RSSIs Silverlight 2 catching up with Flash?
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published March 6, 2008, 6:24 PM
As Adobe and Microsoft come out with new releases of their respective multimedia platforms, the debate rages on among developers over which is the most viable. And Flash's proponents are using Linux as their trump card.
One indisputable fact for now is that, while Flash works across both Windows and Linux, the same really can't be said for Silverlight. Moonlight, a free and open source edition of Silverlight, is still under development by the Mono Project, seemingly with no end in sight.
In other departments, though, Silverlight and Flash appear to keep gradually catching up with one another's strengths.
Essentially, Flash was originally created for developing animations based on frames, whereas Silverlight is an efficient framework with good facilities for animations, wrote Jesse Ezell, in a widely read blog posting from mid-2007.
More recently, though, developer Brajeshwar Oinam has has challenged Ezell to reassess that comparison, especially in light of Adobe's release of Flash 9.
"Here is my personal reply to Jess Ezell," Oinam said. "Your statement is true for Flash 4. Please upgrade your statement. Adobe Flash is currently five versions ahead of your statement."
Meanwhile, earlier this week, even Ryan Stewart -- a former industry analyst who just joined Adobe -- admitted to being impressed by some of the new capabilities in Silverlight 2, as demoed at the MIX 08 show in Las Vegas this week.
"I saw some cool things and a few not so much things," Ryan wrote in his blog on ZDNet. "[Microsoft showed] versions of Silverlight 2 Beta, Internet Explorer 8, Expression Studio 2 Beta, and hooks for Silverlight and Visual Studio."
In Stewart's view, the "cool things" in Silverlight included adaptive streaming -- for providing the best user experience based on the system -- and a deep zooming feature, for instance.
"Silverlight penetration is coming along at a rate of 1.5 million downloads a day and growing. That should get them to their number of 200 million downloads by June of this year," according to Stewart. "Flash has about 12 million downloads a day for comparison, but I think that's a very good number for Microsoft." Meanwhile, the Mono Project's cross-platform Moonlight has yet to see the full light of day.
Way back in June 2007, developer Miguel de Icaza said that the Mono Project would produce its first results in a mere couple of weeks, with support for the Firefox browser on GNU/Linux by the end of that year.
Yet although an IDE named Lunar Eclipse does exist in SVN version control, the goals behind Moonlight are still on their way toward reaching full fruition.
In the weeks before MIX, the Mono Project worked on Moonlight in a number of areas, according to de Icaza.
"We needed more control over the pipeline to implement things like media streaming and supporting seek operations over HTTP," de Icaza wrote in his blog earlier this week. "We want to be able to relicense the code under non-LGPL terms (for people than cannot use the LGPL for some commercial uses), and we need to plug Microsoft's Media Pack media decoders," he illustrated.
If they both have plug-ins for all platforms (eventually), then who cares? Pick your favourite and run with it. My understanding is Silverlight leans towards an application development platform and hooks into the existing .net framework. For the many, many MS shops out there, this seems like an easier way to go online than cross-platform (Flash) development. If you are a Flash shop, Adobe is continuing to advance it's capabilities as well. Seems like a good competition to me!
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|*laughing*
So...you've never actually seen, installed, or used it?
Too bad. If you use flash a lot, it's definitely worth looking into.
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|Thank you for your wonderful insight. Your post has added so much to the discussion that I'm sure everybody is now able to use the information you provided and make a decision on how they should decide.
In reality, your post shows that you probably didn't even install it and know nothing about it. In other words, thank for nuthin'!!!
P.S., as for the spam at the bottom of your post, you might try a spell checker on your blog.
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|Hmmm... and no one even mentioned gnash?!? Hello!?!
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|Yeah, we're talking about stuff that actually matters here, sorry. :)
I've no doubt it's a great product, but I'm guessing it has zero corporate backing, certain it has zero mindshare, and relatively confident that you're the only one here who gives a crap about it.
Hope that wasn't too harsh. Reality can really suck sometimes...
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|My grandparents had a Nash... Rambler, I believe it was.
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|Beep beep...
I hear those things can really fly in second gear. ;)
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|right...
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|hmmm... for once, we agree, but I really do hope it improves.
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|I try to run them over when I am in my Caddie. :-)
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|doubtful. Unless it's purchased by Apple, Adobe, MSFT, or Google. ;p
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|feh...
http://www.youtube.com/w...Hps&feature=related
Sorry, kicked the caddie's behind. :p
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|...which I really don't want it to be.
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|Move along folks, move along. Nothing to see here. :-)
This is just another program / plug-in to add to my system. Yes, Silverlight looks neat and all. I'm not a developer, so I don't know what goes into the other side of programing this.
I don't see this completely replacing flash, instead, I see it as in addition to flash. That is why I still have Media Player, Quicktime and RealPlayer on my system. I would love to get rid of them, but some of the pages I go to use one of these exclusive.
The only good thing I see out of this is competition. More competition hopefully means that the products can only get better. And there is the point of it being Microsoft and therefore updateable through WSUS. So far I only detect for it, but will NOT push it out. No need to put more junk on my systems until my users actually need it. :-)
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|Critical Update! Silverlight 2.0!
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|Sigh... School day: M$ laid out their consumer online strategy and said ad-support will play the major role - they position Silverlight as a killer app for this goal. What they care about is to get those ads out to you. If your platform is deemed worthy of generating revenue it will be supported. If you are elite enough to ride Apple it's your choice to be special. If you run Linux you have most likely disabled all the dancing parrots on web sites anyway.
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|Yea...and adobe does not care about generating revenue...they're developing flash out of the goodness of their hearts.
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|Seems the Silverlight tool is tied to Microsoft product exclusively, lacks the open operability of Flash
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|Unless you consider Silverlight is available on OSX
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|I have to wonder if you read the article or looked for any information on the web?
The download page for both Silverlight 1.0 and 2.0 beta have both Windows and Mac bits. There is also work on a version called Moonlight that is being worked on by Microsoft, Novell and Mono. There may not be much info on the Mono/Moonlight project, but I'm sure it is still there.
Also, Microsoft is working on the mobile platform, and that seems to be where everyone is moving.
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|Micro$oft is not working on MoonLight...as in developing it. MoonLight will always be behind the M$ versions and things will not work right or the same. Classic M$ strategy.
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|Anything for a quick jab on microsoft eh?
Honestly do you even want just ONE person to take you seriously on this site?
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|You know, back in the early '90s, before I grew out of my teenage arrogance, I used to use those dumb things like M$ for Microsoft, DUD for DVD.
That was back when I was immature. To bad I grew up and want people to take me seriously.
As for your comments, you're right, MoonLight will probably always be behind. Just like a lot of software that is developed on one platform and ported to another platform. It has to be Developed before it can be ported. I do think they are trying. And I'm sure that when Linux derivatives have a better market share, they will put more focus on it. The fact that they are working on it all (or at least licensing the technology to Novell and Mono) they are acknowledging that Linux does need to be considered.
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|If it means an end to updating flash then im all for it. Wsus will keep this in check and so its a matter of set and forget.
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|I can't stand that weekly flash update popup.
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|Then what about us linux guys?
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|I'm sure you 3 will think of something... ;)
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|Zing!
That was good... :)
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|someday...
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|It's not often you meet a Linux advocate with a sense of humor...when it comes to Linux.
Glad to see you can take some friendly abuse without throwing a hissy fit.
...honestly, I think Linux would be doing a lot better if more Linux users were like you instead of like zridling and El Dingo.
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|*shrugs*
Glad to see you didn't mention billn, but I feel the same way about zridling and El Dingo.
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|i think is good thing that MS makes silverlight for pc user that dont wanner install flash player (matter of MB)... but on the other hand, Does MS need it ?? cold there not just stop there monopoly " virtual monopoly " on everything....
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|Silverlight 2 has much more potential. Drop for a moment your point about Linux and OSX - anyway its very little market share. Silverlight have one very cool feature integration with .Net languages. Flash have some ugly developed ActiveScript 1-3, terrible object model and limited support for external COM/WIN32API (they call it security). .Net 3-3.5 languages is way more mature so for developers of RIA and ASPX/WCF websites silverlight is natural choice.
I know thansition to silverlight will not come quickly, because we have army of Flash developers for now, but future is there....
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|hmmm, few things here.
First. No mention of OSX or Flex in this entire article, very curious - makes me wonder if these people are worthy of comment at all. Lets just say, Silverlight has "limited" support for OSX and no viable support for Linux. Meanwhile, Adobe even has it's developer tools ported to OSX.
Secondly, from Adobe, "Developers can create complete RIAs using only the free Adobe Flex 3 SDK. The Flex SDK is also available as open source in the Open Source Flex SDK project." The Flex SDK is open source and the Flex Builder IDE is optional. You can use a text editor if you like to build Flex/Flash/AIR RIA's.
Thirdly, there is no mention of Adobe Air.
Looks like Adobe's got it covered while MS is still playing the old "lets try to coerce and force the world to use Windows" game - ***yawn*** - tiring.
I like Microsoft's .NET. C# is a great language especially now that LINQ is part of it. Still, to use the great minds that MS buys off to create these things (Borland Delphi's Anders Hejlsberg), seems you always end up having to take it up the rump in other ways!
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|Meanwhile, earlier this week, even Ryan Stewart -- a former industry analyst who just joined Adobe
"Silverlight penetration is coming along at a rate of 1.5 million downloads a day and growing. That should get them to their number of 200 million downloads by June of this year," according to Stewart.
He joined Adobe.
How does he know there are about 1.5 million downloads a day?
Granted I think Silverlight is getting more downloads than some people care to believe. Microsoft's site alone coming up with the "want to install Silverlight" box every few clicks is probably enough to get mom and pop to install it.
Sites like http://www.asp.net/ where a bunch of .NET developers hang out also makes a strong push for it. There are probably more out there I am sure.
Personally, I wasn't really all that impressed with Silverlight v1. I am not sure if v2 will feel better, it certainly has alot more functionality than v1 did. Where I see the strength at this point is possibly corporate apps maybe?
I am going to shut up until I get a better understanding for what Silverlight v2 is overall first, it's strengths and limits. I will however say at this point, I still like Adobe better, but perhaps it's familiarity.
If they are at all serious about this, they need to work with Novell to get Moonlight up to par like NOW, not as an afterthought later in the game.
On that note getting Adobe to create it's line of development tools for Linux wouldn't be a bad move either. I am sure Flex Builder and the such would be easy, but Flash, Photoshop, etc. would sure be nice. =)
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|1.5M DLs a day was publicly announced during the Mix '08 keynote. There is a video available if you google.
Corporate is definitely where the win will be. It's already available on WSUS and devel tools from MS are something most corps have. Less are willing to pony up foir Adobe's tools which are quite pricey in comparison. You can even get by with the free express editions which have no competitor from Adobe.
I'm impressed by the commitment to performance in silverlight. I'm not at all impressed by the Linux version being shoved in the back seat. But I'm sure it will appear eventuallyl; hopefully it'll work on *BSD kernels too.
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|Competition = Good! I hope they beat each other senseless. Flash CS3 is too damn expensive as it is and Adobe hasn't had any real threat until now. Bring it on!
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|heh heh heh... M$ and adobe spend so much time on each other that they forget about gnash... BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
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|"1.5 million downloads a day"?
Keep dreaming.
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|