Silverlight...

Quote from the link you posted:

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This upcoming Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 provides a rich set of features that enable great RIA application development. These include: * WPF UI Framework: Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications.

This means it's Windows only - the Mono devs don't have any plans to support WPF currently. Less compatible flash replacement? No, I'm not that excited :)

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Original post by Fiddler This means it's Windows only - the Mono devs don't have any plans to support WPF currently. Less compatible flash replacement? No, I'm not that excited :)

From the same blog entry:

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Silverlight 2 includes a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Framework, and enables a rich .NET development platform that runs in the browser.

As far as I understand it, Microsoft is going to include a WPF subset in Silverlight 2 for all platforms.

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Original post by Fiddler Quote from the link you posted: Quote: This upcoming Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 provides a rich set of features that enable great RIA application development. These include: * WPF UI Framework: Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications. This means it's Windows only - the Mono devs don't have any plans to support WPF currently. Less compatible flash replacement? No, I'm not that excited :)

Wrong.

I just read about it. I also watched an interview with Scott on channel 9 last month and the impression that I got is that it was very stressful getting most of the relevant portions of NET 3.0 to fit into ~5.0MB. Furthermore you do not need .NET to run silverlight applications developed in a .NET language. Silverlight already runs on Macs. And the Microsoft developers had full intent on cooperating with the moonlight linux implementation and are not simply posturing for public image.

Now I am excited about this and like how Microsoft is realising such amazing toolchains. Well thought out and structued toolchains that allow for skill reuse. Effectively they are democratizing the internet. Thus people who program in their work but are not trained in software engineering can still create well structured programs that have further reach and not horribly hacked together masses that is common in most communities (psychology, biology, physics, math) - by leveragin aproppriate paradigms with the aid of DSLs (something that may become even easier with the introduction DLR). I am hoping that language disoriented/agnostic programming is the way for the future.

I look forward to playing with F# and silverlight 2.

I am literally twitchy with excitement about the prospects!

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Original post by Mithrandir Quote: Original post by Fiddler Quote from the link you posted: Quote: This upcoming Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 provides a rich set of features that enable great RIA application development. These include: * WPF UI Framework: Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications. This means it's Windows only - the Mono devs don't have any plans to support WPF currently. Less compatible flash replacement? No, I'm not that excited :) Wrong.

Of course, such support would be achieved through Moonlight. In fact, Moonlight already supports Silverlight 2.0 bytecode.

As far as I know however, there are no plans to implement WPF on Mono. It might be that Moonlight would implement the Silverlight 2.0 subset of WPF, but it looks like this effort hasn't started yet (if it ever will) - hence the scepticism.

Edit: It looks like Mono devs are exploring WPF at least, so Silverlight 2.0 might come to Linux after all. Also, lol at capn_midnight, below :)

[Edited by - Fiddler on February 23, 2008 12:17:04 PM]

"ew, will it run on Linux"

I really don't care. I really, really don't care.

I'm excited as well. One thing that impresses me the most is the level of integration with existing technologies. For example, Silverlight assemblies are simply .NET assemblies; you can even build them in plain VC# as long as you reference the correct assemblies. Another example is Python integration. I still have an affinity for Python, and seeing it run on Silverlight and interacting with WPF elements was a "holy crap this is awesome!" moment.

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Original post by capn_midnight "ew, will it run on Linux" I really don't care. I really, really don't care.

You don't care so much, that you had to post to say a such!

-----

I develop with Microsoft Technologies (and one of our projects is going silverlight), however unlike capn' I'm very happy it may work on Linux.

Bigger consumer/view base for anything is a good thing.

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Original post by necreia Quote: Original post by capn_midnight "ew, will it run on Linux" I really don't care. I really, really don't care. You don't care so much, that you had to post to say a such! ----- I develop with Microsoft Technologies (and one of our projects is going silverlight), however unlike capn' I'm very happy it may work on Linux. Bigger consumer/view base for anything is a good thing.

while technically it *is* bigger, I mean, whoopdidoo, it's not *that* much bigger. If I don't have to do anything to have it, okay that's fine, but if I need to start making compromises because "such and such platform's implementation of feature X is buggy compared to this other platform's implementation", then it's way too much freaking hassle.

No not excited, why don't they make or use an open standard instead of making internet websites depend on the .NET framework? You realize how closed, tied and dependent that framework is compared to pretty much everything currently on internet?

I'm very, very, afraid about how much people who would have made something accessible to everyone, will choose to do it with silverlight instead and the implications and amount of content inaccessible to some people because of that.

EDIT: ok, probably with moonlight some of the above arguments aren't completely valid. But anyway, I don't like it, when it concerns the web and things that will be used to spread content, I prefer 20 years of design by committee with many, many implementations, over things that are thrown at us in short timespans. What I'm waiting for, but that's not really coming (other than maybe svg) is a totally open replacement of Flash.

compared to pretty much everything today on the web? like what exactly besides htmlpages?

i mean.. flash? or any nonflashbased movieplayers? java doesn't really fit in at all..

on the other hand, i don't have much use for silverlight, as i just use clickonce to start .netapps over the web, wich allow users to do the work with 'real' windows apps (wich they can even install and use offline then.. with one click).

silverlight is, for me, a bit like having my clickonce app now in a webpage.. not really much use for me.

but it's nice to see support for other platforms.

i prefer to have a .net webapp running on my system compared to the html/&#106avascript/flash mixup stuff from AIR from adobe. at least .NET is something solid (i prefer microsoft products to adobe products any day..).<br><br>something completely open would be even better, but .net is quite open, and definitely much better than adobe flash stuff. so its good work done here.

Actually, I don't agree that "completely open" would be better. Open source software suffers from "too many cooks in the kitchen" syndrome. Everyone competes to get their darling features implemented, and nobody is around to crack the whip on maintaining a unified design. I don't think .NET and it's unified structure would have been possible in an OSS setup. Software projects need dictator architects, someone who can stand on high and say "this is what we will do, because I have the vision, and because this isn't a democracy".

.net is a very nice and clean environment, and yes, i agree with you.. when i see the open source world (linux with apache and the php there and mysql there and rubi on rails in and all), then it's often some patchwork..

everyone who ever worked with .net is happy to see it as an option to replace adobe products.. :)

i'm not so happy about the wpf and such, but that's my opinion.. (and general dislike of xml-based stuff)

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Original post by Lode No not excited, why don't they make or use an open standard instead of making internet websites depend on the .NET framework? You realize how closed, tied and dependent that framework is compared to pretty much everything currently on internet? I'm very, very, afraid about how much people who would have made something accessible to everyone, will choose to do it with silverlight instead and the implications and amount of content inaccessible to some people because of that. EDIT: ok, probably with moonlight some of the above arguments aren't completely valid. But anyway, I don't like it, when it concerns the web and things that will be used to spread content, I prefer 20 years of design by committee with many, many implementations, over things that are thrown at us in short timespans. What I'm waiting for, but that's not really coming (other than maybe svg) is a totally open replacement of Flash.

Ok then, waste your time doing things with HTML that it was never meant to do. The rest of the world will be moving onto a system that was actually designed for web applications.

The ".NET IS NOT OPEN!!!" crowd has been ranting about how MS was going to sue the shit out of Mono for 4 years now. Hasn't happened...

Silverlight needs two things if it is to succeed as a de facto web-standard:
a) Compatibility. As capn_midnight said, the last thing we need are compatibility nightmares, ala CSS/&#106avascript.<br/><br/>b) Support. Silverlight needs to get everywhere, and by everywhere I mean *everywhere*: all major OS'es and mobile devices (will Microsoft implement Silverlight on iPhone like they will for Mac OS X? What about Linux-based phones? Android? Asus Eee?)<br/><br/>That's were Moonlight gets in the game. Silverlight needs Moonlight (ironic isn't it?), because without it the Googles and Yahoos of the world will stay with their HTML 4.01 (and Flash-based) webpages. Unfortunately, Microsoft still follows its schizophrenic approach to open source <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_%28runtime%29#Microsoft_support">offering support to Moonlight developers</a> on the one hand, but restricting it to web-browsers only. (Ok, this makes some kind of bizarre sense, but I thought Microsoft wanted Silverlight to succeed - or not?)<br/><br/>Ah, too bad I guess. We'll just have to wait for HTML 5 to start taking over in, err, about 15 years from now (about the same time as CSS 3 support becomes common). :p

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Original post by Fiddler That's were Moonlight gets in the game. Silverlight needs Moonlight (ironic isn't it?), because without it the Googles and Yahoos of the world will stay with their HTML 4.01 (and Flash-based) webpages. Unfortunately, Microsoft still follows its schizophrenic approach to open source offering support to Moonlight developers on the one hand, but restricting it to web-browsers only. (Ok, this makes some kind of bizarre sense, but I thought Microsoft wanted Silverlight to succeed - or not?)

From what I read, it appeared that it wasn't even in Microsoft's hands to decide that it was restricted to web browsers only but due to the media codecs. Or are it media formats from Microsoft themselves that we're talking about here?

Quoting from the Wikipedia article linked above:

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Microsoft support: [...] * Binary codecs for Windows Media video and audio, only licensed for use with Moonlight when running in a web browser. Other potential decoders include GStreamer and FFmpeg (used during the development stage) but Novell will not provide prepackaged versions of Moonlight with those libraries, because of licensing and patent restrictions in the United States.

So Microsoft licensed *their* codecs for use in the web browser plugin, only. Were they afraid that this would enable people to play .wma/.wmv files on Linux?

There are ways around this, but the patent issues in the US remain.

From that wikipedia entry:

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Some commentators have argued that this may be an attempt by Microsoft to both gain support from those in the open source community, and attract them to a proprietary Microsoft technology.

Is there actually anything Microsoft could do, that would not be interpreted as proprietary lockin by the GNU/Idiot crowd ? Jeez, I mean, they actively support the open source community with internal specification details !