THE "scam" that Silverlight had become in 'the media' was covered here two days ago. We included many examples to show how Microsoft fooled the world through journalists, striving to give the impression -- no matter how bogus it is -- that Silverlight has something to do with open source and is cross-platform (it's neither).
This type of dishonesty has shown little or no signs of abatement as disinformation continues to be disseminated to deceive Web developers. Here, for instance, is
an article from TechWorld which states:
Also, a Linux version of Silverlight, dubbed " Moonlight," is being developed by a team of developers led by Miguel de Icaza at Novell, Microsoft officials noted.
The
illusion of cross-platform must end. There is no "Linux version of Silverlight." Those "Microsoft officials" are lying. There is no "port" either, just to refute another wrong terminology used by other journalists. Moonlight and Silverlight are separate. The latter is the 'real thing', whereas the former is a Novell me-too project which strives only to cling to coattails [
1,
2].
The same type of mistake, calling Moonlight "a version for Linux," is being
repeated in InformationWeek:
Silverlight will run in Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer on Windows and Mac OS, and Novell is working on a version for Linux.
That's incorrect. Developers might get the impression that Silverlight targets GNU/Linux users. It does not. Let's repeat this again: GNU/Linux has no Silverlight and Microsoft has no plan to change this strategy.
Gavin Clarke, disappointingly enough (yes,
again), wrote this article in The Register where
he covers Flash but gets totally distracted by his showering with kisses for XAML, which is is trying to describe using terms like "open source". It's a
gentle form of disinformation.
Microsoft wrapped the Silverlight 2.0 news with the announcement it's funding a project at the open-source Eclipse Foundation to build open-source tools for Java. Also, Microsoft is releasing controls under its Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved open-source license and releasing its XAML documentation under the company's Open-Specification Promise (OSP).
Oh, goodness! Not that OSP again [
1,
2,
3,
4,
5].
⬆
Picture contributed by a reader
Comments
AlexH
2008-10-16 14:20:55
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-16 14:29:18
AlexH
2008-10-16 14:35:43
But anyway, take your point - where are the Ajax content creation tools? As far as I can see, even with the likes of Dijit, people are still having to code up interfaces from scratch, test them in different browsers, work around different bugs.
The closest other free software technology we have is probably XUL. But again, no tools for that either :(
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-16 14:40:12
For content to be available through standards, as opposed to through a universal blob*, more work might be needed. The Web and the Free software movement were not built without some heavy lifting.
__ *Curl and JavaFX being a slight exception.
AlexH
2008-10-16 14:46:19
It's all very well to say that some "heavy lifting" is required: my point is that Microsoft are the ones currently doing it (as free software and in Java, no less). I don't see anything equivalent even vaguely on the horizon for Ajax or any other system.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-16 14:50:46
AlexH
2008-10-16 14:54:19
The point is that there are no tools for people to develop these things; you have to code them up from scratch/against frameworks in text editors. When you're doing anything vaguely visual, it's "tough" to say the least. So, take SVG: how would you animate a character in SVG? What tool would you use to do that, even a simple waving stick figure?
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-16 14:59:44
AlexH
2008-10-16 15:05:45
It's hardly wheel re-invention when there is nothing else out there doing that...
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-16 15:09:29
Dan O'Brian
2008-10-16 15:21:25
AlexH
2008-10-16 15:25:44
SVG + JS + bits is one possibility, but animation, sound and video support is terribly weak, and it's not clear that many parts of the SVG standard are ever going to be implemented.
Flash is another, but it's not really a specified standard and doing a binary format in 2008 is a bit of a strange decision.
There's MPEG / SMIL, but eh, there are some _real_ patent problems.
Potentially you could try to do something with "Ajax", but the experience of OpenLaszlo is that it's a. extremely difficult and b. error-prone. HTML just isn't designed to do that kind of thing, it's not a "pixel-perfect" format (and I'm not sure anyone really wants it to be?). It's also not a standard - the solution would use standard technologies, but would have to exist at a much higher level. HTML is like OpenDocument, Flash/Silverlight is like PDF - very different systems.
It's very easy to say "there should be a standard" or something, but the free software community just hasn't done anything in this area. We're still trying to catch up to simply *play back* existing Flash content.
I would quite happily use something like Silverlight, even if it wasn't nearly as advanced and didn't work in IE, if there were decent content tools. The market here is absolutely massive.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-16 15:45:26
AlexH
2008-10-16 15:59:34
Ziggyfish
2008-10-16 21:16:00
AlexH
2008-10-16 21:36:01
Roy Schestowitz
2008-10-16 21:41:03