ugh, silverlight...

[Skuggomann]

Whats all this fuzz?
id trust suvega w/ my life <3

[Steph]

I saw no objective reason for silverlight to be made - besides putting a Microsoft alternative up being good from a Microsoft point of view.
Instead of everyone using flash, now for some people it's gotta be silverlight. Horray! One more ATI vs Nvidia, Intel vs AMD, Windows vs Unix-derivate battle that will never be decided to the satisfaction of the believers in the one or other camp.

That being said, I see no difference in risk between using flash or silverlight. I installed Silverlight to check out Suvega's guide.

I see the uses of a feature rich website, such as a video player, a showcase, a 3d product view or many other things. When it comes to flash&co being used for what is essentially print("hello world") with the inevitable loading screen, I can not help but feel that someone started the wrong application to generate their web content and therefore got non-html content that they need to use.

[Frosty]

/sigh

I thought this was going to be about beer for some strange reason.. :S

[Schwarz]

gui's are for pansies.

[elo]

Yeah, no love for Silverlight here and it's not because I fear security vulnerabilities or that I have a hate on Microsoft. It's because I believe that the web is the ultimate cross-platform media and Silverlight is for one OS only. I work on a variety of linux distributions (Gentoo, Suse, CentOS) at work as well as Microsoft everyday and the fact is they both have problems and issues that drive me buggy. They also both have features that I really like and I simply try to use the right platform for the right job.

The one thing I do have against Microsoft is the exclusionary practices. They seem to constantly be trying to hedge out Linux on one hand, but then in the press try to portray that they're working towards better interoperability. Buying Novell was a rat-b*$%tard move and my guess is they'll tap the company for all the knowledge possible, cripple Suse, and then ditch em using their new found knowledge to somehow try and crush linux. Silverlight is just another example of exclusion and for that reason I won't support it. So long as enough people refuse to download the plugin and therefore not be able to surf those sites and be advertised to, then we can keep Silverlight at bay and eventually it will die off. Much like Microsoft's last flash competitor they had back in '98 (which I actually supported along with Frontpage 98).

Now on the flipside if Microsoft releases plugins for Safari and FIrefox which work on Mac and Linux, then sure I'll install it if needed and all is well. Like I said, I'm no pro/con for MS, Linux or OSX. I'm pro for interoperability and the freedom to make the right choice for the business (sometimes that means spending money, sometimes that means spending hours).

[succulent]

First Suvega, thanks for doing this guide.

But I have to chime in here too on not liking the Silverlight requirement. I'm primarily a Mac user (and yes I know there's a client for the Mac), but more to the point I avoid installing add-ons like flash, anything ActiveX (when I'm using my Windows box at work), etc., just as a general rule. And wouldn't straight up HTML have been just as easy to author this in?

I did go ahead and install Silverlight (I have numerous computers at work I can experiment on) to check out the guide and I notice a few issues with the player:

- It's not possible to copy the text from it -- was this the main reason for using Silverlight? I had planned to email the text of the guide to myself so I wouldn't have to have a Silverlight install at home, where I actually play WoW. I don't see a copyright message anywhere, I could understand if you want to reserve the rights on anything you write so if that's the intent you should add a copyright (probably a good idea in any case).

- Silverlight player doesn't support the mouse scroll wheel -- my primary method of scrolling text. Argh! This makes reading it kind of frustrating, and speaks to my preference for the use of an open standard. I don't really have a choice of using a different Silverlight player that does support using the mouse wheel.

Anyway, thanks again for doing this guide, I know it must be quite annoying to get the Silverlight hate when you were just trying to help everyone out.

As a side note, I'm a software engineer and used to work at Microsoft too, so I know that it can seem puzzling that people in the outside world aren't in tune with using all the latest stuff out of Redmond. Most people really aren't all that excited to install yet another plug-in, from any source.

[Freddie]

I think it's a good thing that Microsoft made Silverlight. Microsoft has a long history of making proprietary products. This always annoys people because it creates incompatibility. But innovation is more important than compatibility. I'm grateful for the innovation. For those products that turn out to be successful, over time, the incompatibilities become relatively unimportant because the products get integrated one way or another into the overall software ecosystem. Sometimes they even become a sort of standard on their own.

End users see only functional features. If you see software through that narrow lens, then Silverlight looks pointless next to Flash. But Silverlight (like every piece of software) has other dimensions that are visible only to developers. I haven't used Silverlight so I can't name specifics, but I've been using Microsoft products as a professional programmer for 25 years and so far as I can remember, every single one of them had interesting technical innovations in it. It's almost a hallmark of Microsoft products. You only see this if you use the products as a programmer. But you benefit from it (without realizing it) even if you use the products as a consumer.

[Dorffo]

Security implications aside... (I haven't seen any articles/posts that reveal anything more shocking than the holes that show up in Adobe products now and again - clickjacking anyone?)

After two training courses paid for by M$ and several projects over the last year all I can say is: as a developer, I sincerely hope to not ever have to touch the current incarnation of silverlight ever again! Silverlight V2 is much much better overall than v1.0, so I am not writing off future releases at this point.

Random aside - One of the things that I have to admit that I do like about Silverlight is that Flash and Silverlight can coexist very well on the same page, and even better - you can get them talking to each other :thumbup: Silverlight for video content and Flash for everything else has worked well so far!

[Vyndree]

And wouldn't straight up HTML have been just as easy to author this in?

I think Suvega's primary concern is to protect his hard work. HTML can be as simple as copy/paste. He's giving it out for free but alot of times people abuse the word "free" and start charging for their copy/paste job and profiting off of his hours putting this together on the beta.

Well, that and he already purchased Expression Suite.


I know he was considering doing this in .pdf form, but Adobe products cost more for us to purchase licenses for than MS products. :P

[succulent]

And wouldn't straight up HTML have been just as easy to author this in?

I think Suvega's primary concern is to protect his hard work. HTML can be as simple as copy/paste. He's giving it out for free but alot of times people abuse the word "free" and start charging for their copy/paste job and profiting off of his hours putting this together on the beta.

Well, that and he already purchased Expression Suite.

Ah got it, I did mention the inability to copy the text as well, and if that's part of the reason he used Silverlight than I see what he did thar.

Edit: and he really should add a copyright notice to it.