OSNews

er, that's "Dot-net want"...

Good for you. Now get lost, little troll.

I. do. want.

I know, This is a horrible idea... I'll never use this crap nor will I use Flash.

What will you use, and why?

The days of animated gif files are over.
There are no real alternatives to flash and silverlight.

Read up on silverlight. It's actually very impressive.

> Read up on silverlight. It's actually very impressive.

Silverlight is backend by MS.
Flash is backend by Adobe. Adobe don't have any problem with Linux. MS Does.

Silverlight is backend by MS.
Flash is backend by Adobe. Adobe don't have any problem with Linux. MS Does.

Adobe has problems with Linux. Just look at how long it took to get flash 9 ported.

Adobe is just as closed source as Microsoft. The only difference is that adobe for time to time releases some linux binaries (And with this move by Microsoft, you can bet Adobe will keep its linux client up to date).

Microsoft is doing the exact same thing as Adobe, with the exception that its using mono, which will actually make Silverlight run on more platforms than Flash. From what iv seen, they are in it for the long run, so we can expect it to be reasonably updated aswell.

Ofc, we could all ignore Microsoft's attempt at making silverlight cross platform. We can sit in the darkness when huge companies such as ABC and NBC starts to release content for silverlight, that we on Linux cant access. We can sit in the dark while Microsoft makes even more money selling Windows licenses, becuse linux users are forced to Windows to watch rich media.

the great thing about adobe is that distros don't include adobe products. besides, all of their products have been reverse engineered / reimplemented over and over by truly neutral parties. i can ignore adobe. i'm peeved enough that almost every distro forces mono down my throat as a default install. with the mono developers' fingers in this, you just know it's going to end up as a default install.

i repeat myself: do. not. want.

frankly, i don't care if silver/moonlight *is* impressive. i don't want microsoft fingers fiddling in my business. at all. period. ever. i feel the say way about mono in general.

i'm tired of developers chasing a moving microsoft target. absolute zero innovation. miguel and his cache of followers are the one of the most devastating forces OSS has seen. i want innovation. i don't want "free" windows and its associated frameworks. think of the great things that could be created if these people weren't busy trying to photocopy everything redmond pukes up.

geez.

Edited 2007-09-05 19:19

Who cares for ABC and NBC, alot of websites have moved to flash for their video content. To me the Silverlight demo is just a jazzy frontend to what flash can do already.

> Adobe has problems with Linux. Just look at how long it took to get flash 9 ported.

So Adobe has with with other OS not popular as Windows.
Adobe does not have the same amount of money to put in Linux than in Windows.

> Adobe is just as closed source as Microsoft.

Quite. But Adobe does not compete with Linux. This make a big difference.

I think Adobe just has problems. Microsoft knows exactly what they are doing :-)

Photoshop.



Silverlight was first running on Linux. Microsoft-created standard VC-1 was first implemented on Linux.

> Photoshop.

???
It's not cost effective for Adobe to port Photoshop to Linux. That's all.

Why Adobe should not port Photoshop to Linux ?

MS will not port MS-Office to Linux even if it's cost effective.

Yes Adobe hasn't got any problem with opensource at all, because they don't see it

Pardon? what is the difference between overt hatred of GPL (Linux does not equal GPL, it uses GPL) and covert hatred of Linux by Adobe by virtue of their crap support for Linux.

We're talking about the same company that got 3/4 of the way through to releasing Framemaker for Linux and withdrew it from the market. If Adobe were such 'friends' of Linux, they would have not only released that but actually pulled finger and released a creative suite for Linux.

Sorry, atleast with Microsoft there is a level of consistancy; if they're going to screw someone over, they'll do it outright with no effort to covert it. The fact is Microsoft has nothing to lose by support Moonlight given that Microsoft will be firstly the main provider of services and secondly by virtue of the fact that their IDE will always be superior to what ever the opensource world puts out. In otherwords, somewhere along the line a Windows computer will be needed in the creation or deployment of it.

Getting back to Microosft; the vast majority who do like *NIX don't want Microsoft destroyed; we want healthy competition where all rivals keep each other on their toes - pushing innnovation rather than having things stand static because of the lack of competition.

Sure I don't like Microsoft at all, but sometimes it seems that people critcize them for any stupid reason.

They're evil? Maybe, but let's not start a flamewar because of this.

Their products are crap? Idem above.

I think they deserve some attention, too.

Just my 2 cents.

Absolutely.

And they actually do come up with pretty decent products every once in a while. Visual Studio for one is very good.

They also have a history of good mice and joysticks...

Nothing is all black or all white after all.

An absolute statement denying the existence of absolute statements? Curious.

-sarcasm on-
Good point, poor Microsoft does not get enough attention in the PC press already.
-sarcasm off-

We are talking about web applications here.
Flash, Silverlight(.Net) and Java are the current best options for this.
The current html+css+javascript+xmlhttprequest model is terrible for web applications and will hopefully be replaced by something more atuned to the creation of Applications not documents.

"The current html+css+javascript+xmlhttprequest model is terrible for web applications and will hopefully be replaced by something more atuned to the creation of Applications not documents."

I disagree completely. Just look at all the Google and Yahoo apps. They look great (clean, fast, and simple), and perform great for web apps. Look at GWT. Look at all the powerful and easy to use DHTML/Ajax frameworks out there (Dojo, Prototype, YUI, etc).

Then look at all the websites that make heavy use of Flash, and observe how badly they suck ass (slow, bloated, unresponsive, irritating as hell, sucks up all the cpu cycles on the host system, can't be indexed by search engines, etc).

In my honest experience, websites, and web apps, based on HTML/CSS/JavaScript/XMLHTTPRequest are vastly superior to Flash based ones, by orders of magnitude. They are so much easier, more intuitive, more responsive, better looking. Of all the websites I regular visit, I know of no exceptions.

In fact, OSNews becomes much better when I enable the FireFox FlashBlocker add-on. Then that stupid add at the top of this forum can't slow the whole thing down anymore (as well as my whole system).

For things other than videos and games, Flash is horrible. An absolute abomination on the internet.

At least with Silverlight or JavaFX, they're based on true development platforms (.Net and Java, respectively), and can be used to make regular applications and UIs that don't suck up all the system's CPU cycles.

Then look at all the websites that make heavy use of Flash, and observe how badly they suck ass (slow, bloated, unresponsive, irritating as hell, sucks up all the cpu cycles on the host system, can't be indexed by search engines, etc).

True. That's certainly another way of looking at it, because we've had Flash for donkey's years now. You would think that if people thought that a plugin like Flash was the absolute best way to create web applications then Flash would have taken over completely. It hasn't. Most people realised that DHTML/CSS output, with a bit of JavaScript and AJAX thrown in, was simply more usable.

I'm not entirely sure that people really want complex rich client applications sitting in their browser, when all they want is to view some content.

Edited 2007-09-06 18:02

There are tons of good "AJAX" libraries out there and web apps. However, if you've ever actually developed these kinds of things, you'd know how much of a pain it is to get things working cross-browser. It can take a significant amount of resources sometimes.

Then you have crap libraries like prototype which just destroy and rape the global namespace in javascript and screw up all your other scripts.

OSNews is not a web application. It's a web site, it shouldn't require any javascript and I can't imagine why anyone would want a search engine indexing their web application. I don't even imagine it would be possible due to the dynamic nature.

The google web apps are very cpu and memory sucking. They are basically unusable on the thin clients at my uni where cpu resources are limited. Where as programs running on java/.net/native can at least use the shared libraries that are already loaded.

Programs don't need to run in your web browser. They need access to networked resources but these networked resources don't need to be supplied over http there are many other and better protocals depending on the application.

If 'the web' is going to continue to move forward we need to get the hell out of the browser.

No it's not.
There is nothing good about mono.

Just because you don't see anything good about it?

http://www.novell.com/success/volcker.html

It gives all those people looking into migrating to Linux from Windows more options and more negotiation power.

Of course not. Lets all stick to coding with C on Emacs, and pretend that the technology world stopped fifteen years ago.

I'm not a big fan of Microsoft. I often rail on them for being anti-competitive, manipulative, and flat-out bad for society. Even when they do good things, it's often just manipulation.

The jury is still out on .NET, and Silverlight has yet to really stand trial. They could flop. They could enslave the human race. Probably somewhere in between. But ignoring them won't make them go away, and a free software implementation would only limit Microsoft's control over the development ecosystem.

The worst thing that Microsoft can do with Silverlight is wait for it to catch on and then add exclusive functionality. I seriously doubt that Microsoft would break compatibility with older applications. In this case, developers wouldn't be able to take advantage of the new features without Microsoft's runtime and tools, but applications using the open portions of the spec would continue to run on Microsoft and non-Microsoft runtimes.

Following a third-party specification is like using BSD-licensed software. If it's open, then you are free to use it in modified or unmodified form, but it's quite possible that someone will create closed modifications. That doesn't directly impact your implementation, but it can make it less attractive in comparison.

The fact of the matter is that there isn't really a reciprocal license for software specifications. In general, there's nothing preventing anyone from using embrace-and-extend tactics at the specification level. For all we know, Apple will be the first to create undocumented extensions for Silverlight. Novell's implementation will likely include (documented) features that won't work on Windows without support from Microsoft.

It's important to consider the following hypothetical: if Microsoft does something so ridiculous with its Silverlight implementation that cross-platform compatibility becomes absolutely impossible, is Moonlight still useful within the free software ecosystem? I'd argue that even if Silverlight diverges hopelessly from Moonlight, the latter would still be a valuable development framework for the free software community.

At the end of the day, Microsoft can take their specification away from us, and they can take their development support away from us, but they can't take our code away from us. Free software is free software. Any code written for Mono or Moonlight will continue to run, and we will continue to develop and support these projects within our community.

I'll take a free software implementation of a third-party specification over any kind of proprietary blob. We may not control the specification (not that the community really controls any specification), but we control our own destiny. We don't rely on gifts from the gods.

Microsoft has come up with comparable technologies in the past. XMLHttpRequest was a Microsoft invention that gained popularity through free software projects such as Ruby on Rails. It's likely that innovation from the free software community will help shape the way developers use Silverlight. We can help protect our interest in a common specification by driving the technical agenda.

For example, it's likely that KDE4's Plasma framework will eventually include Moonlight support. This opens up all sorts of possibilities, including slick interfaces for everything from phones to entertainment centers. Moonlight is one of those technologies with the potential to bring the "Wow" and compel users to switch away from the evil empire.

Dealing with Microsoft standards isn't always pleasant, but it's usually necessary. Without DOC support in OpenOffice, Desktop Linux would be a dream instead of a revolution in slow motion. The same could be said for Samba. How many years did it take to achieve NTFS write support? The biggest barrier to Linux on the corporate desktop is Exchange support.

It's one thing to ignore Microsoft's desktop agenda and hope that users will be satisfied with the applications available for the free software platforms. But the web is a different story. Users won't tolerate a platform that can't access certain websites. Many more users can live without Photoshop than can live without Flash.

Ignoring Silverlight would be a huge mistake. At least we have open specifications and development support at the moment. We might as well get in on the ground level so that we don't have to play catch-up later if and when Silverlight achieves widespread adoption. The downside of supporting Silverlight is Microsoft runs away with the standard. The peril of not supporting Silverlight is Microsoft runs away with the web.

There is nothing good about mono

You don't have to use it, and you don't have to like it, but we have to have it in our back pocket. Otherwise we're setting ourselves up to be alienated by the evolution of the web, and there's nothing good about that.

Edited 2007-09-06 02:27

With Bill Gates and his Nepolonic complex (Judge Jacksons own words) I'm wondering if Microsoft is realising that making money rather than conqueroring everything that isn't bolted down is the the thing to do.

Right now the way Adobe treats its users makes Microsoft look like an angel - if Adobe really want to redeem themselves in my books they'll have to completely opensource their plugin and make Flash creation tools completely opensource and available so that things aren't locked into Windows and Mac.

JavaFX unfortunately isn't going anywhere soon because the IDE's are so terrible - what is it with companies who try to compete with Microsoft doing such a lousy job at actually providing tools to make their technology work? I wonder if spending a few hundred on the leaders product and actually analysing why the programme is so popular sounds like the sort of commonsense which companies don't use these days.

I can't see how Adobe would gain by opensourcing Flash creation tools. In fact, from a business perspective, that strikes me as a silly move. Opening the flash format so 3rd party organisations can write tools would be a more logical move.

Agreed about your comments on the terrible IDE's though. As much as I dislike 90% of the software MS produce, their IDE's are amongst the best (if not /the/ best) around.

Did they release the source code to Silverlight? I don't seem to see a link.

I'm not sure how it's accomplished, but one of the selling points of silverlight is that it's meant to be indexable. I know, at least, with 1.0 all of the scripts that drive it are just JS and the UI is in XAML (everything is text of some form).

Flash SWF files are indexable too. The problem with indexing Silverlight apps will be the same problem with indexing Flash or Ajax apps - the problem is that they are APPS.

Web pages are easy to index, and server side web apps that generate and deliver web pages, are still generating and delivering documents, all of which are easy to index. Apps need to run on the client before the content can even be downloaded, and even when it's downloaded, it might be in the form of some kind of random xml document fragment or even a proprietary binary format.

It's all cool though, since the strengths of these web application (not document) platforms is their ability to deliver rich content in a rich way (data as charts, video, etc.) - stuff that's already pretty hard to index anyway - and not just show text documents. That will probably always be done in HTML or PDF, or some other indexable document format - or maybe even static SWF and XAML documents.

Your post contains more buzzwords than I can handle in a day.

Now, can somebody explain me how open is Moonlight? It's something I haven't understood well so far...

Well, like OOXML, it is as open as the file-types that you chuck down the pipe along with it, such as Windows Media. Microsoft has had a habit of turning Windows Media support on and off for the Mac like a tap - just because they can, and just for the fun of doing it to the Mac and Apple:

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/05/25/silverlight-brings-windows-media-str...

They seem to be positioning this as some sort of multimedia thing, with HD support as well:

http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo/archive/2007/05/23/silverlight-excite...

You can bet your life DRM will be coming swiftly along with it given Microsoft's record with other things.

Should Silverlight take off in any way, shape or form in enough of a critical mass, watch Windows Media support disappear from the Mac again as quickly as a greyhound with the runs out of a trap. Since there is no Windows Media support for Linux (and if there is, they can soon change that), or anything else Microsoft chooses to throw down the pipe to Silverlight from Windows Servers, Moonlight would simply get squeezed into irrelevance. Microsoft have no problems with Moonlight at all ;-).

I disagree. They are trying to completely edge flash out of the market, and IMHO they are doing a great job.

1) Silverlight is more powerful then flash. Actionscript is ass, and .net is a great platform.

2) Silverlight is more performant then flash. I hate flash UIs, they are always sluggish and unresponsive. So far, all the silverlight I have tried is turning out to be the exact opposit.

3) Silverlight is delivers streaming media better then flash. HD content and far more advanced UIs is something alot of people have wanted for a long time.

If they restrict windows media playback, then flash becomes more attractive for content delivery, and they lose out. As much as DRM is a scary word to throw around, in this case there isn't much that would apply, beyond not allowing you to save the stream, which is standard in any streaming format.

As for no windows media on linux, first of all that is untrue.

"Currently offered plugins include Windows Media, MPEG2 and MPEG4, please contact us if you have other requests as more formats are continually being worked on. Needed muxing and demuxing elements comes as part of respective decoders and encoders."
http://www.fluendo.com/products.php?product=plugins

Secondly, if there is anyone that could get a broad windows media liscence onto linux, it is novell.

Silverlight is more powerful then flash. Actionscript is ass, and .net is a great platform.

Opinion. Designers would not agree with you.

Silverlight is more performant then flash. I hate flash UIs, they are always sluggish and unresponsive.

Have you got any evidence for this apart from your own opinion? I haven't seen any great performance increases with Silverlight over Flash - quite the contrary.

As much as DRM is a scary word to throw around, in this case there isn't much that would apply

Look at how they're using this and what they're talking about.

beyond not allowing you to save the stream, which is standard in any streaming format.

What's this supposed to mean?

As for no windows media on linux, first of all that is untrue.

Microsoft do not support Windows Media on Linux, and like the Mac, they can stop continued support and development for it any time they like.

Secondly, if there is anyone that could get a broad windows media liscence onto linux, it is novell.

But, they haven't - certainly not on terms that people in the open source community can use. The above also stands - Microsoft can stop its development any time they like by creating a new Windows Media version and withholding information as they've done.

Most of Mono uses the GPL v2 or the LGPL. It's not exactly free software, but it counts as shared source software.

(A few libraries use the MIT license.)

GPL, LGPL, MIT and so on are all free software licenses.

They are however not Shared Source.

The bulk of all of mono is MIT X11. It does not get any more available than that. All of the source code is always available through the Mono Project's Subversion repositories that have anonymous access as well as ViewCVS (web based) access.

It is not Shared Source as would be Microsoft's Project Rotor from some years back.

Actually, as I understand it, Silverlight didn't come about due to competition (Microsoft originally had no investment in this area), but due to a programmer's flash of inspiration and a bit of serendipity. AFAIK, it goes something like this:

A MS engineer noticed the small size of the .NET Compact Framework (on the order of a few hundred kilobytes), and decided it'd be cool to try to get it running in a browser. He made a prototype; and it impressed his friends, who told their friends, who eventually told someone with the ability to create new projects who was very impressed.

When MS added in a vector graphics engine (XAML/WPF, which they were working on for .NET 3.0) to this browser-based version of the .NET Compact Framework, they essentially had Flash, but designed by programmers for programmers.

"but due to a programmer's flash of inspiration"

He was inspired alright.

"but dues to a programmers Adobe Flash of inspiration", would be better

segedunum, even though we are "enemies" and at each other's throats at times :p, I happen to agree with you on this one.

Microsoft's Expression design tools are very impressive, I've played with the free trial versions, but they definitely should port their tools to the Mac. The core-code could be ported fairly easily (I think; I don't really know), but the UI would have to be redone because it uses WPF.

You seem to have no respect for MacBU (so we have to disagree again ), but I think they know that Mac well and should be expanded to handle this task.

Many designers do use Windows (after all, Adobe makes lots of money selling the Windows versions of its tools), but you are correct that a substantial number of them use Macs, and likely the majority of the best ones do.

I just read on Miguel's blog that the Mono team is working on Linux-based designer tools.
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Sep-05.html

That wouldn't help Mac designers, but there will be SilverMoonlight designer tools on non-Windows platforms.

Incidentally, there is lots of other interesting info in that particular blog entry, for anyone that's interested.

Edited 2007-09-05 23:44

I just read this ArsTechnica article on a Linux Silverlight design tool. http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/09/03/lunar-eclipse-...

And today's ArsTechnica Silverlight/Moonlight article indicates that it also works for Mac. But it's in a very primitive stage at the moment.

You seem to have no respect for MacBU (so we have to disagree again ), but I think they know that Mac well and should be expanded to handle this task.

I have more respect for Microsoft's Mac Business Unit than anything else, but the problem is, within the context of Microsoft as a whole they are allowed to do absolutely nothing that threatens, or is perceived to threaten, Windows in any way. I find that sad, because they could produce good stuff for the Mac.

seeing as it is all JS and XAML, I don't see why you can't use any of the standard Linux IDEs to develop for Moonlight. Also, I would think that monodevelop would support this soon, making developer tools from MS irrelevant.

Actually, Silverlight isn't programmed in JS... there's only a small bit of javascript wrapper code used to launch the plugin, a defect that will be solved by Silverlight 1.1.

However, Silverlight files can be compiled through a command-line interpreter, and all code is designed to be human-readable and human-writable; if you're masochistic, you don't even need an IDE, just Notepad.

seeing as it is all JS and XAML, I don't see why you can't use any of the standard Linux IDEs to develop for Moonlight.

I'm afraid you don't have any idea about developers, designers and tools.

Also, I would think that monodevelop would support this soon, making developer tools from MS irrelevant.

Yep. Already MonoDevelop can do everything that Visual Studio can do and more ;-).

Well, Mono's XAML designer is of course not ready for prime time and will not be for a long time.

The question is whether -we- the Linux Desktop community consider this an important thing to have, or whether we consider that we should let folks just use Macs and Windows boxes to do design.

I think we should have a complete competitive stack and make sure that Linux becomes a designer's paradise, but it will take us many years to get there. That does not mean we should not do it ;-)

Miguel.

The question is whether -we- the Linux Desktop community consider this an important thing to have, or whether we consider that we should let folks just use Macs and Windows boxes to do design.

Nope, you're right. It is important, but I suppose it's a question of how that is achieved and the path of least resistance for the open source world.

I'm just not convinced that cloning .Net and following Microsoft's technology initiatives is the best way forward to making the Linux desktop a good design platform to be honest.