Hi,

Did you read that article:
http://www.somerandomdude.net/blog/flash/why-silverlight-should-fail/

What do you think ?

Please note that I did NOT wrote that article, I am just looking for constructive comments on what I read.

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Laurent Duveau
ASP.NET MVP
http://weblogs.asp.net/lduveau/

This dude is seriously drinking the Adobe kool aid, and the article is OLD(pre SL2 Beta 1).

While I agree with some of his points, Microsoft is behind with the art related community, and the DRM issue is not well recieved in the end user community, still the article totally misses the point of SilverLight.

1. The penetration issue will not be a problem
2. SilverLight is all about going BEYOND the art community, and fully embracing both arts and business.

The big 3 auto makers produce more video content than all of the hollywood studios.  SilverLight won't destroy Adobe's market share, but it will be competitive, and will certainly put certain sections of their market share on life support(IMO).

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein

Anytime someone starts an argument with "Product X will beat Microsoft's offering because of it's installed base percentage" you immediately know a couple things.

a) The author is a moron. Really, is that the best way an advocate can start his argument? It's basically, "We'll win because we're winning". How about, "We've got these incredible features that those guys won't have for at least x amount of time, if they can pull them off at all."

b) There's a pretty good chance that it's only a matter of time before Product X is irrelevant. See Netware, Netscape, Wordperfect. Contrast them with Quicken, which has never rested on its market share to survive and you get the idea.

So what do I think? The guy is clearly a moron who hates Microsoft and couldn't analyze his way out of a paper bag.

Jack Bond

Khet - The first Silverlight multiplayer game

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

I haven't read anything as ignorant as that blog post in a long time...and why should Silverlight be doomed to fail even if Flash has such a lead? He makes it sound like there's only room for one RIA technology in the world. It really comes down to if there are enough great and compelling sites developed in Silverlight, it will succeed. The main complaints I have with Silverlight right now have to do with some of its limitations, like not being able to manipulate bitmaps or do your own drawing at render time, but I'm sure those will go away in time, gotta remember that we're not even at the first actual release of Silverlight that can use managed code.

samcov:

This dude is seriously drinking the Adobe kool aid, and the article is OLD(pre SL2 Beta 1).

Yes I did not noticed, the article is old.

I am reading a lot these days as I will do a Silverlight presentation in front of Flash/Flex guys later this month, so your comments help, thanks.

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Laurent Duveau
ASP.NET MVP
http://weblogs.asp.net/lduveau/

I don't personally think Silverlight should fail, because Flash needs a competitor. Without competition there is no product development which brings benefits to users and developers.

However, I think Silverlight will fail, because developers capable of doing interactive animated applications and websites are mostly using Flash or Flex and they will never switch.

There are also other reasons why Silverlight will fail. Number of basic controls is too low and default styles are ugly and unpolished. There aren't any good applications for user interface development. Blend is a joke. It just sucks. Visual Studio is not for design, it is an IDE for manual coding.

Although Silverlight is still in beta, it feels like being pre-alpha.

Microsoft will push it with optional Windows Updates for every XP and Vista computer but it is already hated. Flash is hated too, but Silverlight is from user's point of view a similar technology which enables annoying ads, catches user input disabling browser key commands when focus is on Silverlight app instead of browser window, consumes bandwith, doesn't work on mobile devices and requires a plugin which you propably can't install on corporate environment because you don't have admin privileges and home users just aren't interested or they don't know what is to be installed and how to do it. I think there will soon be browser add-ons designed to block Silverlight content.

I've been developing some Silverlight apps for myself and there has not been a single day when I haven't cursed this "flash-killer" into the depths of Hell. I am more an user interface designer than a coder and in some way I like writing XAML "by hand" but styling of controls has been made too difficult. I have a strong HTML+CSS background and of course there may be some false expectations on how things work there, but still I find the way Silverlight controls and templates are styled really poor. Blend generates bad XAML (too complex code, margins which override each other together with canvas.top or canvas.left values etc) or views your styling accurately in its design view but when ran in a browser you get something else. It almost feels like generating HTML with FrontPage which is a total disaster as any WYSIWYG editor.

The whole Silverlight seems like being on very early pre beta level which isn't surprise because the technology is new. Maybe I'll check it again when it has reached version 3 or 4 if there ever will be any progress.

Hi,

Thanks to share your points of view!

I still think that Silverlight is a very promising technology for .NET dev in compragnies. And for sure v3 or 4 will be fantastic for them.
But I would add that it will be hard to attract designers as long as designers tools (Expression) are not available on MAC...

Regards.

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Laurent Duveau
ASP.NET MVP
http://weblogs.asp.net/lduveau/