Microsoft *IS* Killing Silverlight

[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

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[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

[TheGreatAndPowerfulOz]

here here

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

[Lost User]

The code itself is not too messy. It is more like still having to refactor or rewrite something too often. For example, I first had imitated modal forms. Then I realized that forms are not really the best approach when you intend to use the MVP pattern plus a concept of workspaces. Now I have redesigned the entire hierarchy of controls and separated the view (= the content of the form) from its workspace (a simple modal window in this case). And I still see some more such fundamental changes coming.

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.

[BobJanova]

Your title is more certain than the article justifies. Microsoft are being suspiciously quiet about the future of Silverlight, that's more what is actually being said. It would be a shame if so, it is a pretty good platform for rich web apps, but it has really struggled to take market share from Flash (which it is far superior to for most things, in my opinion).

[Dennis E White]

Woohoo!!!! I was a hater of flash and when silverlight came out it only gave me two things to dislike. finally we can start doing some real development with "standards" like html5 and css3. please note the quotes I placed around standards. yes we all know each browser has it's own tendency to do things a bit different than the other but today we can take care of that with one of the various frameworks that are in place (jQuery, prototype, etc.).

as if the facebook, twitter and message boards weren't enough - blogged

[Fabio Franco]

Rumor. As Mary Jo already mentioned: "There’s word from some of my contacts that this might be the last major release of Silverlight, but Microsoft isn’t confirming or denying." I agree that things don't look good for Silverlight right now, but I don't think anyone right now can make such statements that Silverlight will be killed, not even Microsoft. Silverlight might be put on a hold, because of all the HTML 5 hype, with security fixes only. But only time will tell the market reaction to HTML5. If MS is smart enough it will keep watching it and have Silverlight ready to continue production. I think many here agree that Silverlight solves lots of problems, like browser compatibility that drive many HTML developers crazy. So I think it's too soon to dismiss the many advantages of Silverlight.

"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson

[Member 96]

Slashdot? What happened to you man? :)

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There is no failure only feedback

[Br Bill]

I keep trying to put gasoline in my horse. It doesn't work. Why isn't my fuel backwards-compatible?

[BhuvanRamIconcept]

" Even ASP.NET MVC does that automatically, and without all the VIEWSTATE crap of "classic" ASP.NET." Excellent Perfomance with the ASP.NET MVC. Classic ASP.NET View State is really may become a Backward Compatibility for MS. I mostly exited and turned towards ASP.NET MVC Rendering Part i.e., because of Razor Engine.

[KP Lee]

David Kentley wrote:

it grows organically as I try new things. I learn a TON this way, but the code is a mess at the end

Yea, that sounds familiar. I started playing around with custom graphical controls stored in a dynamically resizing array in a winapp. Wondering if you've encountered something similar or not. I'm running into some severe non-linear performance issues. A 10X10 array renders almost instantly. A 25X25 array is about 6 times bigger and takes about 6 seconds to render. A 100X100 array is 16 times bigger, so if it was linear, should take less than 2 minutes to render. Over 3/4ths of an hour later, it starts rendering and unlocks the program just short of an hour later. (Not using threading logic.) This is on a dual core, 2GH device running at about 56% CPU while it is calculating locations and rendering images. So, one of the CPU's is running at 100% capacity for about an hour. That's all because of the custom images and event handling being added to the controls as they are being created and rendered. Rather frustrating when the underlying app can recursively hit 33K nodes multiple times in 62 milliseconds.