5 ms·

Not to burst any bubbles, but Silverlight isn't a plugin that everyone has in the way that Flash is. Silverlight seems to be at slightly less than half of all

by mdasen 17y ago

Not to burst any bubbles, but Silverlight isn't a plugin that everyone has in the way that Flash is. Silverlight seems to be at slightly less than half of all users (http://www.riastats.com/ http://www.riastats.com/). So, that would mean anyone with Firefox, Chrome, or Silverlight could watch it and that would be pretty awesome since I think Microsoft will push for greater adoption. But right now, Silverlight isn't so well adopted. Better than the situation was before the announcement, but still not up to Flash's penetration (and well under 94% of traffic).

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
The grandparent appears to be assuming that all IE users have silverlight, when only 40% of them (about a quarter of all users) have it. But you in turn forget that there is a similar Java plugin that does the same thing and is installed with Mac OS X by default. All combined I'd say 95% is a fair number so maybe the grandparent was aware of this option and simply didn't mention it explicitly. Vorbis audio, which is playable in later versions of Flash, must be as close to 100% of desktops as you're ever going to get.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  You're conflating HTML5 support and plug-in support. For instance: that Flash supports Vorbis does not mean that Flash-supporting clients can play <audio src="foo.oga">. It just means that the site can choose to deliver <audio> to one client and <embed> to another. The same situation happens with h.264. Which goes to say: this is a good thing for Theora, but it is not a victory over h.264. Even in the most optimistic estimate, including this kind of plugin-as-equivalent conflation, it would be a tie, and only in the single domain of playback in desktop browsers.
jmillikin 17y ago
Thanks for the link -- it looks like I was drastically overestimating Silverlight's market penetration. However, the graphs on that site appear unreliable -- for example, they show Silverlight's market share dropping by 14% between January 22 and 26. Do you know if the raw data is available?
- jdowdell 17y ago
  Travis keeps the sites confidential, for obvious reasons. It's plausible that there was another shift in sites sampled recently, similar to the doubling that it reported for Silverlight starting one week in November: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdowdell/4180222368/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdowdell/4180222368/ I saw Alp's post last night... plausible, a good engineering challenge. Not sure how it will play out in the world though. But it sure added some spice to this morning's Theora-vs-H.264 wars.... ;-)

by mdasen 17y ago

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

The grandparent appears to be assuming that all IE users have silverlight, when only 40% of them (about a quarter of all users) have it. But you in turn forget that there is a similar Java plugin that does the same thing and is installed with Mac OS X by default. All combined I'd say 95% is a fair number so maybe the grandparent was aware of this option and simply didn't mention it explicitly. Vorbis audio, which is playable in later versions of Flash, must be as close to 100% of desktops as you're ever going to get.

GHFigs 17y ago
You're conflating HTML5 support and plug-in support. For instance: that Flash supports Vorbis does not mean that Flash-supporting clients can play <audio src="foo.oga">. It just means that the site can choose to deliver <audio> to one client and <embed> to another. The same situation happens with h.264. Which goes to say: this is a good thing for Theora, but it is not a victory over h.264. Even in the most optimistic estimate, including this kind of plugin-as-equivalent conflation, it would be a tie, and only in the single domain of playback in desktop browsers.

jmillikin 17y ago

Thanks for the link -- it looks like I was drastically overestimating Silverlight's market penetration. However, the graphs on that site appear unreliable -- for example, they show Silverlight's market share dropping by 14% between January 22 and 26. Do you know if the raw data is available?

jdowdell 17y ago
Travis keeps the sites confidential, for obvious reasons. It's plausible that there was another shift in sites sampled recently, similar to the doubling that it reported for Silverlight starting one week in November: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdowdell/4180222368/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdowdell/4180222368/ I saw Alp's post last night... plausible, a good engineering challenge. Not sure how it will play out in the world though. But it sure added some spice to this morning's Theora-vs-H.264 wars.... ;-)