Silverlight, coming soon to a browser near you
Thursday, 3. May 2007, 16:45:15
Things are hotting up in the rich media arms race. In the red corner we have Adobe, with Apollo (web technologies, Flash and Flex), while in the blue corner we have the new entrant from the Redmond Giant, Silverlight (web technologies, XAML, .Net et al) — wow, these names really do sound like American Wrestlers. The W3C is also somewhere there in the mix with SVG and widgets 1.0. it could potentially be a bloody battle, and it is quite worrying for the web, as each of the two main players use their own propitiatory technologies, runtimes, codecs and developer tools. One has to use Visual Studio, or Expression studio on Windows to develop for Silverlight for example. Is this another example of the big guys trying to take control of the web again. After Mix, Ex-Microsoft Employee, Robert Scoble, posted about Silverlight, claiming Microsoft rebooted the web
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As Silverlight runs in a browser, it is very important that Opera supports it. We must be compatible with the web sites out there that will use this technology. I also think that it is important that Adobe have strong competition, so that it doesn't run away with a monopoly on rich media interfaces on the web, tying everyone to their own technologies and products. Silverlight has also already been demoed on Windows Mobile. Maybe this is the kick that Adobe needs to start pushing its development of Flash on mobiles and embedded devices. If Flash isn't there (or gets too outdated) maybe Microsoft will get there first.
I don't want to announce too much just yet, but as can be seen from this picture, there are plans in the works for Opera support. We've been discussing this with Microsoft and Tim Sneath since it was still called WFP/e. I hoped to be at Mix to announce Opera support, but unfortunately it came a bit too soon. It was good to see that CNet picked up Forest Key's announcement though. Progress and bug fixes are being made, and the Silverlight team have been very helpful. Hopefully we'll be able to make announcement on Opera compatibility soon.
It is not just the Silverlight team that are being helpful. Microsoft's Ajax library, ASP.net Ajax, has issues in our browser. We've started to look into how we can fix these problems, and have just started discussing with them on including their automated test suite into our build system. We can then start looking into fixing the problems on both their and our end. Once ASP.net Ajax is fully compatible, we should see a vast reduction in the problems in their services that make use of the library, such as the Live.com series.
WIDGETIZE
XP1 # 4. May 2007, 04:23
Ilgaz # 4. May 2007, 09:09
Telling for the record, until they really decide to be multi platform; e.g. live.com working PERFECTLY on all modern browsers, ignore them.
See what happened to Mono project for the record. See what was promised, a full feature 1.0 released and they got abandoned by MSFT.
Don't get tricked and don't get your good intentions abused. It seems they are using Opera Inc. as poster child to claim they are really neutral this time. They aren't. They have never been.
Rijk # 4. May 2007, 13:03
Embedding content in websites that relies on plugins is inherently anti-crossplatform. So the existence of these plugins encourages producers of such content - and it is truly a pity if they do this for content that could be presented in HTML+CSS+JS as well. It is no coincidence that our CTO Haakon is trying to push for a non-plugin video solution with non-proprietary codecs, the one thing were we currently can't do without plugins.
Ilgaz # 4. May 2007, 19:59
What Adobe cares is how widely their product used, not on what platform it is used.
There is a fairly recent example on Mac scene, Windows Media Player got abandoned using Intel transition as excuse and people are diverted to a third party product.
While it is actually better than Windows Media Player in terms of quality and stability, it can't do DRM and live radio/video. That is another way of punishing user because they don't use their OS.
I can also claim lots of Mac/Intel bad user experience, browser lock downs on Opera Mac happens because of that powerpc only application which still manages get into top 10 download charts. It was already problematic on Tiger (10.4) because of archaic preference file model.
Before going off topic: I clearly remember when we, media guys asked "What about multi platform?", they used full feature Mac windows media player to claim multi-platform compatibility and they have no intentions to do otherwise. The sales people
I am afraid the silverlight Opera (the enemy!) compatibility and recent announcement by Miguel De Iceza (Linux) will be abused that way to make it another monopoly and they will do same tricks slowly to give bad experience to any non-windows user.
What should be done is a end user/content provider (yes, DRM if needed) friendly , standards based "thing" which is based on open standards like SVG and others.
I think the non plugin video solution will evaluate to that. As long as it is Opera Inc. involved, there is no problem.
BigBrownChunx # 20. May 2007, 20:03
First, I had to copy the dll files from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight to C:\Program Files\Opera\program\plugins and restart the browser. Then the http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/js/Silverlight01.js script needed to be changed to properly detect the browser. I did this using the inline source editor that would kindly change microsoft's site for me when I hit the apply changes button.
I modified the detectAgControlVersion(), and removed the "&& !document.all" line there (since Opera has support for document.all, and definatly isn't IE), and also changed the browserIsSupportedVersion() function to make it return true (I was too lazy to change it to detect Opera
After that, I browsed the microsoft.com/silverlight page and played the video. It just asked if it could have permission to download a cab file or something, which I presumed was the movie.
So, although it's just the windows version, it's good to know that with the Netscape-compatible plugins, its possible to get it to work in Opera.
Anonymous # 23. October 2007, 21:56
@BigBrownChunx:
Man, you ROCK!
ondatra # 18. February 2008, 13:25
http://blog.crazyboomerang.com/2007/12/silverlight-in-opera.html
Anonymous # 13. March 2008, 13:18
I just wanted to add, that you can start developing Silverlight in Notepad, like you can do it with HTML.
You don't need any fancy IDE.
btw, I hope 2.0 will support Opera on some level, bec it isn't rely on the browser's javascript capabilities.
Chas4 # 17. June 2008, 04:19
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx#sysreq
add Opera!
kamalesh # 21. August 2008, 06:25
Chas4 # 22. August 2008, 00:36
You have to mask as Firefox and have Silverlight 2 Beta 2 GDR 1 (2.0.30523.9)
You can get the Silverlight 2 beta 2 here:
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx?v=2.0
Chas4 # 15. October 2008, 20:05
They said cross platform and cross browser support. If they keep this up they will never catch Adobe's Flash Player
ID as Opera
Microsoft Silverlight may not be supported on this browser or operating system. System Requirements
Click System Requirements and the page is redireted to http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx#
Anonymous # 16. October 2008, 23:21
Silverlight 2 was released and still no support for Opera! :(
I still get the message: "...Microsoft Silverlight may not be supported on this browser or operating system. System Requirements..."
haavard # 21. October 2008, 10:51
Chas4 # 21. October 2008, 12:20
Chas4 # 2. March 2009, 22:54
dstorey # 15. March 2009, 21:58
Chas4 # 16. March 2009, 00:07