Microsoft *IS* Killing Silverlight

[Lost User]

Up to the point where you are crazy enough to make your own UI? :)

And from the clouds a mighty voice spoke:
"Smile and be happy, for it could come worse!"

And I smiled and was happy
And it came worse.

[Johnny J]

I'm not there yet, but please let me know when you've got a framework ready... ;)

Why can't I be applicable like John? - Me, April 2011
-----
Beidh ceol, caint agus craic againn - Seán Bán Breathnach
-----
Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
-----
Just because a thing is new don’t mean that it’s better - Will Rogers, September 4, 1932

[Lost User]

I was crazy enough. At the moment it is not mature enough to be used without having to expect some strange 'features' yet, but I am building the first application with it and fix all bugs or omissions along the way. It already can load it's resources, theme, styles and layout via XAML.

And from the clouds a mighty voice spoke:
"Smile and be happy, for it could come worse!"

And I smiled and was happy
And it came worse.

[BillWoodruff]

CDP1802 wrote:

It already can load it's resources, theme, styles and layout via XAML.

As an aficionado of all forms of madness, may I say that it would be a boon if Thee wouldst grant CP a review/preview/article ? best, Bill

"Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish." Steven Wright

[Lost User]

I would not be sure where to start. The code already has reached some size and explaining every detail may prove to be hard. On the other side, there are still a few open ends, like supporting localization in the XAML markup. I would certainly not mind writing about it, but then it should be something that's useful to the readers.

And from the clouds a mighty voice spoke:
"Smile and be happy, for it could come worse!"

And I smiled and was happy
And it came worse.

[NormDroid]

What's next java,C# C++? :)

Software Kinetics Wear a hard hat it's under construction
Metro RSS

[Dario Solera]

Johnny J. wrote:

I'm just waiting for them to do the same with Windows Azure...

That would be much worse than dropping Silverlight, because Azure generates revenue directly, while a framework that is available for free does not. Sure, Azure is surely not yet generating profits, but at least it has a proven business model behind it. Silverlight was a timid approach at fighting Adobe, for the wrong reasons. Not to mention that, for some reason, the Silverlight plugin always caused problems to me when used in Firefox (but probably it's just me).

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Software Localization Tools & Services and My Blog

[realJSOP]

I've never experienced a problem with Silverlight in FireFox.

".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997

[realJSOP]

Adobe announced yesterday that they're killing mobile Flash and are laying off 750 employees as a direct result. Desktop Flash is next, and then the browser plugin.

".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
"Why don't you tie a kerosene-soaked rag around your ankles so the ants won't climb up and eat your candy ass." - Dale Earnhardt, 1997

[Dario Solera]

In fact I'm assuming it's me (although it happens on all my 3 main PCs). Luckily I only have to use a SL app for managing Windows Azure (very funny indeed), so I just use IE.

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Software Localization Tools & Services and My Blog

[Johnny J]

Not that I'm mourning the "loss", but why? Do they have something else up their sleeve or do they expect that HTML5 will take over?

Why can't I be applicable like John? - Me, April 2011
-----
Beidh ceol, caint agus craic againn - Seán Bán Breathnach
-----
Da mihi sis crustum Etruscum cum omnibus in eo!
-----
Just because a thing is new don’t mean that it’s better - Will Rogers, September 4, 1932

[Dario Solera]

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

1. Web development (even using the much ballyhooed HTML5) keeps us wrestling with browser incompatibilities resulting from differences in standards interpretation.

HTML5 is not yet a standard, and in fact I'm ignoring it for now. Browser incompatibilities are very limited today. I develop web apps all day and I can't think of any relevant incompatibility between IE9, Chrome, FF4+ and even Opera. Sure you may have to support IE6, but would Silverlight be available at all in such case? At any rate, if you don't want to do fancy stuff (like some horrible, eye-bleach-style Silverlight apps I've seen), then HTML and CSS are very streamlined, robust and much, much, much, much more concise. And work on mobile devices too. Regarding JavaScript, 99.9% chance you'll need it, and I agree that it's a major PITA. However, there are libraries that make JS development much more tolerable, even funny in some cases, like jQuery. Oh, they take care of browser nuances transparently, so you don't have to worry about that.

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:

I hate web development because of all the crap you have to do just to maintain state between page changes

Like what exactly? Modern development frameworks do that for you. Even ASP.NET MVC does that automatically, and without all the VIEWSTATE crap of "classic" ASP.NET. I'm not sure about RoR, but I'd bet it's the same. Despite of what people say, ASP.NET still works very well (although I prefer MVC). As a matter of fact, since when IE9 was released, I continue to do sanity checks in IE7, IE8, Firefox 4+, Chrome and Opera, but I rarely have to tweak something specifically for one browser. I think we've built something that is quite complex, all with XHTML, CSS and JavaScript, and trust me when I say that it works and it scales very well. And no, we've never had to investigate problems related to some weird browser a user in Botswana was using. Not even once in almost two years of operations. Well, we explicitly do not support IE6 (and refuse to serve requests coming from it), but how can that be considered wrong? Again, speaking of business/professional applications, the only thing you can't really do without Flash or SL is serving video. That's it.

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don'

[Lost User]

Hmm, one of them is under nobody's control, so Microsoft or anybody else can kill all they want, this one will not go away. Two of these are only much of a loss if you only think in terms of web applications. For 'real' code I would use the immortal one above anyway. And, last, one of those three appears a bit dated compared to the one of the others and I personally would not mind if they decided to bury it.

And from the clouds a mighty voice spoke:
"Smile and be happy, for it could come worse!"

And I smiled and was happy
And it came worse.

[peterchen]

It goes deeper IMO. Microsoft has struggled long how to replace GDI, as usual they allowed competing technologies to be developed for some time. This didn't work out well this time, probably due to their size they lost the decision-making strength to axe projects. What's worse, reality rushed by them: when they implemented their vision for the future web, they were taken over by mobile.

FILETIME to time_t
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | WhoIncludes - Analyzing C++ include file hierarchy

[QuiJohn]

CDP1802 wrote:

I would not be sure where to start. The code already has reached some size and explaining every detail may prove to be hard. On the other side, there are still a few open ends, like supporting localization in the XAML markup. I would certainly not mind writing about it, but then it should be something that's useful to the readers.

Heh, I've had the same dilemma. I've never published an article here, but have had several little projects that I thought would be cool to share. The problem was that, barring a ground up rewrite (something I have no time or desire for), the articles would be full of phrases like, "Sorry about this next bit of code, but it does this, I swear," and "Oh like all your code is so pretty." The stuff I do on my own time is usually research type development, and it grows organically as I try new things. I learn a TON this way, but the code is a mess at the end (it's much nicer when I put the knowledge to work on an actual project). Some things I've considered publishing: software 3D rendering (to get the math down, not worrying about acceleration) with some physics simulation thrown in, reverse engineering a DOS game to port to Windows, Stupid DSP tricks... but I really don't have the energy these days. Maybe when the kids move out of the house :) That gives me 14 years, roughly.

[Matt Gullett]

I have to say I'm not sad to see it go. While it offered some very nice capabilities, it seemed clear to me from quite a while ago, that, except for internal corporate apps, it had a short shelf life. The last full blown app I built was browser based. To be clear, it wasn't a typical web app. I developed a custom NPAPI plugin and used a custom build of Chromium for the app. As far as the user is concerned, it's a typical desktop app. Behind the scenes, however, it's a fairly run of the mill web app that uses some custom plugin code (via Javascript) to interface with their PC. Makes for a very easy to customize desktop app. (There is some app caching involved, so maybe not completely run of the mill, but still standard HTML/CSS/Javascript). I admin there are some UI elements I would have liked to be a little more refined and Silverlight definitely handles that well, but except for a few places, the approach worked great. And now I have a basis for building more apps just like the last one using web technologies while having access to local resources when needed.

[Nemanja Trifunovic]

Dario Solera wrote:

I develop web apps all day and I can't think of any relevant incompatibility between IE9, Chrome, FF4+ and even Opera.

You are not mentioning some pretty popular browsers: IE7, IE8, Safari and mobile browsers. Sorry, but you are just trying to throw a very real problem under the carpet. I also develop for web nowdays and browser incompabilities are very much there. But the worst thing is that everybody keeps releasing new versions of browsers almost every month. I almost miss days when I had to worry only about IE6.

utf8-cpp

[Dario Solera]

I would not consider mobile browsers related to desktop browsers, as interaction is totally different, so you need a completely different UI. At least you have the possibility to do that, as Flash and Silverlight are not an option. As I mentioned in my post (perhaps you've missed it), I always do sanity checks with IE7 and IE8 too, and it rarely happens that I have to tweak something. Sure, there are details that are different (like, rounded corners), but most of the time they don't matter at all. I admit that I neglect Safari, but for us it's not really a problem as everyone seems to be using Chrome on Mac LOL.

If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Software Localization Tools & Services and My Blog

[Marc Clifton]

Well, I for one am glad to have never spent any time learning it. Marc

My Blog

[TheGreatAndPowerfulOz]

Adobe AIR

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering” - Wernher von Braun