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Paul Watson wrote: Name a major RIA that uses Flash.
YouTube uses Flash heavily. They couldn't exist without some kind of rich media experience that Flash gives them.
MySpace uses it heavily -- almost everyone I know of on Myspace has a MySpace music player, built with Flash, on their pages with their favorite songs playing.
You mention Nike; actually, most every shoe shoe company -- Reebok, Nike, Adidas, Converse -- all have websites built with Flash.
Again, the way I see it, Silverlight introduces competition to Flash. They serve a good purpose: without them, we wouldn't have things like YouTube.
I agree with you, however, that entire websites shouldn't be built in Flash or Silverlight. I don't think anyone in the Silverlight camp is saying you should. Instead, it should be used when you need more than Html + CSS + script can give you.
On the flip side, I find it an absurd belief that all applications should be built with document markup and interpreted scripts over TCP/IP.
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Judah Himango wrote: YouTube uses Flash heavily. They couldn't exist without some kind of rich media experience that Flash gives them.
That isn't RIA. That is a video player. All the navigation, all the comments, all the searching and selecting the next video is HTML, CSS and JavaScript. YouTube isn't even an RIA. It is a website with video embeds.
MySpace has little blocks of Flash for, once again, playing video and audio. the comments, the customisation, the photos, the 90% of the rest of it is all HTML, CSS and JavaScript. MySpace isn't RIA either.
Nike, Reebok, Adidas and Converse are all low traffic sites. They use Flash because it is good at branding, at linear systems.
You'll see in my comments above that I think Flash and now even more so Silverlight are very useful for playing media. Not for UIs. Not for RIAs. Just for streaming down linear audio and video.
YouTube showed the true purpose of Flash. It kicked every Flash RIA evangalist in the nuts and said "We can make a billion dollar company that uses Flash as a media embed while the rest of the website is plain old HTML, CSS and JAvascript." YouTube would have failed had it tried to do everything in Flash.
So as you say, Silverlight is good competition but it is competition in todays market and not a progression. The market is changing already and these technologies are going to be left behind.
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote: And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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I think we both agree that software like this is good for some things, like video, audio, 3d and things you can't do in HTML + script. We also both agree that all all-Flash or all-Silverlight website isn't good.
Yay! Now I can get back to work.
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One thing is for sure, for people who work with MS technologies, programming in C# or VB.NET is far more easier than using actionscript.
The single fact that I won't have to learn a new language (actionscript) to do some simple client side logic to my web site is more than enough to use Silverlight.
Paul, you are too religious. Software development is just my job. I won't loose nights of sleep because Im using MS technologies.
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Daniel.Perfect.Element wrote: I won't loose nights of sleep because Im using MS technologies.
I think Paul is not just worrying for himself, but also for his customers. Lockning a customer down with software is just a gentler way of extorting them...
--
Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit
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Daniel.Perfect.Element wrote: I won't loose nights of sleep because Im using MS technologies.
I have. Also lost while using MS technologies: a lot of hair.
---- I don't care what you consider witty, but at least I do not blather on posting nonsense like Jim Crafton.-- Stringcheese, humbled by Crafton's ability to string together multiple sentences
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This was a pretty good discussion in what i'd pegged as a dreadfully boring poll. Thanks, you and Paul.
---- I don't care what you consider witty, but at least I do not blather on posting nonsense like Jim Crafton.-- Stringcheese, humbled by Crafton's ability to string together multiple sentences
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But anyway, we can agree to disagree and carry on with more important things. Like down with capitalism!
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote: And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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Paul Watson wrote: Like down with capitalism!
Yes, down with capitalism!
Wait - what?
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Paul Watson wrote: don't want entire apps embedded into my web-pages that are separate from the main DOM. I don't want them playing by different rules to the rest of the web-page.
It all becoming woolly web apps trying to become desktop and visa versa, is the browser going to be the only app running on a PC and all other software runs through the browser. I wish Microsoft would make their mind up last year it was "the desktop client will be back", and this year is silverlight
Best to sit at the sideline until somebody makes a clear technical decision, I certainly won't be plough my learning curve into silverlight I'm still stuck in WPF.
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I wonder - can both exist?
There is an obvious need for desktop applications: you can't always be online, web apps are severely limited, desktop apps bring far more richness than web apps. Things like PC games are also impossible in a browser (and no, Flash games don't count).
At the same time, anything disconnected is becoming less and less relevant. Things *exist* when they're found by search engines and indexed and displayed in search results for billions of people. Only web apps can provide that.
Since there is a need for both, why can't both exist like they do now? Does one *have* to go away? Web apps won't go away as long as the web exists. But I don't think PC apps will go away either -- people are making loads of money off of PC apps like AV software, PC games, Office software, and so on. No way all that is going away any sooner than web apps.
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I'm sorry for my ignorance, but I cannot imagine that a .NET based component will run fine on Konqueror/Linux. That means, Silverlight is good only for internal use like fancy intranet applications. You cannot use it for public web sites.
Please tell me that I'm totally wrong with that...
____________________________________
There is no proof for this sentence.
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First up I think Silverlight is a u-turn on the highway to the future. But I don't see why it wouldn't work on Linux and in Konqueror. Mono already runs on Linux fine and the news I've seen has shown a strong Linux group developing a Silverlight plugin.
And do remember it is a subset of .NET. Silverlight used to be called WPF/e.
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote: And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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Paul Watson wrote: First up I think Silverlight is a u-turn on the highway to the future.
Why's that? (And yes, I honestly value and am interested in your thoughts on the issue).
Marc
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Maybe more an off-ramp onto Microsoft Way than a u-turn. Like I said to Judah it feels like Flash Done Right which is kinda like .NET is Java Done Right. Sorta. It isn't a real evolution. If we want to stay where we are then we can make use of Silverlight as it has some good fundamentals.
But (from my reply to Judah...)
My major complaint is Silverlight's island mentality. You can see Microsoft want people to start moving everything into their Silverlight island until we reach a point where we don't need the wrapper HTML and then we don't need the browser and boom, we are back on a Microsoft desktop. Sure, it works on OS X and Linux but that's cheap kool aid.
...
When I build a web-site or web-app I look at how I can make the atomic parts of it (the data, the algorithms, the intrinsic objects) reach beyond the glue. Then when my glue starts to crack and get old I can re-use and re-glue into a new form. Or others can. Unexpected uses are powerful (and different from unauthorised.)
It is good design practice that any good progammer has practised since the dawn of multi-line code. Silverlight is sucking me back into a regulated (through the HTML and DOM bridges) sub-world.
A lot of effort is being put into up-ending data and algorithmic silos onto the world wide web. That whole "dark net" thing which is so much larger than the current web and so much more interesting.
Every new system built with something like Silverlight or Flash is another system put behind another door. Sure they can be opened but why on earth do we need that door.
So, Silverlight is good for the status quo and building current-gen apps and I even like it as a media player or data visualiser (on data external to the Silverlight embed) but its not the highway forward, it's the roundabout keeping us chasing our tails.
(I hope Silverlight explodes and leaves a messy spread of cool tech we can incorporate into the ocean of the web and not the rocky island it currently is.)
regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland & South Africa
Shog9 wrote: And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...
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Thanks for great response. Definitely something to think about. I hate to do this to you again, but:
Paul Watson wrote: but its not the highway forward
So what is the highway forward? Or more to the point, does the highway forward preclude cross-platform, thin-client solutions?
I for one think that things like Silverlight and Ajax will have a very brief moment in the limelight, as bandwidth and availability increases, processors continue to get cheaper and faster, I still see that a rich client environment will prevail. However, the problem of cross platform compatibility still remains, and I see it as the only thing that Silverlight has to offer in the interrum, until sometime in the future Mac OS, Windows, and Linux apps can run seemlessly on the same box (or one OS to rule them all is made).
Comments?
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: what is the highway forward?
Ruby. Coded up on Macs.
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yeah yeah yeah!
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At the moment "cross-browser and cross-platform" means IE + Mozilla/Firefox and Windows (XP and higher) + Mac. An architecture diagram suggests that MS will extend this to other browsers, e.g., Opera, and also to Windows 2000.
In the meantime the Mono guys are extending it to Linux. How seamless all this will eventually be is another matter.
Kevin
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From the stuff I've read, it works now on Opera on Windows as well. Is that not the case?
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OK, I didn't know that. At the time of the initial announcement it didn't.
Kevin
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Don't quote me on it, I've just heard that it supports IE, FF, and Opera on Windows, and Safari on Mac. Maybe I misheard somewhere...
I just did a quick search and found some Opera devs talking about official support of Opera and how they've been working with MS since Silverlight was called WPE/E. So it does appear Opera support will be there in the final released version of Silverlight. I don't yet see anything indicating there is a plug-in currently for Silverlight 1.1 alpha.
*edit* Apparently there is a plug-in right now for Opera, but it seems to have some problems with the Silverlight 1.1 alpha.
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Corinna John wrote: I cannot imagine that a .NET based component will run fine on Konqueror/Linux
In addition to what Paul said, the Mono guys are already developing Silverlight for Linux: Moonlight[^].
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Judah Himango wrote: In addition to what Paul said, the Mono guys are already developing Silverlight for Linux: Moonlight[^].
Fantastic. How about, instead of copying every single bad idea from Redmond, they work on a decent IDE instead?
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Visual Studio's got its problems, but I understand it's a helluva lot better than anything Linux's got.
In fact, the only claim to a better IDE some would make is, perhaps, Eclipse. I've used it and found it wanting.
As far as copying goes, Mono provides a way to make thousands of Windows apps run on Linux, Mac, Solaris, and other platforms. Nothing wrong in that.
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