7 ms·

Javascript is now strategic for Microsoft

28 points by mwsherman 17y ago

taitems 17y ago
An important example is when Microsoft launches the web suite for Office 2010 and it potentially runs slowly in older IE versions. What will also be interesting is how far their backwards compatability travels. Will Microsoft signal the death of IE6 by not supporting their own software in their web Office suite? Unlikely, but interesting regardless.
- mwsherman 17y ago
  Interesting question. On the one hand, they could give IT shops a reason to upgrade to IE8. The main holdouts on IE6 are corporations with legacy apps. On the other hand, such an requirement would give the same shops a reason not to upgrade to Office 2010 at all.
- mahmud 17y ago
  If I know MS, they probably created JavaScript callable stubs for the .NET components already in the OS. This is the same way JScript cheated by calling ActiveX components that shipped with the OS and Office. I would be surprised if MS really embraced web standards. Or we can expect a portable Silverlight runtime which brings ActiveX to non-MS platforms (like Flash, but from an actual tool vendor. Adobe is struggling being Sun and Pixar at the same time; they're speaking to a wide audience with diverging interests)
- joechung 17y ago
  SharePoint 2010 will not support Internet Explorer 6. Reference: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announci...
christofd 17y ago
WOW - Excel running in a Firefox browser (see video on page)
amadiver 17y ago
Crazy... anyone have any theories on this? Especially why MS chose JS over Silverlight?
- freetard 17y ago
  The reason to develop Silverlight was to kill flash and compete with Adobe. However, Silverlight hasn't been a big success and it's now obvious that if any technology is going to take over Flash, it's HTML5, CSS3 and JS. It seems the best move to take JS seriously for MS. By the way, Microsoft is hosting the jquery conference to come.
  - StrawberryFrog 17y ago
    Silverlight is competing with flash as planned - read between the lines here - Adobe is concerned with "Doing it right", possibly due to competition. http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/archives/2009/07/flex_4_beta_update_1.html http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/archives/2009/07/flex_4_beta_upd... Silverlight hasn't taken over yet, and it's too soon to say it's "not a big success" - it looks like it isn't a big failure - from what I heard from Scott Guthrie's public talks, the installed base of SL is on track with MS expectations. SL3 is being pushed quite hard, MS has not given up on it. It's not obvious that HTML 5 will make Flash/Silverlight obsolete. But it's competition for sure. It is the nature of MS, being a very large company, when asked to chose between competing technologies, to choose both, so that whichever one wins out, they will be there. Hence, Javascript and Silverlight. MS has deep pockets, and in both paths is leverage existing assets to cut costs and increase developer familarity - JQuery in Javascript, and .Net and XAML in making silverlight.
- snprbob86 17y ago
  Javascript and Silverlight are orthogonal. The first version of Silverlight was only programmable with Javascript. It wasn't until Silverlight 2 that C# was a supported language. Microsoft is a huge company and the departments are loyal to their own bottom lines before each other's technology investments. The Office team clearly recognized that they needed to support alternative browsers in order to be competitive. I believe the Office web apps use Silverlight for a few small, optional features (this may no longer be true).
andreyf 17y ago
In this video, Chris Bryant of Microsoft makes an offhand comment that the components of the new Microsoft Office 2010 for Web are "some of the biggest Javascript applications ever built" Yuk, big does not necessarily imply good. From the video, it looks like they've ported as much of the Office applications as possible directly into the browser. The only UI changes are the pieces they had to disregard because the browser didn't support them. Whatever "web 2.0" is, it isn't the same old applications now running in the browser instead of MFC.
- JBiserkov 17y ago
  When comparing Office 2007 (and 2010) with Office 97 one can clearly see these are not "the same old apps". Especially when combined with the Office Servers. JavaScript isn't such a bad language. It's essentially Scheme in C cloths. It has first-class functions, lexical closures, prototype-inheritance and more. Just avoid the bad parts. See this Google Talk by Douglas Crockford http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook
  - mdg 17y ago
    yes. I always feel like javascript is never learned "the right way". I feel this way because when I first learned it, I was essentially trying to write java code. I wonder why no one ever tells javascript noobies that functions limit scope, not {} ?
thorax 17y ago
Yeah, as I mentioned before, this was the interesting thing about the new Office: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702707 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702707
dtf 17y ago
What are the chances of them inserting V8 into IE? Is that completely unthinkable? They've been doing some crazy things lately...
- snprbob86 17y ago
  It is much more likely that they will use the CLR as a backend.
troels 17y ago
I'll see it before I believe it. I'd be very surprised if they didn't somehow manage to cripple it on non-windows os'es. Sorry for being such a pessimistic old man.

28 points by mwsherman 17y ago

An important example is when Microsoft launches the web suite for Office 2010 and it potentially runs slowly in older IE versions. What will also be interesting is how far their backwards compatability travels. Will Microsoft signal the death of IE6 by not supporting their own software in their web Office suite? Unlikely, but interesting regardless.

mwsherman 17y ago
Interesting question. On the one hand, they could give IT shops a reason to upgrade to IE8. The main holdouts on IE6 are corporations with legacy apps. On the other hand, such an requirement would give the same shops a reason not to upgrade to Office 2010 at all.
mahmud 17y ago
If I know MS, they probably created JavaScript callable stubs for the .NET components already in the OS. This is the same way JScript cheated by calling ActiveX components that shipped with the OS and Office. I would be surprised if MS really embraced web standards. Or we can expect a portable Silverlight runtime which brings ActiveX to non-MS platforms (like Flash, but from an actual tool vendor. Adobe is struggling being Sun and Pixar at the same time; they're speaking to a wide audience with diverging interests)
joechung 17y ago
SharePoint 2010 will not support Internet Explorer 6. Reference: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announcing-sharepoint-server-2010-preliminary-system-requirements.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/07/announci...

christofd 17y ago

WOW - Excel running in a Firefox browser (see video on page)

amadiver 17y ago

Crazy... anyone have any theories on this? Especially why MS chose JS over Silverlight?

freetard 17y ago
The reason to develop Silverlight was to kill flash and compete with Adobe. However, Silverlight hasn't been a big success and it's now obvious that if any technology is going to take over Flash, it's HTML5, CSS3 and JS. It seems the best move to take JS seriously for MS. By the way, Microsoft is hosting the jquery conference to come.
- StrawberryFrog 17y ago
  Silverlight is competing with flash as planned - read between the lines here - Adobe is concerned with "Doing it right", possibly due to competition. http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/archives/2009/07/flex_4_beta_update_1.html http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/archives/2009/07/flex_4_beta_upd... Silverlight hasn't taken over yet, and it's too soon to say it's "not a big success" - it looks like it isn't a big failure - from what I heard from Scott Guthrie's public talks, the installed base of SL is on track with MS expectations. SL3 is being pushed quite hard, MS has not given up on it. It's not obvious that HTML 5 will make Flash/Silverlight obsolete. But it's competition for sure. It is the nature of MS, being a very large company, when asked to chose between competing technologies, to choose both, so that whichever one wins out, they will be there. Hence, Javascript and Silverlight. MS has deep pockets, and in both paths is leverage existing assets to cut costs and increase developer familarity - JQuery in Javascript, and .Net and XAML in making silverlight.
snprbob86 17y ago
Javascript and Silverlight are orthogonal. The first version of Silverlight was only programmable with Javascript. It wasn't until Silverlight 2 that C# was a supported language. Microsoft is a huge company and the departments are loyal to their own bottom lines before each other's technology investments. The Office team clearly recognized that they needed to support alternative browsers in order to be competitive. I believe the Office web apps use Silverlight for a few small, optional features (this may no longer be true).

andreyf 17y ago

In this video, Chris Bryant of Microsoft makes an offhand comment that the components of the new Microsoft Office 2010 for Web are "some of the biggest Javascript applications ever built" Yuk, big does not necessarily imply good. From the video, it looks like they've ported as much of the Office applications as possible directly into the browser. The only UI changes are the pieces they had to disregard because the browser didn't support them. Whatever "web 2.0" is, it isn't the same old applications now running in the browser instead of MFC.

JBiserkov 17y ago
When comparing Office 2007 (and 2010) with Office 97 one can clearly see these are not "the same old apps". Especially when combined with the Office Servers. JavaScript isn't such a bad language. It's essentially Scheme in C cloths. It has first-class functions, lexical closures, prototype-inheritance and more. Just avoid the bad parts. See this Google Talk by Douglas Crockford http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook
- mdg 17y ago
  yes. I always feel like javascript is never learned "the right way". I feel this way because when I first learned it, I was essentially trying to write java code. I wonder why no one ever tells javascript noobies that functions limit scope, not {} ?

thorax 17y ago

Yeah, as I mentioned before, this was the interesting thing about the new Office: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702707 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702707

dtf 17y ago

What are the chances of them inserting V8 into IE? Is that completely unthinkable? They've been doing some crazy things lately...

snprbob86 17y ago
It is much more likely that they will use the CLR as a backend.

troels 17y ago

I'll see it before I believe it. I'd be very surprised if they didn't somehow manage to cripple it on non-windows os'es. Sorry for being such a pessimistic old man.