The announcements around Microsoft’s new Silverlight platform yesterday were important to anyone who is thinking about where the web will evolve. For those of us watching the demos at the Mix conference the immediate importance of it was apparent – Silverlight will be the platform of choice for developers who build rich Internet applications. It makes Flash/Flex look like an absolute toy. After the keynote, the main topic of conversation in the hallways centered on just how effectively Microsoft carried out its execution of Adobe.
We didn’t cover the news as it broke – I was on stage at Mix and Nik Cubrilovic was denied a press pass due to a mixup and got in very late. There was a lot of early coverage but mostly from journalists who hadn’t been properly briefed on it or who rushed to post quickly.
In preparation for the Mix Q&A, Nik and I had well over 10 hours of briefing on Silverlight, with very senior Microsoft employees (Ray Ozzie, Scott Guthrie, Charles Fitzgerlad) as well as members of the product team that actually build Silverlight (Keith Smith and Brian Goldfarb).
Nik wrote a very long post yesterday afternoon on Silverlight, long after the initial news broke. From a pageview standpoint, the post was a loser for us. We would have been far better off doing a one-paragraph post at 10 am announcing the news, and by the time we wrote in the late afternoon the buzz had worn off somewhat.
I’m glad we waited to write. Nik (a long-time developer) was most impressed by how small Silverlight is (4 MB) and how fast it is (it blows away native Javascript routines – without exaggeration, Ajax looks like a bicycle next to a Ferrari when compared to Silverlight).
The news today about Silverlight is significantly more thoughtful. Microsoft-hater Steve Gillmor gives it a thumbs up and says “the engineering behind this is stunning.” Robert Scoble, who’s angry at Microsoft for not giving him a free pass to the Mix event, says “Microsoft “rebooted the Web” yesterday.” The list goes on.
If you are a developer or an entrepreneur, take a look at Silverlight, download some of the sample applications, and take the time to understand how it can affect your product. Our overview post is here, and our podcast interview with the product manager who built it is here.
Some of the most interesting new web applications will be built on this platform.
“It makes Flash/Flex look like an absolute toy”…. your a complete toy.. I mean tool.. Seriously Flash powers over 75% of all video on web.
So stop taking money from M$ and report facts.. not crap propaganda.
I think this is a case of technological fanatisism – Silverlight is a better technology. The Sony is a better technology than the 360. The biggest monopoly going is Apple’s grab for the entire recorded music industry. These things make users and developers fear for their jobs and platforms, however – we are all going to see the web improve, and Microsoft, although late to the show, have put a lot of thought and effort into products like XNA, VSTO and Silverlight. Not to mention the 5 tier suite split (SQL Server, Live, etc). Give it a go. Microsoft were guilty of some monopolisation in the 90’s. Now they are just another player. And a good one at that – remember Bill Gates is about the most effective philanthropist in the world for fighting world hunger, disease and land degradation.
never even heard of silverlight and to say it is better than flash!….
Clothing line
This is pretty good news for us all if this is even half as good as you post. I am looking forward to all these new sites and apps.
Rebooted the web, I like that. Hopefully we wont get a BSOD. Yeah that was stupid I know.
I was actually mad that they didn’t invite me to interview you on stage.
@chris
Despite your short-sighted comment trying to prove a point, flash is over 75% of video on the web. Oh, in case you didn’t hear, Silverlight is not out yet, tool.
I remember similar fan fair during the announcement of ASP.NET and while millions of web site use it I don’t think it reached the expectations it originally touted.
Seems like something to watch but its going to be an uphill battle for MS. Lets not forget how many Web 2.0 companies use and love PHP/MYSQL. Maybe this is the next step?
web-technologies still lack the responsiveness and performance of desktop apps. if i am understanding silverlight’s proposition, it will greatly enhance the performance and functionality of web-based apps.
it will be interesting to see if this is truely the case as it actually gives applications like google docs & spreadsheets an opportunity to better compete with excel.
we are 14 years or so into the internet revolution, and our browser still is clunky. let’s hope silverlight solves this issue.
“It makes Flash/Flex look like an absolute toy”…
Mike, how can you make a claim like that and then not back it up with *why* you think that… I went and looked through the Silverlight specs, docs, and demos, and as a long time developer, I was thoroughly unimpressed… IMHO, this is yet another case of Microsoft strolling in late to the game and trying to follow in somebody else’s footsteps…
I thought it was pretty funny how they are pushing online video streamed at HD quality… sure Microsoft has deep pockets, but don’t they know how much it’s costing Youtube to stream *crappy* video?
“most impressed by how small Silverlight is (4 MB)”
4 megs is not “small” for a browser plugin.
And it is over 10 megs on mac.
-b
I don’t know why anyone would be surprised by Microsoft’s successful execution. Microsoft’s strong point has always been developer tools and technologies. The problem is everything else. Can Microsoft truly be trusted to commit themselves to a cross-platform environment with an equally rich experience across platforms? History says no. And even it could be trusted the fact is that it’s google that is showing leadership where Microsoft should be. Its google thats taking the fight to Viacom. If any company in the tech industry is in a position to dictate to old media the terms of fair use and stand up and tell them – not ask – that the new paradigm is more sharing not less, it’s Microsoft. But it doesn’t, instead it tries to push DRM and kowtow to the media industry for some inexplicable reason. What we need from Microsoft is to stop acting like the rest of the tech industry is its enemy and assume a position of leadership. Instead, Microsoft comes out with another kickass developer suite, its been doing that since the 80’s, why you find that impressive is beyond me.
@bs, most Mac installs tend to be much bigger than their pc counterparts. I don’t know why, and I’d hesitate greatly to say it’s developer ignorance, but that’s just how it tends to be.
The demos load extremely quickly, with fantastic results. I am still wondering though: why is it that the logo looks like an open vagina ?
Man, the short-sightedness of the comments above is truly troubling. Either they don’t get it or didn’t take the time to get it.
I’m blown away at what is going to be possible with this platform. This is not “following in footsteps” or “just another development suite”. Does Adobe host your solutions for you? Do you get mobile support for free? The list goes on…
@12 it’s subliminal advertising to attract even the most hardcore MSphobe
I thought it was an invitation for Apollo.
Wow, what sort of Kool-aid were they handing out there?!
There are a great number of question marks over Silverlight that should at least have got some mention in this blinded-by-the-specs review.
While it may be cross-platform for deployment, how cross platform is it for actual development? If your graphic designers are all Mac, your web server maintainners are mostly Linux, it doesn’t help if your team’s workflow can only author Silverlight on Windows. (Of course, they could all migrate to Windows…)
Many things make, and have made Flash look like a toy. That is not the way to “kill” it. The QuickTime interaction layer existed before Flash (circa 1995-96) yet didn’t catch on because it was “too powerful” and developers found it difficult to get their head around.
Having an XML based schema for developing in Silverlight sounds like a path down that route too. By contrast, Flash’s designers have always understood the KISS principle, which helps when many of its users are more graphic artists than they are developers.
It’s only relatively recently, when the market was deemed ready, that the power of ActionScript 3.0 was unleashed. It could have been done earlier, again KiSS was applied..
The much heralded CLR is still very much a subset of the .NET architecture. That should be emphasized, as a lot of the appeal of .NET lies beyond the subsets.
Microsoft’s track record of accomplishing cross platform availability of their technologies is abysmal.
Eg, Mac Office updates are always out of date by years (except perhaps in in the one year 1998 when Steve Jobs personally made deals).
.wmv files have always played extremely badly, even when a Microsoft player/plugin (Windows Media Player for Mac) was made available, which has now been discontinued in favor of directing user seeking it to a 3rd party one, Flip4Mac.
Their track record is not good in this arena.
In this day of ubiquitous broadband, the “lightness” of a plugin download is no longer much of a selling point. It’s the fact that a download has to be done at all – raising security flags and user inconvenience – that is the actual issue.
Even on Microsoft’s own platform, programs written in .NET have suffered greatly in consumer penetration because of the difficulty of getting it installed. That solution still hasn’t been solved, except to hope everyone updates to Vista soon.
Just a few of these issues, and a large number more that I have got time to discuss, deserve treatment in these overly optimistic reviews.
-Reg
PS Don’t forget those dossiers they prepare for knowing exactly to woo journalists. Eg,
paragraph 4, subsection 2:
“Michael Arrington likes hobnobbing with the bigwigs. Please assign most senior personnel possible to event.”
paragraph 14, subsection 5:
“Michael Arrington likes lots of pie in the sky specs and cool effects, ala Riya. Please prepare 10 hours of targetted eye candy to secure good review.”
@15 then it would look more like a strap-on
Makes it easy for developers to download rich applications to the browser? Okay, but the last time Microsoft tried that we ended up with ActiveX and all sorts of security holes.
I’d like to know more about what they’re doing with security, sandboxing, and basically ensuring that Silverlight is not going to be a hacker’s wet dream.
I think it’s too soon to start praising or bashing the product. Wait until the developers get their hands dirty, the product comes out of beta, apps start rolling out and we get a clearer picture of exactly how effective it is.
The thing we’re seeing with Adobe Flex (more so 2.0) is that although Adobe tauted it as an ‘easy’ way to build RIA’s, the reality just wasn’t so. We’ve seen issues with Web developers struggling with the stricter OO approach to programming and generally the lack of training/documentation materials for expanding beyond the Flickr/YouTube mashups (the basics). Architecting and building an APP is far different to building a Web site, therefore to get Web dev’s to embrace it, it takes educating them on the ‘best practices’ of doing so first. Java developers, who are use to the environment, seem to have few problems adapting.
Microsoft definitely have the developer base to make this work. Distributing the player shouldn’t be a problem either. It’s going to be interesting how this folds out but from the initial Buzz of the product, it’s got my attention!
It does look impressive and playing with the Visual Studio tools for Silver, it is quick to assemble something – though I have not tried anything large scale.
I have tried Adobe Flex too and I think that it too is simple. So if development has become much simpler – great. If deployment is simpler – then great. Maybe they will raise the bar for other tools and technologies.
The only way I would see the web rebooting from this is if everyone switched over to Vista as their servers and all blue screened at once. While MS is claiming that they will support Ruby, Perl, and other languages – one thing they are not doing (for obvious reason) is supporting deployment of the server side on to Linux or Unix platforms. Nothing scales better for large applications on the server side then Linux and Unix.
Also there is no direct support for other database like MySQL, Postgres, etc.
Perhaps the client side layer will be truly impressive with Silver. But as they say nothing is a Silver Bullet and certainly not every cloud will have a Silver Lining (excuse the puns).
I still see PHP (esp. with smarty templates), Ruby on Rails, and Adobe Flex being more scalable on the back-end and still competitive on the front-end. While MS also says they will open source parts of Silverlight – my bet is it will be no code that allows the backend to be ported to Linux or Unix. They are trying to find ways to stay alive and make money as the desktop becomes but a faded memory and perhaps the OS will soon not matter.
I do see potential for Silverlight – for cranking out quick applications and for anyone that is a MS shop – so I don’t want to bash it as it has some great concepts and architecture in it. Some cool applications will certainly appear – which will push everyone else to do something better. MS still wants to monopolize the server market place and the back office – which is the main thing that irks me about this tool and still makes me question how well it will scale.
I see it as just another tool to solve some problems. Just my two-cents.
@18: “Hacker’s wet dream”: Tee hee !
.NET was also supposed to be revolutionary.
I love writing apps in .Net – but you can’t deploy them easily because of the huge runtime. (not many have it installed natively already)
Ditto with a brand new 4mb runtime for Silverlight.
If Silverlight is as pimp as everyone is saying it is, great. But who’s going to push it’s adoption to 80%+?
Will MSN.com require a Silverlight download to load it’s homepage? Let’s see MS put it’s money where it’s mouth is.
i am kinda pissed at microsoft for releasing this – because it looks freaking awesome and i don’t want to have to switch back to developing on an MS platform. the real question that we need to get a committed answer to is:
“Will you release a plugin for linux browsers?”
This is the simple question that will make or break this technology. how committed are they to it? msft is always doing this ridiculous tippy-toed dance where it tries to innovate then stifles itself so as not to step on the toes of other divisions of its business. if they don’t release a linux plug in because they think they can get people to switch from linux to windows, they are fools. they should embrace this stuff fully – it’d be awesome to get web-based MS Office running inside a Firefox browser on linux. somebody might even pay for that (and they wouldn’t have paid for windows)
If Silverlight is not compatible with Linux, it will die… ah flash will remain as the most used platform for videos and rich content. Very simple, the tendency is to use Linux, and get away from the closed applications of Microsoft.
I can’t believe that you wrote this ass kissing post about microsoft. Just because you were on stage interviewing them like a deer in the headlights please spare us with this glorified post…
Silverlight is a hail mary…everyone knows it…
I think there are a lot of things that Microsoft has learnt from other’s mistakes, and has applied to how they built Silverlight. The integration between the tools, as well as XAML and XPS etc are far stronger than flash, svg pdf integration. The power of synergy coming from that alone is going to help MSFT here.
The other interesting part of this is that the CLR is a very nice piece of work. Much better than most other VMs, especially with tail call optimization etc.
So my take is – Adobe will win on the designer front, MSFT on the developer front.
If I was Adobe, I would:
1. Unify SVG and Flash (allow flash to load SVG documents, for example)
2. Allow FLV’s to be easily coded to other formats (Nellymoser asao codec is such a pain).
3. Help people write tools that convert XAML to SVG and swf, and XPS to PDF.
4. Play to flash’s strengths (swf file format is still superior in low memory/embedded environments).
The whole performance thing of silverlight vs javascript is kinda silly (benchmarks, especially in a marketing context). I’d like to see actual benchmarks comparing this with Tamarin, which is slated to go into Firefox’s spidermonkey implementation as well.
Really though… I installed it, and it crashed my browser within 2 minutes on every one of their example sites..
I remember when people thought cold fusion was going to be the next big thing..
Well I did I little more reading and it looks like from this: http://blogs.zd...icrosoft/?p=414
that they are planning to release CLR for multiple platforms – which I assume includes Linux.
But am I required to use MS Dev Studio to build and deploy or can I use Eclipse?
It will be interesting to watch what occurs with this, Adobe Flex, and whatever else is on the horizon.
@giltots – why MS office when there are so many other ones out there now that are web based and cross platform?
Is there a sample example comparing a flash application with an equivalent sliverlight application? I would really really like to try the web ferrari!!!
Mr. Arrington would it be possible to create a sample example for your non-developer audience(like you did in your posts on splashcast and ebay widgets)?
Thanks,
Mike.
People poopooing silverlight already have an agenda.
People praising it like a “web rebooter” has an agenda.
I think we should all wait to make a good educated and non paid for opinion.
Wow, Silverlight sounds very promising.
No free pass for Scoble? Scandalous!
Must be the stench of Redmond about it. Anything they make will sooner or later be addled with Microsoft thinking. The development team should just leave and join Adobe.
2 posts? Does this seem suspicious to anyone else? Something isn’t sitting quite right with me…
Show me an existing web app that works as well as this one developed on Silverlight:
http://download...73/FullCut2.wmv
I’m just glad someone gives a rat’s hind quarters about Silverlight.. because I sure don’t. Any company willing to invest so much sticking it to a community that just wants open standards is basically mocking themselves. They probably should have implemented SVG first in IE7, rather than wasting so much effort on this pile of “brilliantly engineered” rehashing of existing standards, sans the openness and standardization.
Haha, oh, okay, since Robert “Intel shill” Scoble and Steve “Why don’t I make any effin’ sense?” Gillmore think it’s important, I guess there’s no need to question it.
I don’t need Gmail to fly across the effin’ screen and beep at me, I just need it to handle my email. And it does that, without Silverlight, and always will.
I’d like to hear what Mark Anders thinks of all this….
Remember “important to anyone who is thinking about where the web will evolve”. The announcement is the validation of a third type of client software developers are going to think when building applications. We have the thick client (desktop), the thin client (browser) and now the “rich” client.
Read Steve Gillmor’s post to get the whole picture. So far when thinking about RIA applications we had OpenLaszlo (AJAX/Flash), Apollo/Flex(Flash) and Mozilla (XUL), now Silverlight joins them.
It is another late entry for Microsoft but this time not a “me too” solution. In this first release it supports Win/Mac in the client and C#, VB.NET, Ruby, Python as scripting languages so it has the legs to attract developers, who at last will be in charge of bringing the new interesting RIA applications
What unsolved problem does this new platform solve? What developers are they targeting?
Microsoft has lasted this long by being the incumbent, just barely good enough provider of the lowest-common-denominator product, and is functionally invulnerable in their marketshare and revenue stream for those products. This in spite of shinier (Mac) and cheaper (Linux) solutions waiting in the wings.
Sounds a lot like where Adobe is with Flash.
I read the system requirements. OSX, Linux or Unix weren’t mentioned. So, as a developer/company, why would I want to limit my reach when I could use flash which is well supported on most platforms? It may be the greatest stuff in the world, but given the choice of reaching more customers, I’ll choose flash.
Oh please, Mike. You’re exremely gullible and you’ve been drinking too much MS KoolAid. There’s so many other, better, RIA dev systems that this Silverlight thing will be in single digits for the next 5 years.
I’ll say it again this is pocketbook journalism at its worst.
Michael – I’d like you to post in the comments here that TechCrunch did not receive any renumeration for these posts. This is shameful- I also wouldn’t be surprised if half of the comments here are from Microsoft shills. Pathetic.
Interesting technology. Will have to be “toyed” with (pun intended) before giving an opinion (at least for those of us who are not easily swayed by demos). Will have a lot of catch up to do before overtaking Flash (if it ever does, but we know Microsoft’s philosophy: “Time is on our side”). How many machines are running Silverlight in the world right now? How many developers are willing to change a development system that currently works for them, and whose output works for the rest of the world? Anyway, good to see some welcome competition. One big concern is that Microsoft has no real incentive to make Silverlight run really well on OSes other than theirs, while Adobe is OS-agnostic. Their only incentive would be to accelerate Silverlight acceptance, but once they reach that point, how well are they going to keep supporting it on other OSes? Also, can’t wait for Ballmr (his new Web 2.0 nick) to announce the Silverlight plugin for iPhone.
Mike,
You’re quickly destroying your and the credibility of this site with posts such as these. Just 2 months ago you were touting Apollo/Adobe as the next greatest thing. You went to 2 confernces and gave talks about it. Now you’ve been influenced by the nonsense from MS. Fact is, NONE of these dev systems will matter since they all require a runtime download. Pure web apps is where the action will be. MS is just scared and they’re trying to keep their develpers locked in their APIs.
QUIT BEING A SHILL! I want to keep loving this site.
The silverlight website asked me to install it, so I kept clicking on the button and it kept showing the same page. It seemed to fail to detect, or perhaps failed to tell me, that I was on Linux and that this product couldn’t be installed. Instead, I was in a maze of twisty links and web pages, all alike.
So, does the mean Paul Graham was wrong?
Online applications and Microsoft go together like peanut butter and motor oil. Though I am assuming the latter combination will leave a better taste in your mouth than the former.
As cute as this is, I can’t imagine many companies ditching Flash for Silverlight especially if they are out of beta. Flash is time tested where as Silverlight is new. And from Microsoft.
Still, I can’t help but wonder where Microsoft’s priorities are with this one. How does this help their online strategies in regards to Google’s search and online advertising. Isn’t that where they should be focusing or are they just going to give up?
Mike, you probably wouldn’t be getting as many negative “stop being a shill” comments on this post if you hadn’t titled it “Take Time To Understand Silverlight. It’s Important”. I realize you’re a lawyer, but still, it’s so … pompous.
Smart people don’t like being talked down to. I’ll take time to understand the bajillion new “web changing” platforms that come out every week when they actually prove themselves. Like Flash finally did, 10 years later, with YouTube.
Until then, kindly frack off and tell someone else what to think.
No Linux = not cross platform
Everybody has Flash already, so what’s the point in this?
After reading the comments above, I can understand why MS would not want to develop a linux version. What a bunch of whinners.
That is a rather ignorant comment
Microsoft ignores Linux because they hope it will just go away. While at the same time they do things that are driving people to search for something else — anything else.
I make my living in the Microsoft sandbox, but as a Systems Engineer I keep an eye and a toe in the linux world. It is coming along, and is actually starting to show up on desktops outside Geekville. For example, one of our local coffee shops is running Ubuntu on their public computer.
As far as Silverlight goes, it is not on any of my computers (I uninstalled shortly after loading that bug-bucket on one of my systems). It is not on the company computers. As far as I’m concerned, it won’t be for a very long time.
But then, flash is not on any of these systems either. Web developers need to design with a point of not requiring people to load more junk on their already bloated systems.
Oh, I forgot. I do have flash on my kids computer so he can play on-line games. That is about where flash belongs, in toyland!