Survey Results

cross-browser, .NET based ? Can it be true?

29-Jul-07 9:27

I wonder - can both exist?

There is an obvious need for desktop applications: you can't always be online, web apps are severely limited, desktop apps bring far more richness than web apps. Things like PC games are also impossible in a browser (and no, Flash games don't count).

At the same time, anything disconnected is becoming less and less relevant. Things *exist* when they're found by search engines and indexed and displayed in search results for billions of people. Only web apps can provide that.

Since there is a need for both, why can't both exist like they do now? Does one *have* to go away? Web apps won't go away as long as the web exists. But I don't think PC apps will go away either -- people are making loads of money off of PC apps like AV software, PC games, Office software, and so on. No way all that is going away any sooner than web apps.

Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit.
I'm currently blogging about: Barak makes the radio! (audio)
The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul

Judah Himango

Corinna John22-Jul-07 21:23

Corinna John

22-Jul-07 21:23

I'm sorry for my ignorance, but I cannot imagine that a .NET based component will run fine on Konqueror/Linux. That means, Silverlight is good only for internal use like fancy intranet applications. You cannot use it for public web sites.

Please tell me that I'm totally wrong with that... Sigh | :sigh:

____________________________________
There is no proof for this sentence.

Paul Watson22-Jul-07 21:34

22-Jul-07 21:34

First up I think Silverlight is a u-turn on the highway to the future. But I don't see why it wouldn't work on Linux and in Konqueror. Mono already runs on Linux fine and the news I've seen has shown a strong Linux group developing a Silverlight plugin.

And do remember it is a subset of .NET. Silverlight used to be called WPF/e.

regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland & South Africa

Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...

Thyme In The Country
Interacx
My Blog

Marc Clifton23-Jul-07 7:36

Marc Clifton

23-Jul-07 7:36

Paul Watson wrote:
First up I think Silverlight is a u-turn on the highway to the future.

Why's that? (And yes, I honestly value and am interested in your thoughts on the issue).

Marc

Paul Watson23-Jul-07 11:32

23-Jul-07 11:32

Maybe more an off-ramp onto Microsoft Way than a u-turn. Like I said to Judah it feels like Flash Done Right which is kinda like .NET is Java Done Right. Sorta. It isn't a real evolution. If we want to stay where we are then we can make use of Silverlight as it has some good fundamentals.

But (from my reply to Judah...)

My major complaint is Silverlight's island mentality. You can see Microsoft want people to start moving everything into their Silverlight island until we reach a point where we don't need the wrapper HTML and then we don't need the browser and boom, we are back on a Microsoft desktop. Sure, it works on OS X and Linux but that's cheap kool aid.

...

When I build a web-site or web-app I look at how I can make the atomic parts of it (the data, the algorithms, the intrinsic objects) reach beyond the glue. Then when my glue starts to crack and get old I can re-use and re-glue into a new form. Or others can. Unexpected uses are powerful (and different from unauthorised.)

It is good design practice that any good progammer has practised since the dawn of multi-line code. Silverlight is sucking me back into a regulated (through the HTML and DOM bridges) sub-world.

A lot of effort is being put into up-ending data and algorithmic silos onto the world wide web. That whole "dark net" thing which is so much larger than the current web and so much more interesting.

Every new system built with something like Silverlight or Flash is another system put behind another door. Sure they can be opened but why on earth do we need that door.

So, Silverlight is good for the status quo and building current-gen apps and I even like it as a media player or data visualiser (on data external to the Silverlight embed) but its not the highway forward, it's the roundabout keeping us chasing our tails.

(I hope Silverlight explodes and leaves a messy spread of cool tech we can incorporate into the ocean of the web and not the rocky island it currently is.)

regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland & South Africa

Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...

Thyme In The Country
Interacx
My Blog

Marc Clifton23-Jul-07 11:47

Marc Clifton

23-Jul-07 11:47

Thanks for great response. Definitely something to think about. I hate to do this to you again, but:

Paul Watson wrote:
but its not the highway forward

So what is the highway forward? Or more to the point, does the highway forward preclude cross-platform, thin-client solutions?

I for one think that things like Silverlight and Ajax will have a very brief moment in the limelight, as bandwidth and availability increases, processors continue to get cheaper and faster, I still see that a rich client environment will prevail. However, the problem of cross platform compatibility still remains, and I see it as the only thing that Silverlight has to offer in the interrum, until sometime in the future Mac OS, Windows, and Linux apps can run seemlessly on the same box (or one OS to rule them all is made).

Comments?

Marc

Judah Gabriel Himango24-Jul-07 4:24

24-Jul-07 4:24

Marc Clifton wrote:
what is the highway forward?

Ruby. Coded up on Macs. Wink | ;)

Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit.
I'm currently blogging about: How could God prove Himself to humanity?
The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul

Judah Himango

Bhaskar Priya26-Jul-07 3:19

Bhaskar Priya

26-Jul-07 3:19

yeah yeah yeah!

Kevin McFarlane23-Jul-07 1:44

Kevin McFarlane

23-Jul-07 1:44

At the moment "cross-browser and cross-platform" means IE + Mozilla/Firefox and Windows (XP and higher) + Mac. An architecture diagram suggests that MS will extend this to other browsers, e.g., Opera, and also to Windows 2000.

In the meantime the Mono guys are extending it to Linux. How seamless all this will eventually be is another matter.

Kevin

Judah Gabriel Himango23-Jul-07 6:09

23-Jul-07 6:09

From the stuff I've read, it works now on Opera on Windows as well. Is that not the case?

Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit.
I'm currently blogging about: How could God prove Himself to humanity?
The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul

Judah Himango

Kevin McFarlane23-Jul-07 6:57

Kevin McFarlane

23-Jul-07 6:57

OK, I didn't know that. At the time of the initial announcement it didn't.

Kevin

Judah Gabriel Himango23-Jul-07 7:17

23-Jul-07 7:17

Don't quote me on it, I've just heard that it supports IE, FF, and Opera on Windows, and Safari on Mac. Maybe I misheard somewhere...

I just did a quick search and found some Opera devs talking about official support of Opera and how they've been working with MS since Silverlight was called WPE/E. So it does appear Opera support will be there in the final released version of Silverlight. I don't yet see anything indicating there is a plug-in currently for Silverlight 1.1 alpha.

*edit* Apparently there is a plug-in right now for Opera, but it seems to have some problems with the Silverlight 1.1 alpha.

Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit.
I'm currently blogging about: How could God prove Himself to humanity?
The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul

Judah Himango

Judah Gabriel Himango23-Jul-07 6:19

23-Jul-07 6:19

Corinna John wrote:
I cannot imagine that a .NET based component will run fine on Konqueror/Linux

In addition to what Paul said, the Mono guys are already developing Silverlight for Linux: Moonlight[^].

Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit.
I'm currently blogging about: How could God prove Himself to humanity?
The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul

Judah Himango

GPAaron23-Jul-07 7:58

GPAaron

23-Jul-07 7:58

Judah Himango wrote:
In addition to what Paul said, the Mono guys are already developing Silverlight for Linux: Moonlight[^].

Fantastic. How about, instead of copying every single bad idea from Redmond, they work on a decent IDE instead?

Judah Gabriel Himango23-Jul-07 9:09

23-Jul-07 9:09

Visual Studio's got its problems, but I understand it's a helluva lot better than anything Linux's got.

In fact, the only claim to a better IDE some would make is, perhaps, Eclipse. I've used it and found it wanting.

As far as copying goes, Mono provides a way to make thousands of Windows apps run on Linux, Mac, Solaris, and other platforms. Nothing wrong in that.

Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit.
I'm currently blogging about: How could God prove Himself to humanity?
The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul

Judah Himango

GPAaron23-Jul-07 11:10

GPAaron

23-Jul-07 11:10

Yep yep, totally agree.

I'm down with the Mono project, completely. But do they seriously intend to implement every single extension? MS isn't going to shy away from just trying something out, even with the possibility of it not succeeding. I mean, if Silverlight fails, no problem with MS.

Adoption may not happen, people might realize it's just Flash with .Net scripting ability -- which sounds an awful lot like Visual Basic on the client with WebClasses wrapped up in an OCX package, etc.

I'm assuming of course, that the Mono folks do have limited resources, and if that assumption is correct, that it might be better to focus on something that could help move the entire platform along. Let MS write the extensions for the Linux browsers, if being able to claim a "true" cross-platform alternative to Flash is really all that important to them.

Paul Watson23-Jul-07 11:35

23-Jul-07 11:35

I think Microsoft said (paraphrasing) "We won't build a Linux Silverlight plugin but we will support someone who wants to build it." That is the impression I got from Mix '06 when WPF/e was announced.

regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland & South Africa

Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...

Corinna John23-Jul-07 20:51

Corinna John

23-Jul-07 20:51

Paul Watson wrote:
We won't build a Linux Silverlight plugin

So they don't plan to build a cross-browser, cross-platform Silverlight plugin. Only the marketing people call it platform-independant. Microsoft writes the stuff for their own platforms and hopes on the community to do the "dirty job". It's always the same. Dead | X|

____________________________________
There is no proof for this sentence.

Paul Watson23-Jul-07 21:02

23-Jul-07 21:02

Well they did write the Mac OS X plugin for Safari and Firefox. And the Linux plugin looks like it will get done by the Mono guys. It is better than the usual Microsoft story.

regards,
Paul Watson
Ireland & South Africa

Shog9 wrote:
And with that, Paul closed his browser, sipped his herbal tea, fixed the flower in his hair, and smiled brightly at the multitude of cute, furry animals flocking around the grassy hillside where he sat coding Ruby on his Mac...