that ActiveX proved to be, and yes, it's reasonable to look at a company's track record when speculating about these matters.
The difference is that Silverlight code is CIL bytecode that runs inside a sandbox.
ActiveX was native code, and you only had two options: to trust or to not trust, but once you installed the code, the executable had as many rights on your system as any other application running with your user ID.
Silverlight (and Moonlight) come with a sandbox that limits what the code that you download can do, for instance, they do not get direct access to any of your files.
Maybe we start to see DirectX like games directly in web browser too.
Too bad "we" doesn't include "me." My linux-based PVR can't run Netflix on demand because it's silverlight-based, so that's my main association with the technology. Hulu is also linking out to broadcaster's own incompatible streaming sites rather than hosting stuff itself. I fear we are returning to the bad old days of a few years ago when a lot of multimedia on the web was incompatible with linux. Poor linux users, under-represented minority that we are:)
Well, that is a very good point. Ultimately the lack of proprietary content on open software is due to a fundamental ideological and economic incompatibility, and the technology is just a symptom of that.
It's not three-d graphics. It's layered two-d graphics with interesting transforms. You can make something look like it's flipping in or out, and you can do sprites, but you can't make a fully three-d game (that is, you can't rotate something around with bits sticking out).
Why not? Because this approach gets you a bunch of cool effects without the pain of real 3D programming.
Sure, just send the most significant bits in a high-priority packet, and send the least significant bits in lower-priority packets. It seems so simple, it's hard to believe such a feature isn't supported in every audio and video codec.
I think one of the most reasonable concerns against the rising usage of silverlight, and therefore the need for moonlight for linux, is that if new version of moonlight can't keep up with the updated version of silverlight then its not the multiplatform wonder that it should be to be competitive with flash.
I think one of the most reasonable concerns against the rising usage of silverlight, and therefore the need for moonlight for linux, is that if new version of moonlight can't keep up with the updated version of silverlight then its not the multiplatform wonder that it should be to be competitive with flash.
Er, "moonlight"? Cripes, change the name already, sounds like an HD streaming porn plugin.
The Mac version of Silverlight only works on Intel Macs, where Flash works on both PPC and Intel.
"Works" is stretching things a little. PPC Flash was always painfully slow, even by Flash's usual miserable standards.
Google Chrome also won't support PPC users, and Apple is officially depreciating PowerPC support in its next OS release. Should we complain about that too?
I've still got a 12" Powerbook that I'll likely cling on to as long as it works -- it's easily the best laptop I've ever used. However, even I'll acknowledge that it's not practical for commercial software vendors to continually support old platforms.
Exactly what I was thinking. But I would say that this is still more innovation from MS and they look to be getting their crap together a bit lately - that is I would say that, if this wasn't/.
I think this is more like running the apps on your desktop when you doubleclick the icon, like Flash players can do already. It doesn't mean all Silverlight apps on websites or even on your computer suddenly gets access to all your files and stuff.
Whereas your comment sounds like the standard Microsoft mitigation that "this is not a critical vulnerability, because the majority of people aren't bad".
It's yet another "autorun" vector allowing things on webpages to do / launch things elsewhere in your computer... haven't you learnt anything from ActiveX, autorun.inf, resgistry Run & RunOnce & RunService and the hundred of other vectors that allow people to do bad things with Windows products ?
If they'd lock the thing down properly, it wouldn't
...been impressive when compared to Flash? Really? Then why did mlb.com switch from Silverlight to Flash [cnet.com]? I remember when they did this - I had unsubscribed because the Silverlight player was such a mess, and I went back and signed up for the rest of the season.
Silverlight, although not widely used yet (less than 5% of market), is great and innovative compared to Flash which itself now requires a $1499 set of programs for development.
Again, MS is building something better than the people who built it first. (OS, GUI, Office Tools, Chat, Browser, now Flash)
MS is not a Monopoly by accident. They are a Monopoly by improvement.
Not many sites used Silverlight 1.0, because to begin with, barely any sites used Silverlight 1.0.
1.0 did not include the.NET runtime, for most people it was just a javascript plugin that did audio and video. Silverlight only became interesting with 2.0 (this is what we were drawn to when Silverlight 1.1 was announced).
Folks have three options for Silverlight on Linux: (a) Hope that Microsoft supports it. (b) Ignore it altogether and hope it vanishes. (c) Support Moonlight.
We have taken the third step as we believe it will gain adoption and Silverlight will be required to access certain web sites in the future. You might disagree and hope for (a) or (b). In the meantime, we have initiated a collaboration with Microsoft where they provide us with licensed codecs and test suites for all of Silverlight (.NET, GUI, video, audio, streaming) to make sure that the open source version of Silverlight is compatible.
Although we had early access to 2.0 and 3.0, we only use this knowledge for planning. Once they go beta, we have used the public information to add some of those features to Moonlight as we go. For example Moonlight 1.9.5 is actually a mix of Silverlight 2.0 and 3.0, it already supports some four or five features from Silverlight 3.
But Silverlight is a large project, and we are a small team compared to the task at hand, so you are right that we will continue to lag behind Silverlight. This trend in my opinion will change when the fundamental principle of open source kicks in: the need to scratch and itch.
Most Linux users have not had a compelling reason to use Moonlight other than for example Moonshine, but as Silverlight continues to gain adoption and more sites require it, we expect open source contributors to join our effort to tune, improve, bug fix and implement the features on time.
Although you might want to portray having an open source version of Silverlight as a "a losing game", we see this as fundamentally important for Linux to continue to have access to the best technologies.
Barely any sites use Silverlight, period. Pretty much the only ones doing at are being paid to do so, thus it is fairly safe to say they will all be showcasing the very most recent features.
> Folks have three options for Silverlight on Linux:
There is one more. A major PR campaign to induce Microsoft to cooperate with more early information. They need Silverlight to be thought of as cross platform a lot more than we currently need them. This should be leverag
..I still think that Microsoft did not understand what the Internet is about: interoperability. You can create whatever nice framework you want - as long as it is not supported by many systems the adoption rate will be slim. If they would make the API a public standard (that is not restricted) then people might adapt, if it is any good.
Now I know, someone will surely insist that the Windows platform still has the majority of the market share and most users don't care, but you see, most users also don't write applications, and as long as you try to feed BS to the later group of people, you are going nowhere.
Another thing is I see is that the Silverlight frameworks seems to have some severe design issues as it is necessary to bring out a new version seemingly every half year. A well designed platform would try to get the basics right in the first few iterations and then add libraries to it that provide more functionality without having to do a 180 on the whole basic coding.
Guess this will even turn down Microsoft sympathising developers as they can't keep up with the change that's happening continuously. I mean many people are fed up that everything Microsoft does is obsolete in three years time and you can start anew with learning and development (see VB, classic ASP and so forth).
Another thing is, that though the feature list sounds impressive, there are a lot of undressed issues like security that is a very important one with this kind of networked technology.
I still think that Microsoft did not understand what the Internet is about: interoperability.
That may be how the Internet looks to the geek.
But there are a growing number of "gated communities" that simply use the net as a connecting link:
Steam. Netflix. YouTube, MySpace, WoW and so on.
Now I know, someone will surely insist that the Windows platform still has the majority of the market share and most users don't care, but you see, most users also don't write applications, and as long as you try to feed
Icebike asked: What could Possibly go wrong with that?!?
You tell me.
It's in the same security sandbox as when it's running in the browser - it doesn't have the ability to read or write the file system outside of it's own size-limited isolated storage bin, it can't take keyboard input when full-screen, has no access to webcams and mikes, and it can't send or receive data at websites that it didn't download from unless they opt in.
Maybe you had something specific in mind that nobody else had thought of in th
So basically after all this time and effort, the current state of the art wonderful new technology is "the thick client"? Colour me unimpressed:-/
People really need to stop being amazed every time the paradigm switches from thin client to thick and back, only each time with more abstraction layers...
I used to think Silverlight was unnecessary and not useful to me. Then I found Visifire and have had to admit, whether or not Visifire could have been done in Flash isn't so much relevant to me as the fact that this is very useful software to me, and if that means installing Silverlight, so be it. I don't use it for web usage (I'm using it to create static images, not live graphs), so whether Silverlight has a future as a general web platform isn't an issue for me.
that this is very useful software to me, and if that means installing Silverlight, so be it.
If you've already drunk Adobe's Kool-Aid, what's Microsoft's? It's like Coke and Pepsi, neither one particularly cares about the health effects of consuming their product.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday July 10, @12:40PM (#28652205)
What would open sourcing Flash do for them? There are really two possibilities. First, it could attract contributions from external developers. The chance of this is slim, and most of the contributions would probably be poor, so this would just add administrative overhead on Adobe's side for accepting patches. Second, it could lead to forks of Flash. This would be devastating for Flash - the whole premise of Flash, and the reason it's so popular, is that It Just Works (tm) consistently across platforms.
Silverlight can only be "thought of as a sort of HTML 5" if you also sort of thought of Win32 as HTML 4.
Jesus Christ, it's just a clone of Flash that attempts to make Vista's.Net as a binary substitute for the open web.
And yes, Microsoft is desperately trying to compete with Chrome/Chrome OS/HTML 5, just like the company successfully killed Client-side Java and non-IE browsers as a threat to the Win32 monopoly, then sat back and let IE go rotten once it ruled the roost.
If you still live in the late 90s and think Microsoft is invincible and can decree standards by fiat with its monopoly share of the PC desktop and the web browser, let me welcome you to the 2000s, where:
- Microsoft's WMA/WMV-VC-1 codecs failed to kill or even matter in the face of MPEG H.264/ACC. - Microsoft's HD-DVD + HDi [roughlydrafted.com] failed against Blu-Ray and H.264 content in iTunes. - Microsoft's ASF/AAF container files failed to win against QuickTime/MPEG-4 (with even MS now using MP4 in Smooth Streaming). - Efforts to push Zune and PlaysForSure DRM and MS-DRM music subscriptions failed against the iPod and iTunes. - Efforts to push Windows Mobile as a brand have collapsed in the face of the iPhone. - Microsoft's IE monopoly over the web has shrunk down to 60% and continues a rapid decline as Firefox, Chrome and Safari eat up share. - Microsoft's Windows monopoly is facing a global shrinking PC market, mass rejection of a heavyweight Vista/Win7 type operating system as systems move toward netbooks and ultra cheap PCs and laptops that can't support a fat OS, and the loss of the premium PC market for higher end systems to Apple.
Microsoft might be all you know, but it's time to start learning about alternatives or you'll be stuck with the dinosaurs.
3D graphics support (Score:5, Interesting)
3D graphics support does sound interesting, specially when thinking how many flash games there are out but how they lack better graphics. Maybe we start to see DirectX like games directly in web browser too.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And then Chrome OS can run Silverlight which will run Windows 7 with Aero and everybody wins!
Re:3D graphics support (Score:5, Informative)
Or more accurately, Chrome OS will push HTML 5 apps, making Flash and MS Flash (Silverlight) obsolete.
Microsoft is already targeting Smooth Streaming as the trojan horse for pushing Silverlight (and already successfully managed to force anyone who wanted to watch the Olympics or the DNC last year to download Silverlight 2). However, Apple has done an end run around Microsoft by submitting very similar technology it calls HTTP Live Streaming to the IETF as a proposed standard, patterned after SHOUTcast/Icecast HTTP streaming of MP3 (basically upgrading Internet radio to Internet TV).
And while Microsoft dutifully tries to push Silverlight out as The Only Client of its Smooth Streaming, Apple already has shipped HTTP Live Streaming in iPhone 3.0 to its installed base of +40 million active mobile iPhone/iPod Touch users, with partners Akamai and big name MPEG transport stream encoder vendors. In contrast, Smooth Streaming is designed to tie streaming only to Microsoft's streamer, IIS, and Silverlight on the client (surprise!).
Any client that can play H.264/AAC audio/video from MPEG transport streams can play content targeted to the iPhone. You can serve it from any web server. You don't need to create an iPhone App to deliver content to the iPhone, it streams right from the web, right now. That means it will be easy for vendors such as Palm or Android to support streaming video targeted to the iPhone, despite having a much smaller installed base than the iPhone. And with the release of Snow Leopard, QuickTime X will stream HTTP Live Streaming from the desktop, and presumably, Apple TV.
This tears away the primary need for Flash or MS Flash (Silverlight), paving the way open for HTML 5 to push compliant browsers (FireFox, Opera, Safari, other WebKit browsers) into the forefront and leave a dwindling minority on IE 6/7/8 with Silverlight/Flash. Best, HTML 5 can provide fallback, offering HTTP Live Streaming as the first option, H.264 progressive download as a secondary, Ogg Theora for Wikipedia hosting videos that won't play on any mobile devices outside of the desktop PC, and Flash for the Neanderthals among us.
Apple launches HTTP Live Streaming standard in iPhone 3.0 [roughlydrafted.com] : with a timeline and history of Internet streaming and links to example sites.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This tears away the primary need for Flash or MS Flash (Silverlight), paving the way open for HTML 5 to push compliant browsers (FireFox, Opera, Safari, other WebKit browsers) into the forefront and leave a dwindling minority on IE 6/7/8 with Silverlight/Flash.
Streaming MPEG and HTML 5 don't play games, unless you can run a server farm and stream the game image, or you want to make something horribly convoluted and possibly unstable. Either way - Silverlight would have made a great grab at Macromedia's market share...which was what, 5 years ago?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
here, Fixed that for you. /> element)
(please check html 5 draft spec concerning the <canvas
DirectX on WebApps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you want a security atrocity like DirectX? Aren't there enough security holes already? If anything, we should think about banning DirectX from the Web? We should also ban ActiveX.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never heard of any exploits targeting DirectX or someone breaking in via GPU. In a same way someone could exploit Windows sound driver via flash applet to break in. I dont think I've used any ActiveX objects for 10 years, and times have changed. Obviously security has also come up too.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've never heard of any exploits targeting DirectX or someone breaking in via GPU. In a same way someone could exploit Windows sound driver via flash applet to break in. I dont think I've used any ActiveX objects for 10 years, and times have changed. Obviously security has also come up too.
Speaking of ActiveX, am I missing something or does that part about "apps outside the browser" sound like a more modern reimplementation of the old ActiveX? By that I mean, whether it's "inside the browser" or in a different window, this still amounts to running executable code from remote hosts. Let's hope this isn't the security nightmare that ActiveX proved to be, and yes, it's reasonable to look at a company's track record when speculating about these matters.
Like too many articles linked on Slashd
Re:DirectX on WebApps? (Score:5, Informative)
The difference is that Silverlight code is CIL bytecode that runs inside a sandbox.
ActiveX was native code, and you only had two options: to trust or to not trust, but once you installed the code, the executable had as many rights on your system as any other application running with your user ID.
Silverlight (and Moonlight) come with a sandbox that limits what the code that you download can do, for instance, they do not get direct access to any of your files.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:3D graphics support (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad "we" doesn't include "me." My linux-based PVR can't run Netflix on demand because it's silverlight-based, so that's my main association with the technology. Hulu is also linking out to broadcaster's own incompatible streaming sites rather than hosting stuff itself. I fear we are returning to the bad old days of a few years ago when a lot of multimedia on the web was incompatible with linux. Poor linux users, under-represented minority that we are :)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Virtualbox running windows does it for me. Not sure how you'd set that up on a PVR, but I watch netflix in using Linux on a desktop that way.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:3D graphics support (Score:5, Informative)
It's not three-d graphics. It's layered two-d graphics with interesting transforms. You can make something look like it's flipping in or out, and you can do sprites, but you can't make a fully three-d game (that is, you can't rotate something around with bits sticking out).
Why not? Because this approach gets you a bunch of cool effects without the pain of real 3D programming.
(Disclaimer: I worked on silverlight)
Parent
Ogg was supposed to do this (Score:4, Informative)
They called it bitrate peeling.
Re:Ogg was supposed to do this (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, just send the most significant bits in a high-priority packet, and send the least significant bits in lower-priority packets. It seems so simple, it's hard to believe such a feature isn't supported in every audio and video codec.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And where exactly is moonlight? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I think one of the most reasonable concerns against the rising usage of silverlight, and therefore the need for moonlight for linux, is that if new version of moonlight can't keep up with the updated version of silverlight then its not the multiplatform wonder that it should be to be competitive with flash.
Er, "moonlight"? Cripes, change the name already, sounds like an HD streaming porn plugin.
Then again, like Flash or Silverlight isn't...
Re:And where exactly is moonlight? (Score:4, Informative)
The Mac version of Silverlight only works on Intel Macs, where Flash works on both PPC and Intel.
"Works" is stretching things a little. PPC Flash was always painfully slow, even by Flash's usual miserable standards.
Google Chrome also won't support PPC users, and Apple is officially depreciating PowerPC support in its next OS release. Should we complain about that too?
I've still got a 12" Powerbook that I'll likely cling on to as long as it works -- it's easily the best laptop I've ever used. However, even I'll acknowledge that it's not practical for commercial software vendors to continually support old platforms.
Parent
Security problems with a MS product? nah. (Score:5, Insightful)
and the ability to run apps outside of the browser.
It seems to me like this offers a remarkable opportunity for some very serious vulnerabilities if it is not handled very very carefully.
Re:Security problems with a MS product? nah. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think this is more like running the apps on your desktop when you doubleclick the icon, like Flash players can do already. It doesn't mean all Silverlight apps on websites or even on your computer suddenly gets access to all your files and stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me like this offers a remarkable opportunity for some very serious vulnerabilities if it is not handled very very carefully.
Like... what?
If I download a SWF file to my desktop, and run it by double-clicking it, is it somehow less secure than if I run it in a browser?
Re: (Score:2)
Whereas your comment sounds like the standard Microsoft mitigation that "this is not a critical vulnerability, because the majority of people aren't bad".
It's yet another "autorun" vector allowing things on webpages to do / launch things elsewhere in your computer ... haven't you learnt anything from ActiveX, autorun.inf, resgistry Run & RunOnce & RunService and the hundred of other vectors that allow people to do bad things with Windows products ?
If they'd lock the thing down properly, it wouldn't
Oh yeah! (Score:2)
Woohoo party! Wait, ...has Mono's Moonlight even caught up with Silverlight 2.0 yet? ..Nope.
Silverlight's video capabilities have always... (Score:5, Interesting)
...been impressive when compared to Flash? Really? Then why did mlb.com switch from Silverlight to Flash [cnet.com]? I remember when they did this - I had unsubscribed because the Silverlight player was such a mess, and I went back and signed up for the rest of the season.
That said, the ability to write Silverlight apps in Ruby [silverlight.net] is interesting.
Feature creep (Score:2)
How long before Silverlight adds email support?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The Light (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't walk towards the Light. Run.
Silverlight, although not widely used yet (less than 5% of market), is great and innovative compared to Flash which itself now requires a $1499 set of programs for development.
Again, MS is building something better than the people who built it first. (OS, GUI, Office Tools, Chat, Browser, now Flash)
MS is not a Monopoly by accident. They are a Monopoly by improvement.
H.264 licensing (Score:4, Insightful)
It is interesting that Moonlight is not currently pursuing H.264, which makes me wonder if MS is purposely gimping their linux/unix implementation.
Re:H.264 licensing (Score:5, Informative)
Moonlight will have H.264, but we are working towards our first beta of Moonlight 2.0
Parent
Re:H.264 licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
As with VC1 that are distributed with Moonlight use, the H.264 codecs will be fully licensed from MPEGLA.
Same goes for Moonlight, which is covered explicitly under the covenant not to sue from Microsoft.
Parent
Re:H.264 licensing (Score:4, Interesting)
Not many sites used Silverlight 1.0, because to begin with, barely any sites used Silverlight 1.0.
1.0 did not include the .NET runtime, for most people it was just a javascript plugin that did audio and video. Silverlight only became interesting with 2.0 (this is what we were drawn to when Silverlight 1.1 was announced).
Folks have three options for Silverlight on Linux:
(a) Hope that Microsoft supports it.
(b) Ignore it altogether and hope it vanishes.
(c) Support Moonlight.
We have taken the third step as we believe it will gain adoption and Silverlight will be required to access certain web sites in the future. You might disagree and hope for (a) or (b). In the meantime, we have initiated a collaboration with Microsoft where they provide us with licensed codecs and test suites for all of Silverlight (.NET, GUI, video, audio, streaming) to make sure that the open source version of Silverlight is compatible.
Although we had early access to 2.0 and 3.0, we only use this knowledge for planning. Once they go beta, we have used the public information to add some of those features to Moonlight as we go. For example Moonlight 1.9.5 is actually a mix of Silverlight 2.0 and 3.0, it already supports some four or five features from Silverlight 3.
But Silverlight is a large project, and we are a small team compared to the task at hand, so you are right that we will continue to lag behind Silverlight. This trend in my opinion will change when the fundamental principle of open source kicks in: the need to scratch and itch.
Most Linux users have not had a compelling reason to use Moonlight other than for example Moonshine, but as Silverlight continues to gain adoption and more sites require it, we expect open source contributors to join our effort to tune, improve, bug fix and implement the features on time.
Although you might want to portray having an open source version of Silverlight as a "a losing game", we see this as fundamentally important for Linux to continue to have access to the best technologies.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> barely any sites used Silverlight 1.0.
Barely any sites use Silverlight, period. Pretty much the only ones doing at are being paid to do so, thus it is fairly safe to say they will all be showcasing the very most recent features.
> Folks have three options for Silverlight on Linux:
There is one more. A major PR campaign to induce Microsoft to cooperate with more early information. They need Silverlight to be thought of as cross platform a lot more than we currently need them. This should be leverag
Sounds nice, but.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Now I know, someone will surely insist that the Windows platform still has the majority of the market share and most users don't care, but you see, most users also don't write applications, and as long as you try to feed BS to the later group of people, you are going nowhere.
Another thing is I see is that the Silverlight frameworks seems to have some severe design issues as it is necessary to bring out a new version seemingly every half year. A well designed platform would try to get the basics right in the first few iterations and then add libraries to it that provide more functionality without having to do a 180 on the whole basic coding.
Guess this will even turn down Microsoft sympathising developers as they can't keep up with the change that's happening continuously. I mean many people are fed up that everything Microsoft does is obsolete in three years time and you can start anew with learning and development (see VB, classic ASP and so forth).
Another thing is, that though the feature list sounds impressive, there are a lot of undressed issues like security that is a very important one with this kind of networked technology.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That may be how the Internet looks to the geek.
But there are a growing number of "gated communities" that simply use the net as a connecting link:
Steam. Netflix. YouTube, MySpace, WoW and so on.
Now I know, someone will surely insist that the Windows platform still has the majority of the market share and most users don't care, but you see, most users also don't write applications, and as long as you try to feed
Lets learn it all over again..... (Score:4, Funny)
> the ability to run apps outside of the browser.
What could Possibly go wrong with that?!?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Icebike asked: What could Possibly go wrong with that?!?
You tell me.
It's in the same security sandbox as when it's running in the browser - it doesn't have the ability to read or write the file system outside of it's own size-limited isolated storage bin, it can't take keyboard input when full-screen, has no access to webcams and mikes, and it can't send or receive data at websites that it didn't download from unless they opt in.
Maybe you had something specific in mind that nobody else had thought of in th
Argh, recursion (Score:4, Interesting)
So basically after all this time and effort, the current state of the art wonderful new technology is "the thick client"? Colour me unimpressed :-/
People really need to stop being amazed every time the paradigm switches from thin client to thick and back, only each time with more abstraction layers...
Sounds like a great reason for human cryogenics (Score:2)
since most of us will probably be dead before Windows is.
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I used to think Silverlight was unnecessary and not useful to me. Then I found Visifire and have had to admit, whether or not Visifire could have been done in Flash isn't so much relevant to me as the fact that this is very useful software to me, and if that means installing Silverlight, so be it. I don't use it for web usage (I'm using it to create static images, not live graphs), so whether Silverlight has a future as a general web platform isn't an issue for me.
Having said that, I suspect it won't, jus
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that this is very useful software to me, and if that means installing Silverlight, so be it.
If you've already drunk Adobe's Kool-Aid, what's Microsoft's? It's like Coke and Pepsi, neither one particularly cares about the health effects of consuming their product.
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... that will add nothing new, etc. ...
Did you actually even read the summary? It listed lots of new features that dont exist in Flash, so I dont think it "doesn't add anything new".
Re:Why won't Adobe open source Flash? (Score:4, Insightful)
What would open sourcing Flash do for them? There are really two possibilities. First, it could attract contributions from external developers. The chance of this is slim, and most of the contributions would probably be poor, so this would just add administrative overhead on Adobe's side for accepting patches. Second, it could lead to forks of Flash. This would be devastating for Flash - the whole premise of Flash, and the reason it's so popular, is that It Just Works (tm) consistently across platforms.
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If it does not run under Linux could this be considered an anti-competitive move by Microsoft to keep Linux out of the desktop or netbook market?
Is Office not being on Linux an anti-competitive move, or just not targeting a miniscule segment of the market?
Re:I would call it a hypercompetitive move (Score:5, Insightful)
Silverlight can only be "thought of as a sort of HTML 5" if you also sort of thought of Win32 as HTML 4.
Jesus Christ, it's just a clone of Flash that attempts to make Vista's .Net as a binary substitute for the open web.
And yes, Microsoft is desperately trying to compete with Chrome/Chrome OS/HTML 5, just like the company successfully killed Client-side Java and non-IE browsers as a threat to the Win32 monopoly, then sat back and let IE go rotten once it ruled the roost.
If you still live in the late 90s and think Microsoft is invincible and can decree standards by fiat with its monopoly share of the PC desktop and the web browser, let me welcome you to the 2000s, where:
- Microsoft's WMA/WMV-VC-1 codecs failed to kill or even matter in the face of MPEG H.264/ACC.
- Microsoft's HD-DVD + HDi [roughlydrafted.com] failed against Blu-Ray and H.264 content in iTunes.
- Microsoft's ASF/AAF container files failed to win against QuickTime/MPEG-4 (with even MS now using MP4 in Smooth Streaming).
- Efforts to push Zune and PlaysForSure DRM and MS-DRM music subscriptions failed against the iPod and iTunes.
- Efforts to push Windows Mobile as a brand have collapsed in the face of the iPhone.
- Microsoft's IE monopoly over the web has shrunk down to 60% and continues a rapid decline as Firefox, Chrome and Safari eat up share.
- Microsoft's Windows monopoly is facing a global shrinking PC market, mass rejection of a heavyweight Vista/Win7 type operating system as systems move toward netbooks and ultra cheap PCs and laptops that can't support a fat OS, and the loss of the premium PC market for higher end systems to Apple.
Microsoft might be all you know, but it's time to start learning about alternatives or you'll be stuck with the dinosaurs.
Apple launches HTTP Live Streaming standard in iPhone 3.0 [appleinsider.com]
Ogg Theora, H.264 and the HTML 5 Browser Squabble [roughlydrafted.com]
Why Windows 7 is Microsoft's next Zune [roughlydrafted.com]
Why Windows 7 on Netbooks Won't Save Microsoft [roughlydrafted.com]
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