Why Microsoft Silverlight Will Fail.

Filed under Flash, Industry, Web Design by Chad | 29 comments

29 comments

1. Kevin Richardson Apr 18

   I agree wholeheartedly with you. As a Flash/Flex developer of course, I also wonder whether I am totally biased in my opinions. It is good that Microsoft are in the arena, and there will undoubtedly be some superb open source frameworks out there - but ultimately, integration with CS3 and beyond, high penetration of the ubiquotus Flash player, the maturity of the technology, strong mobile support, adoptation of the eclipse open source IDE for Flex Builder 2, the list keeps going … Adobe have made, in my opinion, the smartest choices and ultimately, I want them to win the Web 2.0 battles ahead. Why? OK, I am biased, but I invest my time into learning their frameworks … sure I can change that, but I personally think what they are offering is a beautiful thing.

2. oz Apr 19

   I agree point for point. The one good thing I can see coming out of this is that I hope the competition helps drive down the costs of the Adobe Media server technologies.

3. Chad Apr 19

   A lower price or more accessible Flash Media Server / Flex Data Services option would be a great outcome from this, but the only this is going to happen (IMHO) is if MS packages some similar technology into the Longhorn server… right?

4. nerdabilly Apr 23

   I agree completely.
   Furthermore, the “no IDE for me” bullet point may as well be “no IDE for anybody.” There is Expression Blend, but in my recent trials with it, I found that it writes WPF code, not WPF/E code. WPF/E is a stripped-down version for cross-platform compatibility, whereas WPF is specific to Windows front-ends in Visual Studio IDEs. The difference, of course, is that WPF has many more objects, parameters, and so on which are not compatible with WPF/E and therefore, any attempt to lay out a WPF/E app in Expression Blend is likely to fail. I was not able to find any option to create a WPF/E app in Expression Blend. Plus, the Silverlight plugin has no error reporting, it simply fails to display anything if there is a XAML error. So, if you create a layout in Expression Blend and try to view it in a browser, you will see a whole lot of nothing.

   PS: dugg it

5. irperez Apr 26

   Competition is a good thing. I’m glad to see Microsoft bring in a competing product. Competition makes the products we use better, no matter what side you like more. It also brings the cost of the software down too. So this is great. I personally am hoping that Microsoft gets alot of market share from this, we’ll see. Flash is a monopoly, there are no competing products and in that respect, Flash hasn’t made leaps and bounds to improve its technology over the last decade. Yes it has improved, but not dramatically. Hopefully this competition will mean Adobe will put more R&D into Flash. Only time will tell. Oh and btw, one of the main guys that developed expression blend was a huge Flash developer and was recognized by the industry.

6. Tim Madden May 3

   I disagree with a couple of points:

   No plug in for Linux … it was only in January of this year that the flash plugin was released for Linux, version 9 of the plugin, that was a long wait.

   Market Penetration = Demand … this is mainly due to Microsoft packaging the flash plugin with IE, which it is not doing from IE7, this must have an effect on penetration figures.

   The Growing Mobile Content Market … Microsoft is already well positioned in the mobile market with smartphones and pocketpc phones.

   Maturity … Although the version number of the flash plugin is 9, there are a lot of features that are only one or two version old eg, there has only been one version since integrated video (which has been changed once already from sorenson to on2vp6). I think flash has a lot more maturing to do yet. Microsoft has maturity in a lot of other server based apps, WMP and IE. I don’t think saying flash been around for a decade is going make a difference.

   The Developer Community … People making money from other people sounds perfectly reasonable.

   CS3 … Expression Designer is a step in the right direction, but I take your point, flash has a nice focused development environment with the support from a suite of other products. I think Microsoft can catch up here with the resources they have.

7. ME Aug 23

   I happen to dissagree! I am a long time programmer. Since the age of 7. Thats 23 years programming. I am also highly experienced flash programmer and designer. First off people don’t care what something works with. If they want to see something there are going to download whatever it takes to see that site.

   The silverlight 1.1 download and install has taken an average of 1 minute, on all the systems I tested on. I was going to design my new video site completly in flash. I waited and have made it completly in silverlight. It is sick! I would have never been able to make andything close to this in flash.

   Flash’s programming environment SUCKS! I have used dreamweaver for years and I am so happy to have switcher to .NET and Visual Studio. I have been able to create top notch sites in 1/ 10th the time. Visual Studio is much more mature.

   Also, Flash video quality SUCK too. Windows Media is much higher quality. Flash also is missing a key element Digital Rights Management. No charging for videos in a flash based site.

   The amount of freedom and ease of programming is amazing in Visual studio 2008 and Expression Blend. I was stunned that Microsoft made this, but it gets an A+ in my book.

   It may not work on a PPC Mac. That is only 17 Million old computers compared to hundreds of millions of x86 based systems in the world.

   I think they are going very well with silverlight. You should just realize that your just a silly mac user who is in your own little mac world and sad that Microsoft came up with a great product.

8. Chad Aug 23

   Hey ME, what’s the URL for your Video site? I’d like to check it out. Also, did you by chance try out the new Flash H.264 Beta… pretty snazzy stuff!

   Also, I’m not sure why the absence of DRM prevents you from charging access to media files… EMusic has been DRM-Less since the 90’s and they seem to charge people for their DRM-Free MP3 files all the time.

   I think comapring Flash’s programming tools to Visual Studio is unfair and inaccurate… Compare the Flash IDe to Expression Designer and Visual Studio to Eclipse/Flex Builder. That’s a bit more accurate.

   You are right about one thing… I am a silly Mac user. Silly with no viruses, adware, spyware or crapware! I must be crazy!

9. John Sep 18

   Microsoft has partnered with Novell who is going to provide the Linux plugin for Silverlight (called Moonlight). Of course, there’s complaining that Microsoft excluded Linux and then later complaining that by including everyone they’re seeking to destroy the web or make it Microsoft proprietary. They can’t seem to win either way.

   Flash is clearly the more established standard. If you’re a Visual Studio developer, Silverlight is attractive… if you’re not a Visual Studio developer it understably isn’t an attractive solution.

   The .Net Framework provides a lot of powerful utilities for putting together robust applications quickly. It’s true that Microsoft development has a lot of pay for utilities by 3rd parties but for the most part I’ve always been able to find source code elsewhere. On the Internet you can find support for nearly any language… especially the big ones.

   I agree that Flash isn’t going anywhere. At this point, it’s engrained into Web culture and delivers great content. Competition is a good thing to push innovation, I look forward to see what both products can do for me in the future.

10. Brian Webb Sep 25

    No IDE for me - since silverlight is based on an open standard XAML, there are 3rd pary tools being built right now, which will run on mac.

    No plug in for Linux - Silverlight for Linux has been announced.

    Market Penetration = Demand - Unlike flash, windows forms application can be changed (with minor impact on existing code) to silverlight, allowing new avenues for deployment on existing business applications. (The work I am cuurently doing.)

    The Growing Mobile Content Market - Since Silverlight is based on a mobility visual framework, Silverlight for mobility will be coming out after Linux.

    The Developer Community - .NET (The bases of Silverlight) has a massive amount of opensource support. Plus every .Net developer, theoreticly could become a silverlight developer. May not be pretty, but it will be functional.

    CS3 - Silverlight uses the Microsoft Expression suite. Everything from HTML, bitmap, vector, to actual programming. Plus again there are plenty of 3rd party tools that are starting to roll out. One of my favorite are the Flash to Silverlight converters.

11. Michael Figura Oct 12

    I’ve read over this entire forum list and I’m starting to get a bit angry with myself for wasting this much of my day. And so I feel it would be wasted entirely if I didn’t add a bit to the end to enlighten some of you folks. I’m going to keep things less emotional then some of the childlike postings on this discussion list, from both sides of the fence and from all schools of thought.

    I’m a veteran software architect and have worked with both Flash and Silverlight. Microsoft’s strength has rarely been in inventing products. Which is why I always chuckle a little when I overhear someone ranting about MSFT stealing another idea. They don’t steal, they perfect good ideas and make them better (most of the time). Microsoft is taking it’s first REAL stab at the design market. Silverlight should not be confused as being part of that stab. The Expression studio suite of products comprise that end of the game.

    Listen carefully. Silverlight can….AND WILL….give Flash an enormous run for its money. Why? Because Microsoft has done what it’s always done: put the power in the hands of the developer. Macromedia and Adobe have never been good at building products where software engineering was critical. In fact, I’d love to run over to Adobe and show them what real coding looks like. Macro and Adobe simply can’t seem to get this right. At MSFT, that’s all they do all day. Therefore, I encourage everyone with doubts about Silverlight development, in direct comparison to Flash, to take a good, hard look at Silverlight and it’s .Net programming environment. Welcome to the most powerful programming runtime on the face of the friggin planet. Period, end of story. Conclusion? Even in it’s infancy I can already do more in Silverlight 1.1 than I can in any version of Flash on any computer. Yeah, that’s right. It’s that cool. Believe it. In fact, I would venture to suggest that I can do ANYTHING in Silverlight, because it’s all C# on the back end. Try claiming that in Actionscript. Good luck Flash. Begun, the clone war has

12. Inderjit Singh Nov 15

    A clear thing to see is

    From Developer point silverlite is very strong but same flash animations can be made much faster and presented

    Silverlite will be For corporate market and there is a long time as it is just the start

    No one at home or only watching videos will install Dotnet 3 frame work and a 4 MB Silverlite plugin ( Flash plugin is 1.5 MB and FLV give much higher compression and are better to play online insted of WMV )

    Both Flash and Silverlite look like competitors but are not (as per my thinking)

13. pierre Nov 28

    I think where you are wrong it is that the market penetration does not matter that much. Visitors on a web site don’t decide the plugin that it runs but the developers will.
    With 80% of users browsing the web wit IE (official stat). 15% with Firefox, silverlight will be available to most visitors (it runs nice on Firefox). It’s going to be a developer choice, and most likely a Microsoft Win.

14. Gerardo Pacheco Dec 4

    Inderjit Singh…

    I really have no idea how you say FLV has higher compression rates than WMV. It is totally the opposite! I always can give much better resolution with WMV and smaller sizes.

    For everybody…

    The success or failure of Silverlight and Flash doesn’t depend on adobe-linux geeks feels, it depends on the end-users to accept download new plugins (that’s the real demand) end-users can force web clients and they can force web developers to implement (may be the cooler effects technology)

    Flash and Silverlight, both are not going anywhere anytime soon.
    Microsoft Silverlight will be pushed with money (and they have the money to do it over a decade and more) they will include it with IE and any Windows release. So in the future Silverlight will be predominant too, may be it will be silently added as a windows update to 90% of the computers in the world (Adobe can do that for Flash?)

    What can do developers and what I’ll do?

    1. Accept that Silverlight and Flash (both) are going to stay here over a decade and more as available tools.
    2. Accept that a client can request (not soon) a Silverlight website. And I won’t be competitive if I refuse.
    3. Learn Silverlight to remain competitive.
    4. Keep growing with Flash and maybe use javascript to choose a plugin to use when available and failover to the other or Ajax.

    What can do Adobe?

    Strongly embrace OpenSource to keep developers (and me) doing flash.
    Strongly embrace community initiatives like PaperVision3D to keep developers (and me) doing flash.
    Give me a free CS3 master collection to keep just me doing flash.
    Prepare for War and always be the “Good guys”.
    Be the edge technology.

    What can do Microsoft?

    Copy Adobe and Flash
    Prepare for War and always be the “Bad guys”.

    What can do everybody for me?

    Tell me how to learn Silverlight. I don’t know any Microsoft languages, so what, where and when? IDE, language, platforms?
    Do you know a javascript to check if Silverlight plugin is installed?

    Silverlight is seducing me to the dark side of the force…

15. kevin Dec 12

    Im a Flash Developer by profession, so I do admit that Im biased towards Flash,

    Interms of Graphics production, I feel Adobe provides better support in its suite of graphics products.
    compared to the Microsoft Suite, which I find is very clunky to work with.

    This I feel is something that is very important, and if it wasnt, Microsoft would not have developed and launched their own Suite.

    This comparative ease of Development, really shows in the quality of the final work produced, creating exciting and interesting user experiances developed.

    Rich Media work, is an area of programming where the Visual Design plays an equal part and in some cases more than the programming aspect.

    I feel that unless Microsoft can improve the development Environment, It will be difficult to get the right mix of talent both in programming and in Graphics to develop for Silverlight, which would in turn produce a steady stream of exciting and interesting work.

    this steady of work, to me is what will decide if Silverlight gets into a position to seriously challenge Flash.

    My beliefs lie in the fact that althrough Flash had previously been packaged with older versions of Windows, to achieve higher peneration rates, users would consentually have to go through the pain of upgrading to newer versions of the player to view new content. because they wanted to experiance the new content.

    For Microsoft, they can push the plugin down to users, but If the work delivered over the platform is not inspiring enough, users with older plugins will not be as keen to upgrade voluntarily.
    This would result in a high Silverlight penetration rate, but one that majority use a fairly outdated version.

    I see that some people have argued that support for Macintosh and Linux, is a small issue, This I beg to differ, Approach any MNC sized Client, and ask if they would like their Brands or Prodcts to be associated with being “Mac - unfriendly” or “Linux unfriendly”.

    In a competitve market, any Brand will avoid such an image, as it does nothing for their bottom line, as It would potentially alienate a potential client base reduce the reach of a project they are paying good money for.

    On the plus side for Microsoft, I do agree that the programming IDE and Programming Language, is alot Stronger than Actionscript, which is probably why Adobe introduced Actionscript 3.0 with such improvements in speed and new API.

    I believe for programming, seasoned veterans will be able to develop better with .Net, then with Actionscript 3.0 due to the more mature IDE, but without the support of good animation tools to pair up with, I feel Silverlight Developers will be handicapped too much to make this shine when competing with with Flash projects, especially those that are more animation driven.

    In conclusion I feel on the whole, for a team of Professional New Media Developers and Designers, It is easier to develop for Adobe Flash, than Silverlight, which would in turn provide users with a more consistent flow of interesting projects, that they would find meaningful.
    form the view of consumer led market forces, that would encourage the growth in projects targeting the Silverlight platform, I do not feel the voluntary takeup rate from users will be high,

    which would mean that even if the latest version of Silverlight is more powerful than the latest version of the Flash Player. But the Most popular version of Flash Player is more powerful then the most popular version of Silverlight.

    Then the technological advantage of Silverlight, for projects targeting the mass market is lost.

    From a bussiness point of view, not supporting minority platforms is something that MNCs will not find attractive. as it gives an image of their brand ignoring such groups, this will hinder the development of Silverlight projects as fewer Bussinesses will be willing to commission Silverlight projects.

    The above are my views on this subject, If anyone has alternative views, I would be glad to hear them and be enlightend, if I am in the wrong.

    Bu

16. of course it will fail Jan 31

    Of course Silverlight will fail. It’s the same INTERNET explorer versus Netscape battle all over again. With Netscape starting with 80% of the market there was no chance Internet explorer would catch up right?.
    What does Microsoft have anyway that could compete with flash. It’s not like they are leveraging the audio and video codex from media player err wait I guess they are.
    Well at least they aren’t leveraging all the VB/C# programmers .. ER my bad they are doing that to.
    But there not adding it to Visual studio.. they are.
    Well then at least it will be Microsoft specific we know they would never .. They’re supporting the Mac and Novell has a moonlight plugin that works on Linux??

    err Adobe who?

17. YOU Feb 7

    The Future of Silverlight is 3-Dimensional

18. Kailie Quinn Feb 8

    @Chad

    I suppose this is the sort of analysis to be expected from a scripter who doesn’t author applications, and doesn’t understand anything about software architecture or why applications work the way they do.

    As for community, I suppose you’re completely unaware of the monstrous MS dev communities out there.

    *hands you copy of “Code” and “code complete 2nd edition” and wanders off*

19. Chad Feb 8

    @Kallie, scripter? Hardly. I author PHP and OOP based Flash and Flex web apps, many of which do make their way to the desktop via Zinc or other SWF to exe tools… now, do I make boring winforms apps with a look and feel from Windows 95? No.

    Now, the real issue at hand here is not that MS has hordes of developers, but that they don’t have the design chops or tools to make UIs worth a snot. Adobe has a long leg up on design and without proper design, even if you can make an app doesn’t mean you will find users for it.

    *hands you copies of “Emotional Design”, “Stop Stealing Sheep and Find out how Typogrphy Works”, “Designing Interfaces by Jennifer Tidwell” and a few other design books you will most likely never read.

    When will you software engineers learn, its really all about the experience you create in the apps you build that ultimately determine if it will be successful. Without proper design tools in the hands of skilled designers virtually no app moved from an exe to the web is going to be good.

20. Gary Mar 1

    I’ve been using Microsoft Software for web design and programming ever since the days of the Commodore 64. I worked with guys like John Ianetta to first develop the animated gif back before there was an internet and an AOL, back when most of the pros would share their programming ideas in the old CompuServe forums. Last week I was given (for free, as a gift)the complete Adobe CS3 Suite by a fellow worker. Now I consider myself to be a pretty damn good web designer, and I’ve done some really beautiful work (even if I do say so myself) for many big companies over the years, Like Coca Cola, Pepsi, & Budweiser (Just to name a few.) So my good buddy (actually he’s my business partner) shelled out the big bucks for what he said was probably the best software for design, that he’s ever used. So, I figured what the heck, I’d give Adobe another try. I never liked using programs like Photoshop or Dreamweaver because they would make a 4 hour job into 8 hours, with all the pain in the ass (they always had hundreds of unnecessary options, and I felt that they were very unuser friendly. Well, guys the CS3 suite really takes the cake. I honestly think that a person first needs a 4 year College Degree, and then another 4 years of schooling, just to figure out how to use Adobe Software. I never even liked Adobe Flash, I’d always work much faster and cleaner using more user friendly programs like Swish to do my flash pages.
    So today, I asked my “know it all” buddy to do a simple take out menu for a local mexican take out joint, and show me how he was operating and using this software suite. I sat down right next to him at his desk, hoping to learn something new. The only thing I learned from him is that working with Adobe Software used to be just a plain pain in the ass. The developers who wrote this new Adobe CS3 Suite have succeeded in doing only one new thing. They changed working with the software from a just a plain pain in the ass, into now being a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASS to use. They made it SO user unfriendly, that only a major GEEK (who sits behind the keyboard all day, and has no real social life, other than the people who he meets online) can understand how to use even the suite’s most basic features. Hey Adobe guys! How about getting your heads out of your asses, and creating some much more user friendly software that even the average Joe can easily understand and use. Then maybe you’ll sell 50 or 100 million copies, still make your megabuck profits, and put all of the asshole geek web design companies, (who rip off the public daily,) out of business, and let people do things (like designing) by using their own imagination, and inguinuity. With so many people now owning their own computers (after all it’s 2008, not 1998) I honestly think that it’s about time.

21. Chad Mar 1

    Thanks for the comments everyone… Gary, wow… I have never found Adobe software to be hard to use… especially when compared tot he Expression Blend, etc… strange. If you do indeed have the entire suite of software, I would recommend buying somebooks or training materials to learn the ins and outs of it.

22. jochen Jun 30

    I agree that currently Flex/Flash is the best choice over Silverlight and JavaFX. There are more 96% of browser having installed Flash plug-in while Silverlight is still in Beta version. JavaFX is still a vaporware though. Comparing the performance, Flex is more run more smoothly than Silverlight, showing Flex is a more proven technology in RIA area. Flex Builder 3 is also an easy tool for average developers too.

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