Microsoft Shuts Down Silverlight.net

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
Messages
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Microsoft has been pushing Silverlight on the masses for the past five years, but it still hasn’t been that widely accepted by developers. It has long been rumored that Microsoft wouldn’t pursue development of Silverlight past its present version and this may signal the end of its support.

Of course, "support" is not the same thing as "future additions and improvements". At the moment, we would not place any bets on Microsoft releasing Silverlight 6.
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I always hated Silverlight...only slightly less than Flash.
 
ComputerBox34 said:
AFAIK, Netflix still uses it. I'd consider that a pretty big adoption
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As a WMC user who subscribes to Netflix....this worries me a little. Support from Microsoft for WMC in general is piss poor; no less the Netflix plugin. If Netflix were to adopt something else.....I'd prob be SOL.
 
GOOD!

Thought silverlight was a dumb idea five years ago! And that was before the HTML5 ruckus.
 
good.

i hated installing silverlight just to view some obscure microsoft shit.

microsoft never seems to catch a break going against the grain. hd-dvd, zune, surface, silverlight. all failures
 
Skripka said:
I always hated Silverlight...only slightly less than Flash.
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+1

Microsoft has been pushing Silverlight on the masses for the past five years, but it still hasn’t been that widely accepted by developers.
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dr.kevin said:
good.

i hated installing silverlight just to view some obscure microsoft shit.

microsoft never seems to catch a break going against the grain. hd-dvd, zune, surface, silverlight. all failures
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It's cool if hd-dvd didn't catch on xbox360 sold like hot cakes and sony america is in troubles now of days. Silverlight always seems like a gamble just to get market penetration, i mean it is better then flash but flash just wasn't so horrible people were going to jump ship.
 
Thus, continuing the Microsoft tradition of creating solutions to non-existent problems, bludgeoning it's userbase with them, failing to have them catch on, and pretending they no longer exist ~5 years on.
 
No one needs silverlight or flash anymore, this makes alot of sense now. People complain about it but why? Silverlight worked fine for me, and it was one product I rarely heard about any problems with unlike flash. But what changed is all the phones pushed advanced "web" programming off the web and onto the phone in the form of "apps" With apple just flipping the bird to adobe and MS now having their app store integrated into windows 8, it seems like the concept of universal access to advanced features on the web will no longer be done through a browser but rather through apps. Personally I think this is bad in the long run but that is the way the phone market pushed things because they valued exclusive apps over universal access.
 
file attachments in microsoft's own hotmail had problems in firefox until you disable silverlight. But other than that, it's ignorable except netflix.
 
What drove flash's adoption? flash games, embedded video players, silly animations. MS clearly wanted SL to compete with flash, but I don't think they wanted to hurt their "serious business" image by marketing to the devs of those kinds of apps.
 
GaryJohnson said:
What drove flash's adoption? flash games, embedded video players, silly animations. MS clearly wanted SL to compete with flash, but I don't think they wanted to hurt their "serious business" image by marketing to the devs of those kinds of apps.
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Only way i ever saw silverlight getting real looks if youtube somehow adopted it over flash then there would be enough of a user base that it wouldn't be like netflix where people comment on how it's the only thing using silverlight.
 
rudy said:
No one needs silverlight or flash anymore, this makes alot of sense now. People complain about it but why? Silverlight worked fine for me, and it was one product I rarely heard about any problems with unlike flash. But what changed is all the phones pushed advanced "web" programming off the web and onto the phone in the form of "apps" With apple just flipping the bird to adobe and MS now having their app store integrated into windows 8, it seems like the concept of universal access to advanced features on the web will no longer be done through a browser but rather through apps. Personally I think this is bad in the long run but that is the way the phone market pushed things because they valued exclusive apps over universal access.
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I don't actually see it going away but I hear what you are saying. It is very nice to have all access through a browser and these devices just aren't capable of using a browser as their complete-portal yet. Seeing how when browsers usefulness skyrocketed when flash/advanced html services were implemented I can see it happening on the phone/tablet scene in a while once phones are capable.
 
I did quite a bit of silverlight development this year at work. I quite liked it

*runs*
 
Ihaveworms said:
I did quite a bit of silverlight development this year at work. I quite liked it

*runs*
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lol, it's cool.
It's just too bad that Silverlight was so proprietary and limited to x86 processors.

That's one of the nice things about Java, it will run on any OS or hardware platform currently available.
 
F Microsoft and their web development practices.

Everything they pull out with regards to web development is an abomination.
 
krogen said:
F Microsoft and their web development practices.

Everything they pull out with regards to web development is an abomination.
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SHHH!! You guys are seriously going to piss HIM off, and then he will self-destruct the thread and/or explode! :eek:

But yes, Microsoft's web dev practices haven't been good since the Windows 2000 Pro days.
 
Why isn't HTML5 widely adopted these days? Is it not mature/good enough to at least co-exist on the same momentum?
 
nOrVow said:
Why isn't HTML5 widely adopted these days? Is it not mature/good enough to at least co-exist on the same momentum?
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You would think so.
I use it all the time and actually like HTML5.

Flash is just so damn bloated, not to mention the proprietary licenses are killing Linux installations for new versions (not counting security patches).

It's going to be a while, if ever, when Flash is finally killed off.
 
Pulling support for something like this mades things like Metro applications seem like a bad idea. Why make and learn a skillset if there's a chance that it's not going to be relevant soon.
 
When i worked for Netflix, everyone said they couldn't wait till their Silverlight contract to be up...
 
DeathPrincess said:
Pulling support for something like this mades things like Metro applications seem like a bad idea. Why make and learn a skillset if there's a chance that it's not going to be relevant soon.
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You just solve the Microsoft-Mystery business plan of 2013. :cool:
 
DeathPrincess said:
Pulling support for something like this mades things like Metro applications seem like a bad idea. Why make and learn a skillset if there's a chance that it's not going to be relevant soon.
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Out with the old in with the new; Direct3D has something to say to you. Learning new languages and api's is part of the job. Anyways it's not like microsoft makes it hard on developers they provide great tools and documentation.
 
ComputerBox34 said:
AFAIK, Netflix still uses it. I'd consider that a pretty big adoption
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Yeah I was going to say. If this forces Netflix to adopt HTML5 or Flash, what will that mean to their CC and Subtitle feature? I hope like hell it can be ported to HTML5 or Flash. They took so long getting the movies they have subbed, I'm going to be pretty pissed if they have to start all over again.

If course if the subs are in a text-like format, like IDX, SUB, SRT or SSA, then I guess my worries are unfounded.
 
Netflix isn't going to switch to a non-DRM streaming method. Not because Netflix is "ebil", but because the studios demand it. There's little reason for Netflix to stop using Silverlight, even if it's getting no new versions.

Ihaveworms said:
I did quite a bit of silverlight development this year at work. I quite liked it

*runs*
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Yeah, I was going to post something similar. Even if it never gained wide adoption on the internets, it was always just another option.

Silverlight faces the same problems all of .NET does: it's quite useful for a subset of problems, but there are few other reasons to choose it over alternatives for the rest of the cases. And I say that as a fan of the languages and frameworks.
 
XenIneX said:
Thus, continuing the Microsoft tradition of creating solutions to non-existent problems, bludgeoning it's userbase with them, failing to have them catch on, and pretending they no longer exist ~5 years on.
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so because a solution exists (flash) there shouldn't be competing products (screw java, we already had C)? flash is a load of shit and silverlight is only hated more because everyone already has flash. if you visit a website that uses flash, most people just accept it because the plugin is already installed and it loads automatically. if you are asked to install silverlight for this or that, nerd rage ensues because it's micro$oft (yes with the freakin dollar sign).
 
temujin987 said:
so because a solution exists (flash) there shouldn't be competing products (screw java, we already had C)? flash is a load of shit and silverlight is only hated more because everyone already has flash. if you visit a website that uses flash, most people just accept it because the plugin is already installed and it loads automatically. if you are asked to install silverlight for this or that, nerd rage ensues because it's micro$oft (yes with the freakin dollar sign).
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If Microsoft even supported their bullshit software properly, maybe things would have turned out different. Why don't I see silverlight on Linux? Because Microsoft never bothered, yet I can use Flash just fine.

Flash succeeded because Macromedia / Adobe were willing to port it to other platforms.

One of the reasons why Flash is starting to lose some ground is because of the lack of proper support on mobile devices. If mobile devices are not supported, I betcha web developers will do things in HTML5, with a fallback to Flash.

Failure of Silverlight is Microsoft's own fault.
 
dr.kevin said:
good.

i hated installing silverlight just to view some obscure microsoft shit.

microsoft never seems to catch a break going against the grain. hd-dvd, zune, surface, silverlight. all failures
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It's their own fault. They keep trying to break into something that is already well established, with the exception of HD-DVD(they lost that fair and square).

But seriously, the Zune(and I fucking LOVE my Zune and dread the day it dies), but the iPod was already established very well. They had to of known they didn't have a fighting chance.

Silverlight, come on. As much as flash is garbage it had been around forever. I want to know what they were smoking when they thought that shit would catch on. I've hated Silverlight from the begining.

Surface. iPad. Regardless of what you think about Apple their shit is considered by many as the "Standard", right or wrong.

They need to stick to what they do best. OS's and Office products. Xbox's do okay, too. They can keep making those. I understand they have to expand their base to make more profit...but their history of innovation isn't too hot.
 
OEM said:
It's their own fault. They keep trying to break into something that is already well established, with the exception of HD-DVD(they lost that fair and square).

But seriously, the Zune(and I fucking LOVE my Zune and dread the day it dies), but the iPod was already established very well. They had to of known they didn't have a fighting chance.

Silverlight, come on. As much as flash is garbage it had been around forever. I want to know what they were smoking when they thought that shit would catch on. I've hated Silverlight from the begining.

Surface. iPad. Regardless of what you think about Apple their shit is considered by many as the "Standard", right or wrong.

They need to stick to what they do best. OS's and Office products. Xbox's do okay, too. They can keep making those. I understand they have to expand their base to make more profit...but their history of innovation isn't too hot.
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Microsoft has a long history of arrogance. The introduction of Silverlight was just yet another example for the text books
 
nOrVow said:
Why isn't HTML5 widely adopted these days? Is it not mature/good enough to at least co-exist on the same momentum?
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You still need multiple versions of the same website to work on different platforms, and then multiple codepaths to work with different browsers on the same platform. I've been making web apps for iPad and they won't work on android, much less on the desktop. I have to make another version of the website from the ground up for the others. It's not just a matter of having a touch interface, all i have to do is make the interface modular if that was the case (i.e. launch touch interface if touch device detected), no, the way each browsers handles javascript, css and html5 interaction codewise will vary between browsers so i can't even use the same functions since the values they will receive will depend on the browser.

The only way i can actually get things done is by asking what browser they want it to work on, and code HTML5 to work with that, and then rather than waste time creating alternates for other browsers, simply disable the features that will not work with them.

As of now, it's usually for iPad. I'm still using flash on the desktop since it's the only one that actually works consistently across browsers. The boss is still pissed i couldn't replicate the desktop functions on the iPad (A lot of the critical html5 functionalities i need are disabled on the iPad, the same functions that run fine on Flash when it was still running on android)
 
Wow. How on earth does "Microsoft consolidates Silverlight.net documentation into MSDN" translate into another round of "SILVERLIGHT IS DEAD!!!" rumors?
 
InorganicMatter said:
Wow. How on earth does "Microsoft consolidates Silverlight.net documentation into MSDN" translate into another round of "SILVERLIGHT IS DEAD!!!" rumors?
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Rumor?! This is the Internet and it was stated, on the Internet, that Silverlight is dead.
Therefore, it is undoubtedly, the official, mega-truth.

Accept it and submit!
 
OEM said:
...

They need to stick to what they do best. OS's and Office products. Xbox's do okay, too. They can keep making those. I understand they have to expand their base to make more profit...but their history of innovation isn't too hot.
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IMO their 'innovation' has been to try and move as much of the control and money in the PC market in their direction. I bet it frustrates MS to no end that while they are the dominant OS in the world, much of the sales related to users using that OS are not going into their pocket. They have repeatedly tried to seize chunks of the PC market for themselves and end up repeatedly failing at it.

IMO Metro is designed to alleviate some of that 'problem' by herding the cattle, I mean as many people they can :D, into the new MS Slaughterhouse, I mean Walled Garden.
 
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