Silverlight About to Gain Some Ground
Obviously, it has been a long time since I have written a blog post. Life is busy. New company, new kid on the way, and some other excuses... ANYWAY, I'm back in the saddle again.
For my first "returning to blogging" post here I just want to comment on the announcement from NBC (covered on ZDNet here).
This is some pretty big news as far as a marketing story. I'm sure plenty of MS haters have plenty to say about it, but I for one commend Microsoft for a wily, and very smart tactic (assuming they had a hand in the decision).
Silverlight is absolutely a powerful platform for rich content on the web. Its capabilities are on par with Flash already, and in a couple ways are superior (3D and integrated CLR which means support for a whole slew of languages). It's cross platform and all that good stuff as well. So they've got a decent product on their hands, and paired with MS's fantastic development tools it could be quite good. There is of course one major problem; there is virtually no market penetration vs. Flash. That is the limiting factor and the reason I would not recommend Silverlight for a typical website project, unless the budget was big enough to include duplicating versions for multiple target platforms (and even then I wouldn't recommend it). As of now it's best suited only for those internal projects or inward facing products where you have control over the deployment platform.
Please take note that I am in no way bashing Flash or Adobe here. A lot of MS haters will see that I am not hating MS and by extension take the leap that I am therefore hating Adobe (or whatever other company is opposing). Microsoft is not nearly as bad as many people make them out to be, and definitely not more so than other big software companies...
Anyway, back to the point. Microsoft is poised, with the NBCOlympics.com deal, to increase their market penetration quite significantly. Yes, some people will just refuse to go there, but those numbers will by dwarfed by far by the number of people that will just go ahead and click the "download now" button (just like we all did at one point for Flash). Flash is still king for rich media on the web for now, but some solid competition will be welcome.
I'll stop here as far as the speculation goes, but I think things could heat up a bit after the Olympics. We shall see, of course, in due time.
For my first "returning to blogging" post here I just want to comment on the announcement from NBC (covered on ZDNet here).
This is some pretty big news as far as a marketing story. I'm sure plenty of MS haters have plenty to say about it, but I for one commend Microsoft for a wily, and very smart tactic (assuming they had a hand in the decision).
Silverlight is absolutely a powerful platform for rich content on the web. Its capabilities are on par with Flash already, and in a couple ways are superior (3D and integrated CLR which means support for a whole slew of languages). It's cross platform and all that good stuff as well. So they've got a decent product on their hands, and paired with MS's fantastic development tools it could be quite good. There is of course one major problem; there is virtually no market penetration vs. Flash. That is the limiting factor and the reason I would not recommend Silverlight for a typical website project, unless the budget was big enough to include duplicating versions for multiple target platforms (and even then I wouldn't recommend it). As of now it's best suited only for those internal projects or inward facing products where you have control over the deployment platform.
Please take note that I am in no way bashing Flash or Adobe here. A lot of MS haters will see that I am not hating MS and by extension take the leap that I am therefore hating Adobe (or whatever other company is opposing). Microsoft is not nearly as bad as many people make them out to be, and definitely not more so than other big software companies...
Anyway, back to the point. Microsoft is poised, with the NBCOlympics.com deal, to increase their market penetration quite significantly. Yes, some people will just refuse to go there, but those numbers will by dwarfed by far by the number of people that will just go ahead and click the "download now" button (just like we all did at one point for Flash). Flash is still king for rich media on the web for now, but some solid competition will be welcome.
I'll stop here as far as the speculation goes, but I think things could heat up a bit after the Olympics. We shall see, of course, in due time.
-Ryan Gahl
I work as a professional software engineering consultant, specializing in web-based (inter/intra/extranet) applications, Ajax, and C#.
My services can be purchased by calling the following number: 1-262-951-6727
I am becoming an expert engineer.
posted by Ryan Gahl at
11:49 AM
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