Microsoft Woos Developers Under the Silverlight 300
CWmike writes to tell us that with the impending release of their Silverlight 2.0 product, Microsoft is poised to enact the next phase of their plan, wooing developers and designers directly. Microsoft is funding a French open-source project designed to allow programmers to utilize the Eclipse framework to build Silverlight apps. "Microsoft is also releasing for free a set of programming templates called the Silverlight Control Pack under its Microsoft Permissive License, as well as the technical specification for Silverlight's Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) vocabulary via Microsoft's Open Specification Promise. The latter, said Goldfarb, should make it easier for would-be Silverlight developers."
Re:So, does this mean (Score:5, Informative)
It is called Moonlight. http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight [mono-project.com]
But I am not all that comfortable with it. I think that Microsoft has done enough that I just can not trust them with any "standards" any longer.
Re:So, does this mean (Score:2, Informative)
More links on the topic (Score:5, Informative)
SL Eclipse Tools project
http://www.eclipse4sl.org/ [eclipse4sl.org]
MS Press release (interestly enough, it plans linux as a supported platform)
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-13Silverlight2PR.mspx [microsoft.com]
Silverlight 2 release is imminent.
Re:While I don't like Flash. (Score:3, Informative)
Too bad applets got such a bad rap. They actually work very well now and are fast and powerful.
Re:So, does this mean (Score:1, Informative)
ActionScript is really not that bad.
I am a full time as3 dev moving from C++ and Java. I still do quite a bit of work in Java as well.
There are only a few real problems with the language: a lack of overloading constructors and the lack of generics (which will be changed in an upcoming version).
If you're in ActionScript 3, it feels nothing like JavaScript. We've got strong typing!
Re:So, does this mean (Score:3, Informative)
Oh it is a holy war based on language syntax. I thought I was missing a glaring design quality issue about it.
Re:Why not Flash or AJAX? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:While I don't like Flash. (Score:3, Informative)
You can build Flash apps using the Flex SDK in any IDE you want.
Also, Flex Builder from Adobe is based on eclipse.
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/features/flex_builder/ [adobe.com]
Re:Why not Flash or AJAX? (Score:4, Informative)
Except that a plugin is not available on Linux. MS touts Moonlight as a nearly complete port of Silverlight to Linux but in fact it's very far from being usable - even Gnash is light years ahead of Moonlight when compared with their closed source versions.
Re:So, does this mean (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately Moonlight is nowhere near usable, at least for the average user. Additionally it will contain closed blobs of MS code because of the Novell-MS deal: read up [wikipedia.org]
Re:So, does this mean (Score:5, Informative)
Flash runs just fine on PPC Macs. I have a friend with a Windows Mobile phone that has no problem viewing Hulu Flash movies. (No clue what CPUs in it, but I doubt it's x86.) I dunno where you got the idea that it's x86-only.
Re:So, does this mean (Score:2, Informative)
First of all, there's an issue when dynamically loading images. No matter _how hard_ you try to dispose of allocated memory (Manual delete, NULL pointer, force GC etc etc) it does not free the previously allocated memory. Whopping memory leak. Furthermore, it's no longer possible to reference objects on the timeline until the frame _after_ they first get instantiated. Or the next one. Maybe. Or even the next one - all depends what mood the player is in. Sure, there's events you can hook in to to make sure you wait until the object's properly instantiated, but that kinda defeats the object of having a _time_line. So for us, AS3 is a bust until they can fix these issues.
Back OT, as for Silverlight - I've yet to see this running anything meaningful at more than a crawl. Even looking at some of the most basic of UI widget sets implemented in Silverlight is a painfully slow experience, so that's not going to cut it for me either. Anybody have any links to either "meaningful" Silverlight content (i.e. more than just "hello world"), or a UI widget set implemented in Silverlight that's usable real-time I'd be interested to check them out...
DT
Re:So, does this mean (Score:3, Informative)
We are getting ready for our first beta of Moonlight 1.0, which will map to Silverlight 1.0, you have a few options to get it running:
(a) Wait until our official Beta launch, and it will contain an easy-to-install plugin. Click install, restart browser, you are done.
(b) You can use it today if you build from our source code, it is published here: http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight [mono-project.com]
(c) Repositories like Packman have RPMs that you can install for various distributions that you can install today.
We will be using Microsoft's Media Pack for Linux, which is a licensed version of the media codecs, binary drivers provided by Microsoft. This has the advantage that the media companies that own the patents on codecs have been paid for (MPEG-LA consortium and others).
For those of you that live in a country where software/machine patents are not enforced (media patents are enforced in Europe, contrary to popular lore) or those that just want to stick it to the man, you can build Moonlight with the open source FFMPEG media codecs.
Support for Silverlight 2.0 will ship in preview form in December.