Microsoft gives up on Silverlight
Out of context: Reply #24
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- Boz0
Ukit.. I was joking about the whole I'm always right :)
I'll answer your comment/questions.
1. "You can rant all you want about Apple and Steve Jobs (which have nothing to do with this) but at the end of the day, being dropped from the regular web is a pretty big blow and the responses of the Silverlight devs in the forum post I linked earlier tell you that."
First let me just say that hyping this news about Silverlight and mischaracterizing it as the end of silverlight is actually an indirect dig at flash by Apple fanboys and Apple sites because they want to show how HTML5 will take over everything.. This is simply not going to happen.. so everyone should better learn to deal with it.
Also, again, Silverlight is not being dropped at all... few years it will probably shift to full blown development platform for devices and OS.. you won't need Silverlight for the web that much (people will use Flash for more advanced video and audio stuff and probably HTML5 for simple video and audio, and I guess Silverlight won't play a huge role there - it's not like it has so far anyways). But in general, there's nothing those Silverlight developers have to fear.. They will have plenty of work. Microsoft is not leaving Windows Phone 7 and Windows Silverlight Framework any time soon and in fact they are making Silverlight the center of their whole new strategy and company's direction.
Developers got upset, because his interview was taken out of context and mischaracterized.
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2. "What are people going to do at work all day, use their iPad? Are we going to design on a TV or a phone? Use some common sense."
No.. they will run the instances of same application on their respective devices.. Let's take a look at a simple fictitious example..
Right now.. we have a website called BozzyliciousNews.com this website is built in HTML and it has a ton of news, but it also has your profile, some social stuff and news you subscribe to and all that good stuff.. So it's effectively a news platform with API you can plug into to get user info and their news and all that.. I'll keep going with my example but it's similar to what we have with Facebook now. You don't even need to use Facebook website now to use Facebook right? It's everywhere (your phone, your ipad, your google tv, your roku box, your xbox 360 etc)...
That's how we do news today.. in general what people would do is go that website on their device and use it like a site right?
But the future is not going to be in sites anymore. Why is that.. because you want to take advantage of certain special device APIs you are viewing the content on, you want to interact with the device and make the UI take advantage of that specific type of device right?
Well unfortunately HTML can't do that.. it can do some simpler things, it can package your site as, basically, a mobile app but it's really not powerful enough to do what AIR or Silverlight will do.. Naturally, the best way to do it is to build apps that would utilize Bozzylicious platform through it's own API but to code it in device's native language (like java, obj-c etc) but that's not what's time efficient and flexible.. That's why people want AIR/Silverlight as app development plaforms because they are universal.. One code base, different interactive layers.
Now, a regular user, in the web before mobile evolution would use your site by going to it on their desktop computer. But, the way you will live your life (and you are totally right to call me out on it in a few years if I was wrong) is that you will have an Android phone in your pocket, an iPad in your car or your bedroom, a Google TV in your living room and you will access Bozzylicious platform from all those devices through beautiful apps (as we've seen plenty on iPad and phones) with similar interfaces but tailored to that devices display/interaction capabilities. You will read your news, read comments, watch videos etc etc and have 3d stuff and great interfaces overall to show that content off.
You will have less and less need to go to your desktop computer and access that website. Why would you? You have information on the go.. That's what majority people actually want and it seems that a lot of new startups are doing exactly that.. building APIs and launching apps.
And even on your desktop, you probably won't use browsers and those sites in the same way you use it now.. You will be using Apple's OSX App Store, you will be using Intel's AppUp, you will be using Adobe's inMarket app store, you will be using new IE9 features they call "web apps" instead of sites..
It's what's happening now.. HTML5 will have a role in this, but the whole model has shifted.. the web will most likely start becoming irrelevant in a few years. The reason I say this is because I can already notice that I have less and less demand for websites and so forth and more and more demand for interactive applications that will run on devices. And in many cases HTML5 frameworks that package these apps are just not best solution and can't do a lot of things we need them to, we can easily do with Flash/AIR (or Silverlight).
So yes, people will be using iPads, TVs, in car computers, mobile phones etc etc to get their content, previous accessible from websites only. I'm not saying web will be dead, you will have HTML5 websites/apps and all that good stuff but it will be more simplified.. blogs, some apps that won't be demanding in terms of some crazy UIs and media experiences but straightforward stuff you can do/simply animate with JS. You will still be able to experience these on different devices (and that's where compatibility plays a positive role with HTML5, but it's not really anything new.. HTML4 is also compatible and will work). .HTML5 is just a buzzword.. hype that Steve Jobs raised by trying to justify absence of Flash on his own devices because it would take control out of his hands.
In this, I actually see WebGL being dead as a door nail btw.. After seeing Molehill from Adobe and what Unity3D is doing.. and transferring it to devices and all that stuff.. WebGL looks downright funny.
So yes.. in the end.. Silverlight will rule everything Microsoft on devices.. AIR will rule the rest.. HTML5 will be just for a bit more advanced websites that would kind of act as apps but more universal and it won't really take advantage of device features it runs on and it will still be run through a browser naturally.
- btw, ukit.. here's the IE9 thing I told you about.. http://www.downloads… and yeah, Microsoft will push Silverlight to build these as well.Boz
- Silvelight for development of these as well. They basically want you to build apps not websites.Boz
- And these web apps will probably be also HTML5 for the most part.Boz
- "indirect dig at flash" Tinfoil hat much?PIZZA