Even though Silverlight was first announced ‘way last year‘, the debate about wether it’s going to be successful still goes on. Silly, because it will of course get totally huge.
For those not in the know, Microsoft Silverlight is, according to Microsoft
a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.
Like Flash, only better more ambitious
Basically, it’s like Flash in the sense that it’s a plugin for your web browser that enables applications you couldn’t build using html, ajax and all that jazz. Only it can do much more. Flash’s beginnings after all are in creating graphical interaction on websites. Today’s Flash is a scaled up version of that. Silverlight’s beginnings are in full on .Net application development. And from what I understand, it hasn’t really been scaled down.
This became even more evident last month, when the Silverlight 2 beta was shown to the world. Most sceptics who pooh-poohed (sp?) the first version last year as an overblown web movie player, are not so sure any more.
To be sure, Flash has been around for a long time, and it will stay for a long time to come. There’s a place for easy and accessible development of cool and interactive graphical web environments. But there will also be a market for richer applications with more going on ‘at the back end’. Silverlight would be a more obvious choice for those kinds of development.
Microsoft is big and slow, but the introduction of Silverlight shows there are at least pockets of people who understand the power of the web and who are not held back for protection of Microsoft’s current business model. More importantly, they have the freedom to create new services and introduce them to the public. I’m assuming there’s more to come.
So the first reason Silverlight is going to get, like, totally Huge is: the OS is moving to the web and Flash doesn’t scale up enough for that. Silverlight does, because it’s what it was built for.
Some more reasons
Anyone who can develop in .Net can develop for Silverlight. Think of Adobe’s statement with Air: “If you can do web development in html, ajax, javascript - now you can do desktop development”. Well, here’s Microsoft: “if you can do client development in .NET, now you can do web development with Silverlight”.
Microsoft states about 2.5 Million .NET developers. You can assume they’re overstating it. It’s still a lot of developers that now are able to create apps for the web.
Installed base? Irrelevant
A little word about installed base. This discussion is not about installed user base. There is practically no barrier for a user to install Silverlight. It just took me all of 30 seconds to download and install it on my Mac. It may take a less experienced user a few minutes - but people install plug ins all the time. If the application is cool enough, they’ll install what makes it possible (as evidenced by my wife and my parents, who are completely tech fobic but still manage to surprise me every now and again - when they care enough to do so).
So now it’s just a matter of waiting for those cool apps. If you know any, let me know in the comments. If you think Silverlight sucks, also let me know in the comments.
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4 responses so far ↓
quetwo // March 25, 2008 at 11:38 am
3 things with your statements:
(1) Flash dosen’t have the power. Since the introduction of the new ActionScript 3 based VM that powers Flex and new Flash applications, power is no longer an issue. The language and the VM has transformed into one of the most powerful platforms to fit in a small download. Taramin (the VM and runtime withing the Flash Player) is being open-sourced and immediatly being brought into the FireFox platform to help with their JIT compiling.
At a conference this last fall, Adobe showed off Quake running in the Flash Player with full framerates. That is power!
(2) Install base IS relevant! Lets say there are two competiting websites selling widgets. One uses a technology that every browser already has (AJAX or Flash), and one requires the user to a. Download a new plugin b. shutdown their web browser c. find that website again. Chances are, you’ve lost their attention, and there is a good chance you lost their business.
Granted, some applications are going to be compelling enough to have people install their plugins. Most of the time, however, people won’t. With all the viruses swirling around, people have become overly cautious when installing anything extra. And with many users sitting on computers without admin rights, they may not be ABLE to install Silverlight.
(3) Silverlight has no stonger of a back-end than Flex. In fact, I would argue to say that Silverlight has a weaker back-end approach than Flex. Adobe has open-sourced (most) of the protocols that Flash can nativly talk to their back-ends. It can talk nativly to .NET, PHP, Java, ColdFusion, Ruby, Perl, and even mySQL. If you want more power behiend it, a product just open-sourced by Adobe called BlazeDS can sit as a middle-ware that can proxy requests to just about ANY middleware. An enterprise version of BlazeDS called LiveCycle Data Services adds features such as Managed Data Collections (something that hasn’t been addressed in Silverlight yet). This dosen’t even account for the generic access that you have access to such as straight XML, REST, SOAP, etc.
.NET gives you native access to a .NET server, and generic access (SOAP) to just about anything else.
Yes, Silverlight is a player in the industry, but it will mostly be from and for Microsoft people, looking to build a quick application with their exisiting .NET framework experience. Flash/Flex is for everybody else.
hansdekker // March 25, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Hi quetwo,
Thanks for chiming in. Flex does seem like a very powerful tool. I will do more research into that. I may have been taken in too much by web mores. But…
As for Silverlight in situations where people aren’t admins: your talking about corporate environments. As you know, Microsoft’s dominance of those environments is much bigger than the home market - where Apple is now finally making some bigger inroads.
However, IT-departments are big Microsoft shops. They’re members of MSDN and I see them visit Microsoft ‘workshops’ regularly where they get wined and dined and informed on ‘the big picture’ and long tail developments. My estimation is that Silverlight will be on those corp. desktops soon enough.
The one corporate IT environment I have access to at the moment (my one full time client these months) does not have Flash Player version 9, so it also doesn’t run Flex apps. That may or may not be indicative, you tell me. I wanted to try Brio from Adobe labs - which is really nice and I’ll blog about that at some point.
As for the home user, I really don’t believe installing Silverlight will be a major obstacle.
Now, you said:
> Yes, Silverlight is a player in the industry, but it will mostly be from and for Microsoft people, looking to build a quick application with their exisiting .NET framework experience. Flash/Flex is for everybody else.
I guess what I’m saying is that there are (always) more Microsoft people than you think. Millions of developers. . 150 Million Vistas, and still considered a failiure.
BTW: will Silverlight be rolled out as a recommended update - like Safari? What will that do for the installed base?
King Rat // March 25, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Neither Flash nor Silverlight are based on open standards. The web is based on open standards. And will only get more so. Either the products will standardize their formats, or they will eventually fall by the wayside. It could take a while, but it will happen. (Word has been around for 20 years and it is now losing steam to ODF because its format is not public standard. And that’s why MS is trying so hard to get OOXML declared a standard.)
quetwo // March 25, 2008 at 10:30 pm
@KingRat: Flash (Specifically, the SWF standard) is well documented, and well understood. Not only are there 3rd party open-source projects compiling to SWF, but there are Adobe sponsored open-source projects that compile to it. Check out http://labs.adobe.com and http://opensource.adobe.com. The Silverlight team said that it will not become open-source, but they will help open-source clones (mono project) create compilers for other Operating Systems (Linux).
@Hansdekker: Silverlight will be rolled out as a recommended update, that is well undersood. However, this will not make the platform universal — the .NET 1.1 platform has been ‘recommended’ for about 5 years now, and it’s take is still somewhere around the 60% mark of Microsoft-based operating systems. Take in account non-MS based OSs, and you are still talking about a take rate of about 50%. That means that 50% of the people will still have to leave your application and download something to view it. You’ve lost a large part of your audience right there.
Flash Player 9 has an install base of over 95% of all internet connected computers. This ratio is higher than any single browser (and allows consistancy over ALL browsers and operating systems).
Not every IT shop is a Microsoft house. While there are LOTS of Microsoft shops out there, there are equal numbers that are not. Sure, many places will USE Microsoft, but many of them don’t drink their cool-aid. Even fewer of them actually get into the Microsoft developer platform.
Of the people who run and maintain websites, very few of them actually report to the IT shops. Many of them are apart of either HR or some sort of marketing/advertising departments. Marketing and Advertising department are traditionally Adobe shops, and HR is usually up in the air (what software company makes type-writters ;P ) Even those IT shops who do run or maintain websites, many of them are accoustom to Adobe/Macromedia products.
Microsoft truely does have the traditional desktop programmers. It will be interesting to see how many of them really swing from programming Desktop applications to creating RIAs.
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