Is Silverlight really dead, or is it the future of Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Windows Phone? This is a question weighing on the minds of legions of Microsoft developers right now – developers who were once promised that Silverlight was the answer to their cross-platform, cross-browser compatibility woes, only to be later informed that JavaScript and HTML5 will be the tools used to build Windows 8 applications. HTML5 is also supported in the IE9 browser, coming soon to Windows Phone “Mango,” due out this fall.
Does that mean HTML5, then, is the future of the Microsoft platform? Maybe not. A new, unannounced platform called “Jupiter” may soon have Microsoft developers leveraging their existing skills to write applications for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone. Which means, of course, apps that run on all platforms – not just PCs, but tablets and phones, too…and even the TV (via Xbox). → Read More
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about consumer cloud services. There’s Apple’s recently-announced iCloud, Amazon’s Cloud Drive, Google’s Music Beta (which is your music in the cloud) and, of course, Microsoft’s SkyDrive. All of these to one extent or another are moving away from simple online lockers, and we see that today with the release of the latest update to SkyDrive.
The navigation is less clunky. Groups are now built in. Docs open up in online versions of Word or Excel, and can also be opened in the traditional desktop Office apps with edits syncing back and forth. But the biggest change is SkyDrive’s transition away from Microsoft Silverlight to HTML5 for all but a few remaining features. Photos and videos are all viewed with HTML5, which brings infinite scrolling of thumbnails and a new slide viewer. Videos now use the H.264 format and the video player is HTML5 instead of Silverlight. → Read More
Perhaps you read the news late last week or this past weekend that Microsoft is shifting their strategy when it comes to Silverlight. Essentially, they indicated that they were commited to using it as the development platform for Windows Phone, and for certain media applications (like Netflix), but for a true cross-platform strategy, they’re going to shift their focus to HTML5. That all sounds great. It makes a lot of sense.
Well, unless you’re a Silverlight developer. Then you might be a little worried and/or pissed off.
In fact, following Bob Muglia’s (Microsoft’s SVP of the Server and Tools Business) comments last week during PDC, there was a bit of an uproar in the Silverlight Forums. So it’s hardly surprising today that we have Muglia directly responding with a follow-up blog post. And perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has also issued his own post with his thoughts on PDC where he makes mention of Silverlight — 6 times in 5 paragraphs. → Read More
Nearly a year ago, Microsoft pulled together a group of reporters for Bing Fall Release event. The highlight of the presentation was a demo showing off some nifty new features in Bing Maps. The problem? All of this stuff required Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plug-in to work. I berated the company for once again pushing users towards a more proprietary web. So today it’s time to laud them, as they seem to be backing away from that strategy.
During last week’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC), ZDNet’s Mary-Jo Foley asked Bob Muglia, Microsoft’s SVP of the Server and Tools Business, why the company failed to highlight Silverlight in a meaningful way this year. His answer was rather surprising. → Read More
This isn’t exactly the most momentous announcement, but the evolution of the streaming media platforms out there is worth keeping an eye on. SRS is a good, established sound standard, present on many TVs and now decodable to your local setup through Silverlight. → Read More
As we all know, the battle between Flash and HTML5 for the future of online video is raging. But what about that other plugin some sites use for video? You know, the one made by Microsoft — Silverlight? A new posting tonight may call that platform’s future in video into question as well. Because arguably their most important client is looking to jump on the HTML5 video bandwagon: Netflix.
A post tonight by Adrian Cockcroft (as noticed by the blog Hacking Netflix), Netflix’s Director of Web Engineering, indicates the company’s intention to embrace HTML5 going forward. The move is apparently spurred on by Netflix’s move to Amazon’s cloud, which will require a re-architecting of the codebase, Cockcroft notes. So what better time to start supporting the latest technologies? “One of these is HTML5, which is raising the bar for cross browser support for advanced user interface features, and is now supported by a large and rapidly growing percentage of the visitors to netflix.com. In addition many TV based devices now embed webkit, which is the HTML5 compatible technology that underpins the Safari and Chrome browsers,” Cockcroft writes. → Read More
This year’s MIX 2010 was led by Scott Guthrie, who has emerged from Microsoft’s rank and file to own just about everything developer-related. Where last year’s MIX and PDC conferences were spearheaded by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, Guthrie’s keynote appearances focused on the progress Silverlight has made in driving the company’s 3 Screens and the Cloud approach to the disruptions going on in mobile, television, and the Web OS desktop. I spoke with Scott after his opening day keynote in Las Vegas:
Steve Gillmor: I was particularly impressed, surprisingly so, I must admit, with how Seesmic seemed to be the heart of the demos. In its showing how you can go, Loic [Le Meur] made an investment in the Windows client, and then backwards leveraged it into the Silverlight client, and then opened up three platforms as a result. That’s pretty spectacular I thought.
Scott Guthrie: Yeah, I think what we’re trying to do — I mean, ultimately what we’re trying to do is how do we enable developers to be successful on our platform using our tools, and a lot of the focus we’ve had around Silverlight has been primarily around consumer and then also last year more also in the business space where I think we’ve reached a tipping point where the value for companies being able to build an app and sell it or be able to make money is suddenly very compelling.
And I think both what Loic showed with Seesmic and then I think also the eBay app that was shown, that we’re really excited about, it was a great example of people are choosing it, because, wow, I can build an experience that my customers love, I can hit multiple devices, it runs on the PC and it can run on the Mac, it can run in the phone, and the user experience isn’t kind of a lowest common denominator but it’s kind of a wow experience on all the platforms.
You know, I think you’re going to see more and more developers get excited by that. If ultimately developers can build cool apps and make money off of them, you tend to get them interested.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wE4r0Q5BZ8&hl=en_US&fs=1&] → Read More
Microsoft’s stealth Windows replacement WebOS turned the corner today with the announcement of Windows Phone developer tools. Mention Silverlight on the Gillmor Gang as I did Friday, and Google evangelists Chris Messina and Brett Slatkin did a living Blue Screen of Death. But Nexus One and Android success not only validates the race with Apple, it brings Microsoft into third place in the smart phone race. As Seesmic’s Loic Le Meur told me prior to his appearance at the MIX2010 keynote, shipping a plug-in architecture for Silverlight gives him an instant onramp to Windows, Mac, and mobile. Scott Guthrie leads off. With no PDC this year, MIX has taken on the tone of the premier Microsoft developer conference. Silverlight approaching 60% penetration, up from 45% at the PDC last December. The Olympics player has been open sourced. Visual Studio reved to support Silverlight 4. Free Expression Blend 4 upgrade to Silverlight 4. Silverlight 4 ships next month. Joe Belfiore takes over to announce the development platform for Window Phone 7 series devices. What’s immediately interesting is how similar WIndows Phone is to Android. The three experiences may be more similar than Apple wants them to be, but the time spent learning Android pays off more quickly wtih Windows Phone than iPhone. Even differences become less intimidating because of the transition through Android. Not surprisingly, what’s not shown is any tools for porting Windows Phone apps to iPhone or Android. I wouldn’t expect the latter, but given Adobe’s noise about Flash-to-i(Pad)Phone, the former is surely in the works. Microsoft is giving away all the dev tools for WP7 development, and Seesmic’s demo underlines how fast the ecosystem could be built with Microsoft at the head of the stack. Of course, no one sees it this way ecept a small number of analysts and developers who recognize Redmond’s core strengths and weakness from the stretched-to-the-margins Google play. That leaves Apple. → Read More
While digging through the Chromium forums back in November looking for clues about the then-unreleased Chrome for Mac beta, we stumbled on an interesting bit of information: Google was moving away from supporting Gears going forward. While this move was obvious for some given Google’s heavy investment in HTML5, Google hadn’t talked much about what would happen to their plug-in that allowed for things such as offline access to Gmail. They’re talking now.
In a post yesterday on the Gears API blog, Ian Fette from the Gears team comes right out and says it in his title: “Hello HTML5.” Fette notes that the reason there haven’t been many updates to Gears in the past several months is because the team has shifted its focus towards implementing the same features into Chrome through HTML5. So far, this includes Database API, workers, local storage, and web sockets. And soon, LocalServer API and Geolocation will be a part of Chrome as well, Fette notes. In essence, all of these features make Gears unnecessary — well, at least in Chrome, which Google obviously wants you to use. → Read More
Had a wonderful time at the Google Holiday Party the other night both because of and in spite of it being “off the record.” The ground rules created an atmosphere where Googlers could be more frank than they usually are (note irony here) and at the same time get to wall off portions of the media’s brains from talking about what they said. These moments feel a lot like the Washington senior official scenario, where quotes emanate from thinly disguised “spokespersons” which are in reality the actual “persons.”
In any case, I won’t reveal what was said by Googlers because I want to be invited back next year. Also because they didn’t say anything that contradicts anything they’ve said publicly or that I’ve made up out of whole cloth. In fact, what I can talk about is what I said. Here’s a digest of that stream:
It seems that the WebOS contest for the hearts and minds for developers is settling out as one between ChromeOS and Silverlight. In my mind, ChromeOS is Chrome, and now that it’s on the Mac I care. Chrome therefore subsumes FireFox, Safari, and eventually Android, regardless of what has been said about the difficulty (or not) of having one OS span the desktop and mobile devices. I can’t tell you when Googlers will release Chrome Extensions but a spokesperson pointed out Google has publicly stated the project is open source, which suggests you could look up the answer to this and many questions. Indeed MG has made a career out of doing this.
So when Extensions ship, I will move off of Firefox within minutes, not because I have any extensions other than PowerTwitter but because I wait for enough stability and market force to make moving a conservative bet. And the main thing I’m waiting for above all else is Silverlight compatibility. I can’t say what Googlers said about this, but my thought is that if they can support the crap Adobe AIR hairball, they can support Silverlight. My bet is they will or already do. → Read More
Today at their Bing Fall Release event, Microsoft showed off some nice updates to their search engine, including further information about how the much anticipated Twitter and Facebook data integration will work. But by far the most interesting thing they showed was the new beta version of Bing Maps. While it looked very nice, the real reason why it was so interesting is what it requires: Silverlight.
This news comes just days after Google’s revelation (thanks, in part, to our story on the upcoming Chrome for Mac beta) that they were backing away from supporting Gears in the future, in favor of HTML5. Gears is the software that Google created to allow users to use their applications while not connected to the web. But it’s also a plug-in (for all browsers except Google’s own Chrome for the PC). This is a big barrier to entry for many users. And it’s something that creates problems developing apps around it if say, a user doesn’t have Gears installed.
So it’s good to see Google step away from a plug-in even if it’s no longer proprietary (originally called “Google Gears,” they have since open-sourced it). And it makes what Microsoft is doing even more frustrating. → Read More
There’s no question multi-touch enabled hardware is going to be invading many homes and offices in the years to come, and it’s exciting to see how some software makers are already building applications that take full advantage of the multi-touch experience, aided by support baked into modern operating systems and increasingly powerful graphics processors.
But until today, I had’t really seen anyone boast a full-fledged multi-touch website yet.
Well, say hello to the future by visiting the new SilverPAC website, built by LA-based Ciplex in collaboration with Microsoft using Silverlight on Windows 7. → Read More
Ever since FriendFeed was sold to Facebook, we’ve been told over and over again that the company and its community were toast. And as if to underline the fact, FriendFeed’s access to the Twitter firehose was terminated and vaguely replaced with a slow version that is currently delivering Twitter posts between 20 minutes and two hours after their appearance on Twitter. At the Realtime CrunchUp, Bret Taylor confirmed this was not a technical but rather a legal issue. Put simply, Twitter is choking FriendFeed to death.
What’s odd about this is that most observers consider FriendFeed a failure, too complicated and user-unfriendly to compete with Twitter or Facebook. If Twitter believed that to be the case, why would they endeavor to kill it? And if it were not a failure? Then Twitter is trying to kill it for a good reason. That reason: FriendFeed exposes the impossible task of owning all access to its user’s data. Does Microsoft or Google or IBM own your email? Does Gmail apply rate limiting to POP3 and IMAP?
So the reason Twitter is killing FriendFeed is because they think they can get away with it. And they will, as far as it goes, as long as the third party vendors orbiting Twitter validate the idea that Twitter owns the data. That, of course, means Facebook has to go along with it. Playing ball with Twitter command and control doesn’t make sense unless Facebook likes the idea of doing the same thing with “their” own stream. Well, maybe so. That leaves two obvious alternatives. → Read More
The Gillmor Gang convened Wednesday to ponder the last several weeks of events loosely contained in a discussion of the next generation Web operating system. Three major announcements set the table for this Thanksgiving edition: Google’s ChromeOS, Microsoft’s Silverlight 4, and salesforce’s Chatter collaboration platform. The last might be pigeonholed as enterprise Twitter, but Marc Benioff’s position as a central driver of Web Services since the last collaboration shootout in Y2K suggests there’s more to Chatter than meets the casual social media eye.
This edition sports some familiar longtime Gangsters, including Ziff Davis Enterprise and ITBusinessEdge editor Mike Vizard and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis, who promises not to agree to time limits on his next bets. Alert listeners of the old RSS-bound version of The Gang will recall Calacanis bet a sushi dinner that Google would launch its own OS. I pinned him down to one year, and unfortunately the bet was joined 3 or 4 years ago. Even if you accept the idea that ChromeOS is a real OS, then the next bet might be when Silverlight merges into the new Windows. Robert Scoble says no Silverlight Office for 5 years. I say 2 years tops.
More recent regular Kevin Marks continues to party down on the notion that HTML 5 will hit the mainstream shortly. Kevin sees Microsoft’s announced support for Silverlight video transcoded to Apple streaming format for the iPhone as a validation of HTML5, but there’s no getting around Microsoft’s aggressive use of Silverlight to push the market ahead of HMTL 5′s progress in the video area. → Read More
Earlier this summer I traveled to Redmond to talk realtime and the cloud with senior Microsoft executives. In this conversation with Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, I tried to delve into what “we inelegantly call Three Screens and A Cloud” from Bach’s vantage point atop Xbox, Zune, Windows Mobile, Media Server, and related hardware. The subtext: Microsoft’s nextgen realtime strategy at the cusp of consumer and enterprise.
ROBBIE BACH: For us, the cloud does a number of things. First of all, it enables us to create community. Right? I mean, the biggest thing — people ask why is Xbox Live successful. Why do we have 20 million members on Xbox Live? And a good percentage of those people who pay us real money for a subscription every year. And some of it is about multi-player gaming, I will grant you. But a significant portion of it is about those people saying, “Hey, this is where I meet my friends. This is where we do things together.”
And if you don’t have a cloud set of services behind that, that gets actually quite hard. How do we do the types of things we’re doing now where you and your friends will be able to watch a movie together and not be in the same room? That requires a set of cloud-based services behind it to enable that to happen in a rich and effective way. And, oh, by the way, talk and see each other at the same time. That’s a pretty interesting experience and a pretty interesting trick. And that all happens through the work that we’re able to do on Xbox Live.
So to me, the biggest thing that the cloud does in the immediate term is it gives us a social environment. It gives us the ability for people to do things together.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu289G4bqCA&hl=en_US&fs=1&] → Read More
Microsoft announced the availability of Silverlight 4 in beta at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) today. Some of the new features include more fluid animations, Webcam, microphone and printing support, 200 percent faster start times than Silverlight 3, deep zoom and multi-touch support and more. It now also supports Google Chrome, even though it’s just a rounding error of a browser.
One of the big capabilities of Silverlight 4 is its ability to take rich-media experiences outside the browser in client apps which will compete with Adobe AIR. The non-browser apps fully support HTML, allowing tight integration with content from the Web. It also supports notifications. → Read More
Earlier this summer I traveled to Redmond to meet with a number of Microsoft executives, including Bob Muglia, President of the Server and Tools Business. Muglia’s group has grown rapidly to become the critical swing vote in Microsoft’s transition to the cloud, now closing in on almost a third of the giant’s overall revenue. And as Silverlight and realtime become the strategic heart of the integration of cloud and on-premise solutions, what Muglia had to say then will resonate much more clearly when he takes the stage next Tuesday with Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie to open the PDC in Los Angeles.
STEVE GILLMOR: Will there be a Silverlight Office, something like that?
BOB MUGLIA: What I think you’ll see over time is major parts of Microsoft applications beginning to incorporate Silverlight into their experience. I mean, as — if you look at, for example, the Web companions that Office is doing, they do use Silverlight in a variety of instances. So, we’re seeing that being used there. We’ll begin to see Bing and MSN and our online properties begin to adopt Silverlight inside the set of things that they do. We already see some of that in a limited form in Windows Live.
If you look at my business, which is less consumer-focused, and we focus really on business customers, we are building interfaces that are Web-based interfaces for our business servers, using Silverlight. I mean, it’s become pretty universal that the kind of experience we can provide, in this case, a system administrator, is much, much better, we can write it much faster, by using Silverlight. And as we begin to launch new services — we have a management service we’ll be launching next year that’s System Center Online, that enables people to manage desktops through a cloud-based service — the entire user interface for that, from a management perspective, is all done in Silverlight.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhJwHOsoXEQ&hl=en&fs=1&] → Read More
Here’s a bizarre use for Microsoft’s “Flash-killer” Silverlight—a ballistics calculator. Yes, Silverlight is being used to build an application that lets shooting and hunting enthusiasts “customize shooting conditions” while comparing Winchester-made bullets.
Winchester’s Ballistics Calculator lets gun users choose their type of ammunition and then compare up to five different bullet types with charts and graphs. You can enter specific conditions like wind speed and outside temperature, maximum range, direction, speed and height. The application will then display charts and graphs that visually lay out the point of impact, drop and trajectory of each type of bullet. → Read More
With Windows 7 shipping in less than a month, we’re sure to smell a whiff of the Microsoft of old from the Pacific Northwest. After years of dropped balls and transitions from the Gates era to whatever we’re now in, Steve Ballmer should have plenty to feel good about. Steve Sinofsky has completed his personal reworking from Office chief to Windows czar, and the new OS arrives just in time to crest with the netbook wave. On the Office front, the O2010 tech preview is in a classic Microsoft holding pattern, waiting to touch down next year in the wake of the new Windows release. Microsoft marketing managers still won’t answer the simple question (What are the features NOT available in the Web Apps?) They’re glad to rationalize the answer as: we’re providing the features Web users want. The real answer continues to lie in the politics of the transition from disk to Web. What is new is that Powerpoint and Excel the Web versions can now function with somewhat greater fidelity than Google App’s competitor. Compare them to the desktop versions, you’re in the old political weeds. Compare it to Google, not bad. SkyDrive starts to look like an interesting service, if only (and importantly) as a reason to get a Windows Live ID and 25 gigs of free storage. I find the desktop/Web Apps comparison a cul de sac Microsoft will do well to get away from as fast as possible. The central message for nextgen realtime apps is that Office Web Apps are soon to be highly competitive with the alternatives. The collaboration features alone are so basic that my fundamental question is whether the desktop apps support them in realtime, not the other way around. Word is still not baked and seems to continue to suffer from oldthink strangleholds, but if the first wave gets some traction with realtimers it may tip things our way before ship date. The other mixed messaging is of course Silverlight. It’s easy to wonder whether Microsoft really gets what they have going here, but the underlying answer is yes, with the political caveat. Reports of a recent internal meeting were devoid of mentions of Silverlight, with the usual Bill-era science projects around Walls and other esoteric research fantasies taking up most of the troop rallying. Nonetheless, Silverlight is the most strategic part of the new Microsoft message, that Redmond services → Read More
