Microsoft and Silverlight @ ZuneOriginals.net

OK Microsoft,

When you release a new technology and you promote it as an alternative to Flash please at least make a little attempt to actually use the technology in one of your production web sites. I can't say much of your continued use of Flash in your production web applications. It's frustrating and it's degrading to your developer base. Do you actually think that any developers will jump on board with the technology when you yourselves don't even use it?

If anyone has any insight in to why the https://zuneoriginals.net site is written in Flash please let me know. I would have thought this project was a great candidate to show off what the Silverlight technology can do with a little Zune 2 demo with HD quality streaming video etc. I guess someone at Microsoft wasn't so keen.

Is Silverlight a pipe dream? Will Microsoft even use it in their production implementations? Or is Flash just that much better? You tell me! Would you ever use it?

Over and Out

Tafiti: Under the Silverlight hood

I'm particular. I looked through the www.Tafiti.com source code and noticed a bunch of stuff that I didn't like about how Silverlight is building the underlying RIA.

In www.tafiti.com there is a function called startSkipjack that uses a Silverlight.createObject function. Back in the day's that used to be a call to ActiveX or some sort of COM object in the browser - but this function is obviously a JavaScript wrapper for the creation of the Silverlight plugin. I'd assume an actual plugin is loaded that is not 100% JavaScript - I'm sure Microsoft would like me to think that too.

Kind of a strange strategy to make a plugin dependent on XAML and JavaScript at the page level but then again I guess any scripting language will suffice and XAML is just XML.

After seeing a working demo certain things escape me ...

Use of Styles

It's use of styles ... Consider this EX//

SJ.Hyperlink(0, 0, 55, 0, "feedback",
"FontFamily='Verdana' FontSize='9' Foreground='#ffffff' Opacity=' 0.8'",
"mailto:tafiti@microsoft.com ");

One would think inline styles would be replaced with CSS. By externalizing CSS developers would be able to modify styles by simply modifying the underlying CSS template. This just makes things easier to maintain. But Kudos for actually using the same syntax in the inline style declarations.

Text Content in JavaScript

My final criticism is: Isn't a huge problem with these Rich UI's (Flash) that search engines have a ton of trouble indexing the actual text and links? In Silverlight text and link info is included in the JavaScript which most search engines will just ignore. Consider this EX//

signInSignOutLink = new SJ.Hyperlink(0, 0, 35, 0, userIsAuthenticated ? "sign out" : "sign in",
"FontFamily='Verdana' FontSize='9' Foreground='#ffffff' Opacity=' 0.8'",
userIsAuthenticated ? userSignoutUrl : signInSignOutLink.openWithName = "_self";
if (!userIsAuthenticated) {
signInSignOutLink.onMouseEnter = function(sender, args) { SJ_ShowToolTip(sender.visual, "Sign in with your Windows Live ID so youcan access your stacks from multiple computersand post stacks to your Windows Live Space.", args.getPosition(SJ.topCanvas)); }
signInSignOutLink.onMouseLeave = function() { SJ_HideToolTip(); }
}

They (Microsoft Silverlight) could have easily put time into developing a sort of hide region feature whereby things like the sign in sign out link could be defined in markup to be hidden and then merely organized using Javascript / Silverlight. They could then subclass the hyperlinks into external and internal Silverlight hyperlinks. This would support search engine indexing ... Consider this alternative to above EX//

<a id="signInSignOutLink" class="SilverLightHiddenControl">sign in</a>....<script>signInSignOutLink = new SilverlightHyperlink("signInSignOutLink", "NavLink", "NavLinkOver", "NavLinkVisited", OnClickEvent, OnMouseEnter, OnMouseLeave ...); signInSignOutLink.Init(); // or just include this in the constructor but call the constructor after the page is loaded .. </script><br />

Site Size:

I'd be curious to get a Flash developer to develop a simple "Hello World" application and then compare the size of that application to a Silverlight application. My guess is that Silverlight will be significantly larger than Flash merely because it requires XAML and JavaScript to run before launching the application and it's provided in the raw mark-up files. I see this as a drawback for anyone wanting to develop a high performance RIA in Silverlight.

Threadding:

My understanding is that in using Silverlight you may effectually write a client side multi threaded interface. I'm curious to understand how we can actually multi thread when communication between the browser and Silverlight is dependent on JavaScript. Possibly Microsoft can better explain this.

Conclusions:

I'm very suspicious. Is this a plugin or a cached clientside JavaScript library. Or is it as it looks, a hybrid mash-up of a bunch of trendy technologies: Plugin + XML + JavaScript. And if it is the later, why in the lords name wouldn't they make indexing the content a priority and why would they leave crap like inline styles in the source. I'd assume that would be a huge win over Flash etc. especially if the search crawlers can already crawl html.

My Quick Asks For Silverlight:

1) Show me how Silverlight can be used to create Virtual Earth Mash-Ups.

2) Make Silverlight work on Opera Mini.

3) Show me a multi threaded UI example.

Let me know what you think about Silverlight.

Over and Out

Nausea = Microsoft's Silverlight Home Page = WOW, I think I'm going to be sick

Wow (I think that's the new Microsoft Line),



I decided to take a quck look at Microsoft's demo of it's new Silverlight technology. Man did I almost puke all over my keyboard. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I've read in several places that the blury background effect is something Silverlight does for you automatically (Silverlight transition function). I really hope this isn't the default, cause I imagine everyone would want this feature turned off. I don't know if it's my eyes, or if it's me trying to focus to read the blury text, or what it is, but it makes me dizzy and sick to my stomach. Gives me a whole no meaning to the word WOW (Wow, I think I'm gonna toss my lunch).

Microsoft Silverlight

Sorry readers. This is a quick response to a friend at Microsoft's email asking me what I thought of the Microsoft Silverlight platform. I'll write a better opinion when time permits after doing more research:

Silverlight looks pretty cool, is it really Microsoft recognizing that Adobe is a competitor and going after them? Or is this their platform entry into the video content distribution market? Its about time regardless! Gotta love the two step behind strategy (NOTE is it two step behind or did MS really think IT was still paving the internet freeway)!

I didn't see anywhere if the server platform had to run on Windows but that could be a problem if they had to convince big companies to use it (they will have to pay off Google/YouTube bigtime to switch the infrastructure to deliver the content - or more likely I guess just compete). Also, it seems like you'd need a ton of licensing to start a business with it. So I don't know who their target development market really is (we need more proof that this isn't just another Microsoftie).

I think it will be tough for it to take off via grassroots as the Adobe product is dug in / open and the market is pretty mature (is it really the next generation technology or will the next trend come first?). It really depends if Microsoft wants to go xBox on Adobe / Google and suck up losses for half a decade for long term gain. People think that Google is in this position but MS has way more power ($$).

Is it really all about pushing the Microsoft TCP Chimney technology (so we can go Microsoft over Intel 10gb internet and make use of the MS server farms)? Is Microsoft going to push this technology to all vista users so they will automatically have the client plugin? Will they use the ad platform to push to other platforms?

I can see google / adobe teaming up against this technology big time cause they like open source. Further, there are not many big .net sites on the net so its kind of tough to think this technology would scale too well. Typical MS issue stuff.

The big catch for me is when a company announces technology with a set of big media partners, its almost like they built it for themselves, and API'd the software for developers to use for FUN - but if you can prove it works with them then you can get credibility so developers may use it.

Is this just a name change and a couple business deals?

I just got a subscription to Joost and its pretty cool. Gives me 20 good quality digital stations with video on demand. I have a feeling there will be a future market for users to share hd video but think that high quality syndicate video internet lies in owning the network of programming - like YouTube is now, Joost is the evolution of the corporate side of YouTube and it is free.

I guess Microsoft could just make bigger offers to networks / sign bigger deals to get content and force other players out of the high quality part (but mobile may promote the low quality video internet if it gets more trendy - especially with respect to video capture over video preview and that my promote YouTube).

Its pretty cool stuff, but I don't think its a really new technology! Having said this, the one scary thing you can never discount is what Microsoft can do on the backend with some of it's video technology (and xBox stuff). Is it possible that this announcement will be followed by another PhotoSynth announcement? If Microsoft finds a way to make PhotoSynth stream real 3D models of the world this may actually become a development platform we can build avators into (careful Second Life and Google Earth). Also, how does this plug-in relate to Microsoft's mapping platform, will they move maps.live.com to Silverlight's open cross browser platform? Is this the final component we need for xBox to become a real streaming entertainment platform for home users?

I wonder. I wonder a lot about this one.

Over and Out