3 ms·

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).
- StrawberryFrog 17y ago
  Silverlight supports "Alternative browsers". In fact, it's easier to get the exact same rendered output on screen in Silverlight than in Javascript, since it's running the same engine in all browsers, just via different plugins.
  - snprbob86 17y ago
    Which, to my (probably outdated) knowledge, is why they used Silverlight for print preview. The key here though is that I can log in to any random machine with any common browser and use the primary features of Office. Google Docs offers me the ability to read a spreadsheet on a kiosk in a hotel, so Office web better do it too. If Silverlight was required, that wouldn't be realistic until it achieves Flash-level or greater adoption.

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).

StrawberryFrog 17y ago
Silverlight supports "Alternative browsers". In fact, it's easier to get the exact same rendered output on screen in Silverlight than in Javascript, since it's running the same engine in all browsers, just via different plugins.
- snprbob86 17y ago
  Which, to my (probably outdated) knowledge, is why they used Silverlight for print preview. The key here though is that I can log in to any random machine with any common browser and use the primary features of Office. Google Docs offers me the ability to read a spreadsheet on a kiosk in a hotel, so Office web better do it too. If Silverlight was required, that wouldn't be realistic until it achieves Flash-level or greater adoption.