Will Silverlight become the next big Internet standard?

[BigBear]

Will Silverlight become the next big Internet standard? Or will flash with its current wide spead use keep its presence?

[andrew.]

Nope. Flash will always be the main one. Mostly because it's a standard now and also because it's on pretty much all OS's. Plus, I have Silverlight and I see no advantage of using it.

[BigBear]

Well Silverlight is going to be multi os and multi browser

Also 99% of internet users have Flash (according to Adobe)


http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/

[jbking]

What constitutes a standard, here? Does the W3C have to give sign off or is there something else that makes something common enough to be a defacto standard? I think I'd be in the camp that could see a Silverlight/Flash duopoly like there is for Coke and Pepsi, Home Depot and Lowe's, Intel and AMD for CPUs, AMD and nVidia for GPUs, etc.

[BigBear]

Yeah I guess that makes sence sort of like right now users need java and flash plugins for their brwosers so just add Slverlight to the list

[Dusk Eagle]

The problem is, Microsoft has an unfailing histroy[pdf] of Embracing a standard for a while, Extending that standard to only allow certain features to work with Microsoft products, and then snuffing out all competition by no longer supporting interoperability. They do this because if at any point, people no longer need Windows to perform all their tasks, their will be no motivation for anyone to stick with inferior, more expensive software. The pdf I posted above is a must-read from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, which will bring you up to speed on many of Microsoft's illegal practices to rule the standards over the years, but if you don't have time to read that, brush up on the strategy at Wikipedia.

One of two scenarios is guaranteed to unfold if Sivlerlight is successful in penetrating the market:
1) At some point, Microsoft will extend their Silverlight standard in a way Mono will not be able to emulate. People using Mono will have reduced functionality, and eventually will be completely unable to use Silverlight at all. This keeps people from transitioning to FOSS OS such as Linux or BSD, and Microsoft rejoices.

2) Microsoft forces companies like Novell and Red Hat to sign license agreements for use of Microsoft's software patents, and threatens to go after the companies and the customers of the companies that refuse to sign license agreements. Microsoft is already doing this by, among other things, claiming that Linux violates 235 of their patents (although they're not very specific about which ones) and have already signed license agreements with the likes of Novell and Red Hat. Microsoft has also gone after companies in court that infringe on even the most ridiculous of their patents, as in the recent TomTom suit.

I fully expect that, as consumer awareness increases about Microsoft's true nature, Microsoft will find it harder and harder to push Silverlight and other pseudo-standards onto computer users. But to avoid letting Microsoft prevail with Silverlight, people must first refuse to use Microsoft products, or else they will simply Embrace, Extend, and Exterminate competitors all over again.

[SJ]

what are the most stand out features for silverlight? i never programed in it, but all its apps that i've seen (which is not a lot) can be pretty much be made in flash.

[Tony]

If it's easier to develop in Silverlight (.Net vs. ActionScript), and if it has less problems than Flash (Silverlight had the advantage of being developed later), then developers might start to switch over.

Reuse of server-side libraries might be quite compelling for ASP.Net devs. Adaptation will follow.

[wtd]

jbking @ Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:01 am wrote:

What constitutes a standard, here?

I think we're talking about de facto standards.

[rdrake]

While it's a fantastic technology (anybody who says otherwise is an uneducated moron), I'm not convinced it will overtake Flash.

Will it become the RIA de facto standard? It might. I don't see many AIR applications (then again I don't see many Silverlight ones either). It looks like AJAX is the way to do things now-a-days.

Personally the lack of Linux support kills it for me. Moonlight in my experience tended to lock up my browser and cause my CPU usage to spike if it worked at all.

[bugzpodder]

none of silverlight, java, flash are internet standards and they will never be.

[gianni]

Personally, I think we're going to see flash usage decline quite drastically over the next few years as HTML 5 is adopted. For the most part, flash is really only used to display video/multimedia, and this technique will be obsolete with new (actual) standards. Obviously this technology is new, and there are a few shortcomings, but I think we'll see these ironed out over the next few years.

Just take a look at this example.

Semantic web, here I come!

[rizzix]

andrew. @ Thu Apr 23, 2009 5:11 pm wrote:

Nope. Flash will always be the main one. Mostly because it's a standard now and also because it's on pretty much all OS's. Plus, I have Silverlight and I see no advantage of using it.

I found one advantage of using silverlight over flash: videos for whatever reason seem much much better in fullscreen mode in Silverlight than in Flash.