Comments on: A Whole New Web Starts Now

By: Nick Ohrn

Nick Ohrn — Tue, 15 May 2007 10:54:34 +0000

I agree that this new Microsoft initiative is a huge leap forward in RIA on the web. I think the biggest advantage is that you can take advantage of almost the entire .NET CLR when using Silverlight. That gives an extensibility that Adobe’s Flash can only dream of.

I hope, however, that both platforms succeed in the places that they deserve to. Microsoft’s solution will be integrated into current .NET development stacks, and Flash will continue to be prevalent across the web. Maybe we’ll end up with Flash being used for animation and Silverlight for video playback (like they’re intended for) but I guess only time will tell.

By: Tom

Tom — Sun, 06 May 2007 08:51:57 +0000

Silverlight is a good compliment to an existing Microsoft-supplied development stack. It’s not the second coming of Christ. It’s not “a new web”. It’s still a third-party plugin that requires a download that doesn’t work on all browsers. It’s a better Flash with ActionScript replaced by new libraries for your [limited] language of choice. Dan, I expected you to look at this differently than the rest of the hype-mongers.

Oh well, lets jump on the bandwagon before it fills up!

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 03 May 2007 03:24:06 +0000

You’re right, I meant Flex, not Apollo. And the Mac plugin is indeed larger than 4MB, as it’s a universal binary, although this is all still a beta.

By: John Dowdell

John Dowdell — Thu, 03 May 2007 02:54:38 +0000

Hi, just checking… you’re aware that YouTube uses casually-produced video, often compressed, which is then recompressed on the server to the final video format before being displayed by Adobe Flash Player, right?

I’m not sure of Microsoft’s eventual download sizes, performance, or capabilites. (The current Mac 1.1 alpha is 10.3 megabytes, for instance.) Some creators do choose to use “Loading” screens, but I prefer it when SWFs just start up in the usual way, “in a flash”. Adobe’s Apollo project is not an in-browser plugin, but instead brings normal web apps to the desktop, as standalone applications which can read/write the local drive… different thing entirely.

I think the title may actually be “A Whole New Web Starts Five Years Ago”, but I won’t insist on that one….

cu, jd/adobe