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Microsoft picks HTML5 over Silverlight for Internet apps
- contextfree 16y agothis has been clear for a while. Ballmer said as much at a recent financial analysts' meeting: http://decav.com/blogs/andre/archive/2010/10/27/ballmer-microsoft-s-strategic-ria-platform-is-html5.aspx http://decav.com/blogs/andre/archive/2010/10/27/ballmer-micr... "Interviewer: "HTML or Silverlight, what is Microsoft's lead strategy for developing rich internet applications? Silverlight, HTML5, or acquiring Adobe?" Ballmer: "If you want to do something that is universal, there is no question, the world is going HTML5... The world is just pushing down that HTML5 path, and so are we... What we've really done [with Silverlight] in very good ways is to repurpose it as an important part of the client platform, so yes, you will embrace HTML5, but it's also clear people want client apps... So we're dedicated to Silverlight, but with a little different concept, and we're embracing HTML5."
- rbanffy 16y agoThat's why Windows Phone 7 doesn't support HTML5? Seriously, Ballmer is never clear in interviews.
- windsurfer 16y agoHTML5 support on the windows phone would mean Windows phone devs could support other phones, and would unify the market. Fracturing it helps increase the value of niche apps, while unification would only level the playing field and leave the windows phone at a disadvantage.
- WiseWeasel 16y agoIt also means that WinPhone7 users won't have access to a rapidly growing library of HTML5 content. That's quite a disadvantage for a nascent mobile platform, especially now that HTML5 = mobile web thanks to widespread support from Android and iDevices, among others.
- metageek 16y agoThat's the sort of strategy that works when you're a dominant player. WP7 needs to go the other way, making it possible to write cross-platform apps, so that devs will say, "Ooh, here's a better to make my next app!" instead of, "Eww, do I really want to support yet another platform?".
- rbanffy 16y agoMicrosoft acts like it is the dominant player because most of its employees genuinely believe it's a question of time for their inherently superior technology becomes dominant. It's sad in a way.
- auxbuss 16y agoThat's precisely what I say elsewhere in this discussion. Lack of HTML5 means we wont support WP7. Period. I'd love to support WP7. More competition. Keep Apple and Google on their toes. No problem with that. But no HTML5? Game over. Decision made. It's madness. Madness I tell you.
- confuzatron 16y agoWindows Phone 7 doesnt yet support copy and paste. I would not look at a lack of 'HTML5 support' as strategic.
- rbanffy 16y agoAs windsurfer pointed out, lack of HTML5 support is a strategic decision. The lack of copy and paste is... well... "stragedic".
- confuzatron 16y agoIMO, windsurfer didn't 'point out' anything - he/she speculated as to why WP7 didn't emerge from the womb with HTML5 support, and expressed the speculation more as an assertion of fact.
- rbanffy 16y agoHere: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1848070 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1848070
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- InclinedPlane 16y agoThe fact that Windows Phone 7 doesn't support HTML5 may not be intentionally strategic, but it affects Windows Phone 7's strategic future nonetheless.
- confuzatron 16y agoDoes it however strategically affect WP7's strategic future? Look, the way I see it, WP7 is barely months (weeks?) old. To expect HTML5 support when 'HTML5' is in still flux is silly. MS are still working on their desktop support for goodness sake. Lack of copy-and-paste demonstrates clearly that MS couldn't get everything in to v1.0. And to impute strategic motives is reaching.
- Someone 16y agoI cannot see them giving up client-Side Silverlight that easily; controlling the whole stack is an advantage for them just as it is for Adobe (if Flash is king, Adobe sells tons of developer tools, and possibly licenses on mobile devices) or Oracle (with java). So, I expect their strategy is to have a full Silverlight path where supported, with a fallback to HTML/SVG/Canvas when needed. If so, Windows 7 Phone phones would currently have more need for a good Silverlight implementation than for good/full HTML5 support. If Windows 7 Phone phones manage to gain traction, the business strategy could then well be to decrease effort on the HTML5 fallback path.
- rbanffy 16y ago> I cannot see them giving up client-Side Silverlight that easily; controlling the whole stack is an advantage for them just as it is for Adobe It's only an advantage if the stack is relevant. Silverlight is not.
- Someone 16y agoNo, but I think it still is their goal to change that.
- contextfree 16y ago"client-side" doesn't mean "in-browser", desktop and mobile apps are clients too.
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- mrj 16y agoI don't get it. Their brand new phone doesn't support HTML5.
- cryptoz 16y agoNor does any MS browser for Windows XP, which still has > 50% of the Windows market share. It's very doublespeak of them: Yes we love HTML5, but we won't have any of it on our most popular OS or our new mobile phone ...wtf?
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- cryptoz 16y ago> Just because XP is their most popular OS doesn't mean that they need to keep supporting it. Ballmer said "we're embracing HTML5". If they want to embrace this technology then yes, they do need to bring it to their older, more popular OSs. Otherwise, they're just putting in a halfassed, minimal effort to it. All other HTML5 browsers run on Windows XP. Microsoft is the only company to produce an HTML5 browser that doesn't run on the world's most widely used OS, which happens to be made by them. That's absurd. Definitely not "embracing".
- confuzatron 16y agoSo there are multiple browsers that support HTML5 on XP. What's the problem again?
- cryptoz 16y agoSince none of them are made by Microsoft, very few corporations will use them. This means that many web developers will still be developing for IE8 in the year 2020.
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- jister 16y agoSilverlight + "Intranet" is always a good combo. I'd say a better replacement for smart-client apps.
- glhaynes 16y agoAs long as your users don't want to use most mobile devices. I'd much rather put out HTML5 apps where possible... intranet apps in particular seem to tend to live for longer than you ever thought possible. But, yeah, it's definitely nice for certain scenarios.
- cpr 16y agoSure, but an even better replacement would just be modern webapps.
- kenjackson 16y agoWhy? On the intranet you're likely dictating the browser/technology used anyways. Why not simply use what's best for the specific job. If it's Flash, Silverlight, HTML5, rich client app, virtual machine, etc...
- contextfree 16y agoin particular, CLR on the client -> much less painful development
- cpr 16y agoBecause then you're not hostage to any company's particular technologies.
- kenjackson 16y agoSo I should not use the best tool for the job, and give up say 5x productivity, in the fear that some company will take me hostage -- especially since AFAIK, this has never happened. And if it has happened it has happened an order of magnitude less frequently as projects getting killed by using the wrong tools. That I've seen happen first hand, including as recently as last year.
- neovive 16y agoThis is smart competitive positioning by Microsoft. Microsoft has been burned in the past for not embracing standards early and clearly wants to be on the right path from the outset. The difference this time around is that HTML5 also presents itself as a competitive option to the proprietary iOS and Flash platforms, to which Microsoft offers no significant or competitive alternative.
- eddanger 16y agoWriting cross-browser "desktop" html/javascript is very painful right now. The mobile world is a beautiful playground because IE isn't a serious player. Now if Microsoft would adopt WebKit for its mobile browsing, then I'd eat my hat.
- jcromartie 16y agoIt's "very painful?" I can't imagine how you'd describe cross-browser HTML/JS in 2004.
- dstein 16y agoTry 1998, when DOM didn't exist. That was pain.
- metageek 16y agoLayers. Layers seemed easier than DOM...until you encountered the bug in Netscape 4 where you couldn't have two layers loading at the same time. I worked on Netcaster for a while, and we had to have a queue of (layer,url) pairs; when each layer was finished loading, its onLoad handler would notify the queue to load the next layer.
- eddanger 16y agoWhat kind of html/js apps were you making in 2004!?
- stan_rogers 16y agoWell, I was making an online charity auction app for the United Way silly season with 10-second high bid updates for each of 20 - 30 items being auctioned each day. Average number of concurrent users was ~1000. The app supported IE 5+, NS 4.7 and 6, Phoenix/Firebird and Opera (each of our new acquisitions had its own pet house browser). Updates were through 1-pixel iframes/ilayers, and the whole thing ran on a single-processor P III 800Mhz Lotus Domino R5 server. And believe it or not, the problem child was Opera -- CSS backgrounds just would not colour inside the lines in the current version at the time.
- apl 16y agoSo Microsoft is still a gargantuan hydra with different heads fighting each other? It's fairly fascinating. On the one hand, you get this sensible, open Microsoft - the company that still delivers reasonably good Desktop products, has a great development platform, wonderful developer resources/support, now supports HTML5. On the other hand, you keep encountering its evil twin: the institution that made the Kin, that scrapped Courier, that can't decide which horse to back in the internet race, that made IE7, and so on and so forth; the company that will end up losing most of its mind and market share to the new (and old, actually) kids on the block. Wish there was only the former.
- ergo98 16y agoIt sounds like Microsoft is adaptive and pragmatic. What's not to like about that? If everyone was using Silverlight today I suspect they wouldn't be saying the same thing. Instead it has virtually no traction among devs (aside from a core group of hardcore Microsoft boosters), it has little legitimacy, and the smartphone explosion has rendered it dangerous to choose. If Flash is a relic of the past (true), then Silverlight is a relic that didn't even have relevance in the past.
- apl 16y agoIt sounds like Microsoft is adaptive and pragmatic. What's not to like about that? I really wish this was all there is to it, but their behavior doesn't qualify as adaptive and pragmatic as far as I'm concerned. It qualifies as aimless and schizophrenic. It's one thing to suggest, fail and then drop technology. Google does that. Even new Apple does that from time to time. It's another thing to suggest, fail and then keep developing technology in some state of semi-cancellation while backing a completely different approach at the same time: for instance, Silverlight. Right now, it seems like a classic case of throwing stuff at walls and seeing what sticks. That's part of the reason why Microsoft is struggling in any area except for its core business.
- contextfree 16y agoI don't know that Silverlight is in any state of semi-cancellation, they're just now promoting it mainly for desktop and mobile apps instead of for web apps.
- jcromartie 16y agoThis is why I don't bother with Microsoft's development platforms. They are always moving the goalposts.
- geuis 16y agoLets keep in mind exactly what Microsoft does. They throw a ton of money and developers at some product and make a lot of noise about how this is their next big thing. Then they seem to completely or mostly drop it and they're off to the next thing. My fear and source of consternation is their sudden "love of html5". Yeah, they're currently doing good on getting IE up to spec. Even though its still not 100% there, but that's ok since its in beta. When its officially released, it will matter then. What I firmly believe is going to happen is that IE9 is going to get released and will get the occasional security patch, but they're going to stop doing major development on it and again the MS browser will stagnate for years again. So everyone should stop getting excited when Microsoft says they're doing this one thing or another. Apple keeps its cards close to the chest and stays focused on what they're building. Microsoft is the guy at the table that always goes 'Hey guys, wow look at this King/Ace I have! Now look at my pocket Queens!'
- johnzabroski 16y agoYou need a more complete history of Microsoft to know the full story. Back in the early DirectX days (1996), Microsoft was working on a technology called Chrome Effects that was intended to compete with VRML as the world's ultimate "Networkable Graphics" format. This history is covered in books such as <em>Renegades of the Empire</em>. This was stuff from back when Michael Abrash worked at Microsoft!
- projectileboy 16y agoRight on. This is exactly why I started to actively avoid consulting gigs where I'd have to work with Microsoft technologies - whatever knowledge you gain has a shelf life measured in weeks, because they're constantly on to the next shiny trinket.
- tlianza 16y agoThe company who should fear this turn is Adobe. This is the exact opposite of "market validation" for Flash. This is a competitor signalling that they are no longer betting on a Rich (binary) environment in a browser. They see that as a dead-end, and have undoubtedly spent considerable time, money, and effort coming to that conclusion.
- cryptoz 16y agoAdobe makes money with tools, not with Flash. If Adobe makes good HTML5/JavaScript tools, and keeps making Photoshop, they'll be fine.
- Goosey 16y agoIt's still dangerous to them. They are the de-facto standard for Flash creation tools, but there is a much larger ecosystem for HTML5/Javascript tools. Even discounting existing HTML5/Javascript tool users who may or may not have a grudge against Adobe for Flash you still have to expect a significant amount of currently-Flash devs during the transition.
- tlianza 16y agoIndeed, I'm referring to the Flash tool, not the Flash runtime which is obviously free. But, the investment in getting the Flash runtime everywhere is what makes the platform valuable, and therefore what makes the tool worth using. But, I agree with you that if they pivot they should be fine. To some extent they're also (smartly) re-purposing their existing tools for native mobile development: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/packagerforiphone/ http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/packagerforiphone/ I'm skeptical that they'll be big in the "good HTML5/JavaScript tools" business based on what they have[n't] done with Dreamweaver, HomeSite, ColdFusion, etc. They just don't seem to have a lot of developer momentum there, IMHO.
- kenjackson 16y agoBut assuming Adobe makes money from the tools, doesn't this just open up the field for them. AND it relieves them of the cost of having to maintain and update the runtime. Now they can really just focus on the tooling. MS, Apple, Mozilla, and Google focus on the runtime (browser). If seems like if Adobe plays their cards right, they end up making a lot more money, although they become a lot less prominent brand.
- dstein 16y agoMicrosoft is really the last company anybody should be looking for guidance on Internet technologies. Their strategy has historically been to make web development as difficult as possible, so as to delay the eventual replacement of the PC as a computing paradigm. Microsoft only stays in business if the PC paradigm lingers, and lingers...
- ashleyreddy 16y agoHTML 5 is still in a draft state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5 Looks like it will be in IE9. So whats all this about Microsoft not adopting open standards? Their kind of a big company isn't it okay for them to support both?
- kenjackson 16y agoI find it ironic that just two months ago the same pundits were talking about how WPF was dead and Silverlight is taking over. Now Silverlight is dead and HTML5 is taking over. Yet in MS most high profile product, WP7, it supports Silverlight, but not HTML5. Why do I get the feeling that most people have no clue WTF they're talking about? :-)
- marcamillion 16y agoThis looks like a classic case of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Despite how much Apple raves about HTML5, the fact remains that the bane for the App store are HTML5 apps. Microsoft has just raised the stakes a bit...but as many commenters have pointed out, time will tell whether or not they have staying power. They have a tendency to wax and wane on their support for products.
- seltzered 16y agoIs it possible for developers to see this merely as microsoft positioning everything to be more like apple? I'm seeking some validation if the following is now true: wpf ~~ cocoa (for mac) silverlight ~~ cocoa touch html5 (formerly SL when used as webapps) ~~ html5. I hope microsoft pitches the above this way, so developers like me that need to use their tech stack can sleep easy at night. It's a simpler way to think about everything. And Flash can still have it's place for RIA and grow to be a premier tools developer for html5 apps. Remember, apple originally took an opposite direction when the iphone first came out, originally expecting developers to develop mobile html applications for the phone. That idea died quickly, and a year later Cocoa Touch and the App Store came out.
- contextfree 16y agoIt's not quite that simple, because Silverlight is for desktop apps as well, and there are also the Windows native APIs (which are strongly rumored to be getting an overhaul in 8).