Silverlight

[chat2ian]

I don't trust M$ and never will

Because at every interaction with their products, I have been left wanting.
Because they believe in dominating the World with proprietary standards.
Because their products are too expensive.
Because their products are too complex.

Because they plagiarise and then produce inferior, but more widely distributed products - resulting in the World having crap forced upon it.

Adding a new proprietary standard at this point just muddies the waters for users - and for content providers. What's needed is more products using current standards, not more standards.

I hate them with a passion that's hard to put into words. Why is it a bad thing to be biased against a company that's horrific in every sense?

Does that answer your question?

 

[dernhelm]

You people need a sense of perspective. .Net and it's associated technologies (including WPF, WCF, and Silverlight) quite simply blow away XCode and Objective-C. Microsoft's development environment is better than Apple's. There, I said it.

That, of course, does not translate into better products. Apple's XCode environment is more than good enough to build some pretty fantastic stuff (as we have all witnessed). And OS/X and the default set of widgets available there is so much better than what you get in windows that XCode more than makes up for it's deficiencies. And of course, developers turn out to be really crummy product designers - and Apple has some really good product design people in the wings.

But from a development perspective, well lets look at the facts: .Net is released - and about a year later Apple adopts garbage collection into XCode. Why? Because having GC as an option is better than not having GC as an option, and Microsoft (being developer oriented) figured that our first. Running rich client applications in a browser may not appeal to the average Joe consumer, but to corporations (and hospitals, and schools, etc.) it is a really big deal. Apple is more than willing to let Flash control that part of the market - but Microsoft is not. And what they realized is that if they could leverage certain .Net skills to produce these in-the-browser applications they could appeal to developers that don't want to learn "yet another programming environment" in order to do their job.

None of this to say that Silverlight is "better" or "worse" than Flash/Adobe Air/whatever they are calling it. But it does provide language level compatibility that Adobe can't touch. That's why Silverlight is here to stay, whether anyone here likes Microsoft or not.

 

[angelwatt]

None of this to say that Silverlight is "better" or "worse" than Flash/Adobe Air/whatever they are calling it. But it does provide language level compatibility that Adobe can't touch. That's why Silverlight is here to stay, whether anyone here likes Microsoft or not.

It may be here to stay perhaps, but I haven't come across any sites that offer it, nor Adobe AIR (except the eBay thing they demoed). I'm wondering when places will start leveraging these products. I built an Adobe AIR app for work to use in house, which works really great and going to make one for my web site. What I love about it is that I can take my existing HTML/CSS/JavaScript and turn it into and Adobe AIR product with very little effort. I don't make use of the Flash components. So I didn't have to learn any extra languages to use Adobe AIR, unlike if I tried to do Silverlight. And being on a Mac I don't even seem to have the option if I wanted to.

I'm not really disagreeing with anything you said, I'm just wondering where these new style apps are at. I've been looking forward to them, but keep having to wait.

 

[chat2ian]

Perspective

Here's my perspective, and it's simple:

When clients ask me to quote for building browser-based applications, I add 40% for anything on .NET simply because in my experience, it takes longer to build and is more expensive than open source technologies.

I'm sure there will be people who disagree, but that's irrelevant to my business. No matter which developers I use, .NET takes longer.

Not to mention that it's a proprietary environment. I don't want to have to pay a license fee to Redmond every time I deploy something thanks very much.

 

[Eraserhead]

You people need a sense of perspective. .Net and it's associated technologies (including WPF, WCF, and Silverlight) quite simply blow away XCode and Objective-C. Microsoft's development environment is better than Apple's. There, I said it.

Yeah, but its essentially a lie, I could come up with a list as long as my arm for why .NET is worse than Cocoa. But for a serious view take a look at Peter Bright's article on Arstechnica arguing the exact opposite.

The only advantage .NET has over Cocoa is that it can do ASP.NET which isn't supported by Cocoa at the moment.

 

[snickelfritz]

I will be very surprised if this technology ever becomes anything but an obscure proprietary API for large MS-bound corporate intranets.

 

[dernhelm]

Yeah, but its essentially a lie, I could come up with a list as long as my arm for why .NET is worse than Cocoa. But for a serious view take a look at Peter Bright's article on Arstechnica arguing the exact opposite.

The only advantage .NET has over Cocoa is that it can do ASP.NET which isn't supported by Cocoa at the moment.

I've read that article before, and found it quite humorous. The simple truth of the matter is that everyone's favorite development environment is always the "best". That's why when I went over to the "dark side" to code on windows I always loaded Cygwin on every machine because I couldn't live without sed and awk.

But that article is whining about Win32. And I agree, whenever I need to delve back into Win32 I hate it too. Everyone does, or at least everyone who isn't a masochist. But I wasn't arguing about whether I liked developing on Win32 APIs. I was saying that the .Net platform and the visual studio tools are simply better than XCode, Obj-C, and Cocoa - at least for what I do.

I myself would still rather be working on Macs (it's all I own at home, and I still do a lot of custom Cocoa development for fun) but I can call a spade a spade. Microsoft has finally passed the Next environment for ease of development. It doesn't mean I can't write 1st class enterprise apps in Cocoa (people do it all the time) it simply means that for me it has been easier working in .Net. I will say that it is only recently that I've felt this way, the Next environment (now Cocoa) had always impressed me - but it is finally starting to show it's age a little.

And if Apple is listening (which I am sure they are not) they should (gasp) take a look at what Microsoft is doing right (sacrilege!) and do them one better. But Apple isn't really driven that way, they are not looking to sell tools to developers (which is why they give it away). There tools are more than good enough - and they're free. Which is something Microsoft will never be able to say.

 

[Eraserhead]

I've read that article before, and found it quite humorous. The simple truth of the matter is that everyone's favorite development environment is always the "best".

Peter B is actually a big Windows fan, who has recently bought a Mac, and so understands how both worlds work.

I was saying that the .Net platform and the visual studio tools are simply better than XCode, Obj-C, and Cocoa - at least for what I do.

It may be true that specifically for what you want to do .NET is better, but it doesn't really generalise, PeterB has also identified similar flaws in .NET as in Win32.

There are large tracts of Win32 without .NET equivalents (of interest to me is the lack of .NET counterpart to DirectShow, for example, but that's far from the only one). And even when .NET does have some functionality, it's often very restricted. For example, the horrible containers library (badly-named interfaces, an insufficiently granular taxonomy, a failure to provide interfaces for some container types (HashSet), lack of iterator concept causing leaky abstractions (LinkedListNode)), the weak cryptography library (compared to e.g. Java Cryptography Extensions), totally demented functions like HashPasswordForStoringInConfigFile, the dual mail APIs (System.Web.Mail, System.Net.Mail), both of which are extremely limited (compared to e.g. JavaMail), the leakiness of the Windows Forms abstraction (the fact that I have to care about whether there's an HWND, for example)... it goes on and on and on. What makes it particularly galling is that in many cases there were better models out there; for .NET, Java should be the obvious source of inspiration. Simply copying what Java did would have been a great deal better in most cases.

(source)

I can add to the demented features with some specifics for ASP.NET, DropDownLists not allowing you to combine more than 2 together at once with bound data sources, Button events getting called AFTER the page has recalled the PageLoad method, the server-side being unable to read values set to "read only" controls by Javascript and it goes on.

And if Apple is listening (which I am sure they are not) they should (gasp) take a look at what Microsoft is doing right (sacrilege!) and do them one better.

Which is why it was Apple not Microsoft who listened to their customers and fixed the transparent menubar and Stacks in Leopard whereas Vista still doesn't let you search the control panel properly and has the crap power button in the start menu and many other flaws .

Its also why the iPhone v2.0 seems to be pretty much 100% enterprise ready, because Apple didn't listen to their customers, right.

 

[macsrules]

Microsoft Silverlight is 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.

By using Expression Studio and Visual Studio, designers and developers can collaborate more effectively using the skills they have today to light up the Web of tomorrow.

Another piece of crap software plugin so that Microsoft can try to keep themselves relevant to the web.

It's bad enough we have to endure there outdated non-compliant browsers but now they want us to adopt another one of there bastard children.

All this courteous of them having a high market share with good-old all American IE. Born from Microsoft love of the world.

 

[dernhelm]

It may be true that specifically for what you want to do .NET is better, but it doesn't really generalise, PeterB has also identified similar flaws in .NET as in Win32.

I could do something similar for EVERY development environment I've ever worked in. And I've worked in a lot of them. But that doesn't prove much of anything. It isn't that I even disagree with him much (ArsTechnica has been one of my favorite sites for years). But my point was (and is) that .Net is more developer friendly for what I (and legions of other people) do. Ever try to make reusable custom widget is XCode? You CAN do it, but it sure as heck is a lot easier in .Net.

I can add to the demented features with some specifics for ASP.NET, DropDownLists not allowing you to combine more than 2 together at once with bound data sources, Button events getting called AFTER the page has recalled the PageLoad method, the server-side being unable to read values set to "read only" controls by Javascript and it goes on.

Oh I can do better than that. The default grid widget in Silverlight doesn't filter or sort - how pathetic is that! There are lots of things that I don't like in .Net. I'm not saying MS got it all right. Just that there are some things that Microsoft did get right - from a developer perspective - that XCode did not.

Which is why it was Apple not Microsoft who listened to their customers and fixed the transparent menubar and Stacks in Leopard whereas Vista still doesn't let you search the control panel properly and has the crap power button in the start menu and many other flaws .

Its also why the iPhone v2.0 seems to be pretty much 100% enterprise ready, because Apple didn't listen to their customers, right.

Did you read anything I wrote? I specifically said that Apple based software is generally better because Apple DOES listen to customers. How does Apple fixing the dysfunctional transparent menubar have anything to do with XCode being a good development environment?

 

[FoxyKaye]

Microsoft tried its best to avoid tcp/ip networking until Win95. Not due to stupidity, but due to the desire to "rule the online world." If Microsoft had its way in the mid-90's we'd now all be logging onto MSN via dialup to read MacRumors.

And after they implemented it, almost gave the world MS TCP/IP instead.

Microsoft and standards are like jellyfish and the Mojave Desert, they just don't exist together.

 

[weg]

I am certain that if Silverlight is successful, Microsoft will have an enhanced version that will only run in Windows, completely forgetting about cross-platform compatibility.

Unlike Apple. They never even bothered to provide a Linux implementation of Quicktime, so they can't drop it.

 

[macsrules]

Okay, I went online and did some more reading to educate myself on Silverlight, to see what we are in-store for if it gets some traction on the web. Here are my thoughts. These are my opinions.


1. First - Microsoft is and are fighting an uphill battle. Most of the new and cutting edge web technologies are open source. How can they compete with that? Well they have there browsers on a ton of PC computers which gives them an audience, but they can't really compete yet because they don't have a platform for their developers.(read on, I will explain) Also, they have such a negative image among many in the web community.(this is not the web communities fault, if Microsoft would have stayed current)


2. Why can't they compete with Open Source? It is simple, PHP is one, if not the main Open Source Language while Microsoft, uses it's own, ASP. They are trying to find a way to compete with all the developers out there that contribute to the Open Source Community written in PHP. By the way, Apple was brilliant in building OS X on some of these core technologies. I am guessing, but I would say, most of the Open Source Developers have no love for Microsoft.


3. Well, Microsoft has tons of money, they can compete with anyone they want. Yes, Like the author in one of the articles stated, they can and have to, throw money at the web.(they can't ignore it like they do other Mac equivalent products) They just can't ignore it, so,


4. There solution. Create a plug-in that allows programmers out there that write in Microsoft languages and other CORE Programming languages to be-able to write web applications that will load up into the browsers. Do we really need this? I say more headaches when it comes to supporting. Are browser companies other than IE going to have this plugin pre-installed? I am pretty sure it is safe to say, probably not! So all the non IE browser people will have to manually install this plug-in? It is kind of like the current situation, people being frustrated about older versions of IE not being compliant. Now people with other browsers that go to sites that where built needing this plug-in installed, will be frustrated.

5. According to one of the Articles, Microsoft says, this gives them the ability to compete with AJAX and Flash (I say, no, this tries to give Microsoft a way to get there hands around the neck of the web) They say that programmers that write in these other languages will be able to write better applications than the ones in Flash and Ajax. (I disagree, there is nothing you can't do with the current tools, if you know what you are doing.) According to the articles, Silverlight allows more programmers that know these languages to write there applications for the web using this plugin. That may be true, but do we want people that use the languages that are the main focus of Microsoft, building future web applications and standards? There products are usually bloated and sub-par.(personal opinion)

6. So, this will supposedly give them a platform. I say this, why don't those people that can program in these other languages just learn PHP, Flash, Flex, Action Script, Adobe Air, Javascript, Ruby on Rails, etc..? It would be easy for them if they know these other languages to pick it up. If they feel they are still too limited, maybe they should focus on building Microsoft applications?

 

[ShortyExcl.]

So why does alomost every single Microsoft-related news item get so many more negative than positive ratings on Macrumors? Like the recent one Silverlight, which is far superior to Flash and Ajax.

Like, will there ever be anything but arrogance from the (general) great mass of Mac users?

Because Microsoft is trying to get a monopoly in every aspect of the computer market..They don't want free will..the freedom to choose between your favorite system..or to work with what you like best..Microsoft is setting standards where there are none needed..and if they do work out the way they want..they do not share with other platforms..for example..I am a mac/linux user..so i have a macbook and a linux desktop..these 2 work great together..i can set up networks..well i can do whatever i want..but if i try to put a windows computer in it..even file sharing isn't simple anymore..and there is more because of the NTFS file formatting if you try to keep it simple..put a dual boot linux/windows..you can't even share anymore between to hard drives..without having to install plugins and crappy sofware..and then the fun begins..so i'm all set up..i have my linux desktop..i have my macbook..and i want to make a database for my school which works with access..and off we go..because..windows has set standards for the .mdb..and guess what?..no access or .mdb support on mac..and for linux there isn't even a ms office package available..So set up parallels desktop..windows xp (at least a bit stable?!)..install ms office in your windows environment..and there you go..bill = what about 500euros..but hey..your off to work with the windows standards..so the next step..you have made your ms database..and now want to implement it in a program..oh but wait..no more visual basics for mac..allright..so lets by the windows version and put it in parallels as well..

Do you understand why i HATE microsoft?!..why most of the people here hate it?..because it is a scheme..robbery at the least..if you want to work with microsoft standards..you have to install crappy software..or you have to buy a windows pc or parallels and windows at the least..

By the way..have you tried windows messenger and isight..or even offline messages?..great compatibility don't you think?! (ow in case you didn't knew..i was being sarcastic!)