
"With the latest releases of Opera, Google Chrome and Firefox continuing to push the boundaries of the web, the once-dominant Internet Explorer is looking less and less relevant every day. But we should expect Microsoft to go on the offensive at its upcoming MIX 2010 developer conference in Las Vegas, where, it has been speculated, the company will demonstrate the first beta builds of Internet Explorer 9 and possibly offer a preview release of the browser to developers. Several clues point to the possibility that the next version of IE will include broad support for HTML5 elements, vector graphics and emerging CSS standards. If Microsoft plays its cards right in Vegas, IE 9 could be the release that
helps IE get its groove back in the web browser game."
Member since:
2007-02-17
Actually, yes. Two OSes (Windows and OSX) does NOT qualify as "cross-platform". Sorry. How about the plethora of other platforms which can access the web, hmmmmm?
The entire set. Silverlight is just a re-write (in order to obscure) SVG, DOM2/DOM3 and ECMAScript.
Blah, blah, blah.
Why re-implement SVG? Just do the real thing, then it would be acceptable. Also implement DOM3, CSS3, HTML5, ECMAscript (correctly) with a decent JIT compiler, SMIL, etc. Why scrunge it all up and regurgitate it as Silverlight? What is the point?
If Microsoft want Silverlight/.NET to be a standard, then make it so. It is simple really ... make it so that anyone may implement, no roylaties, no patented proprietary bits (such as multimedia codecs, Winforms, ASP.NET or ADO.NET), no caveats about "non-commercial development" etc, etc. No threats. No talk of any need for "indemnity".
If Microsoft did that, then Silverlight/.NET can become a public-access web standard.
Not otherwise. No way.
People just aren't going to swallow that kind of malarky from Microsoft any more.