Submitted by Apparantly, Silverlight is doing well. It was announced [.wmv] at a MIX ’08 keynote that Silverlight is being installed on internet users’ machines at a rate of 1.5 million per day. Silverlight is being used in places like Netflix and to webcast over 3000 hours of the 2008 Olympic Games.
Call me skeptic, but I find that figure very hard to believe. In a month they would reach est. half a billion downloads, someone at the PR department should be fired (or get a raise).
Don’t look now, but I think your decimal point just jumped the track. 😉
1.5E06 * 30 = 45E06
I believe that’s about in line with what Firefox 1.0 got.
Your math is way off. 1.5 x 30 = 45, which is 455 million downloads short of half a billion.
The number itself may be way off, but the decimal point was only one off.
I can believe it. I myself beta test so I have downloaded it everytime I wipe my computer which is at very least once a week now multiply that by all of the others that test and then add in everyone else and its right in range.
Keep in mind that MS has quite a reach. It can put Silverlight on a lot of commonly-used pages (msn.com, live.com, microsoft.com, advertising, and third-party deals such as Netflix and Facebook) and generate traffic to Silverlight without too much trouble. Many users will install anything that has Microsoft’s signature on it. Point is, the downloads don’t need to come from one particular site; similarly, the phenomenon we may be witnessing may have to do with people owning multiple machines and accessing the same sites (desktop and laptop).
Doesn’t Silverlight come with the standard updates retrieved from Windows/Microsoft update? If so 1,5 million downloads a day is barely an accomplishment as it gets pushed to the user.
Are there any good implementations of Silverlight yet and is there an advantage for the user compared to Flash so far?
it isn’t getting pushed over windows update yet.
Right now, we are at 1.0, which is javascript only and with no user controls (if you want a textbox, you build it from scratch). What 1.0 has going for it over flash is that it will deliver hi-def video out of the box, and it does it well.
Most people I know are waiting for 2.0 (later this year, beta 1 just came out for it). 2.0 will have more of the framework, use any .net language, and have user controls. This will make silverlight very compelling for doing rich applications interfaces for the web, which is something flash is used for, but wasn’t really designed to do.
IMO it will take 3.0 or 4.0 before we have a real flash killer, simply because while the tools for developers are already way beyond what flash offers, the tools for designers are nowhere near there yet. (Same goes for WPF)
How does Flash not deliver hi-def video out of the box, it has h.264 already. And since Flash automatically updates, more Flash users have support for it than people with Silverlight?
Of course, the Internet already had hi-def video without the need of these shims…
Can Flash adjust video quality on the fly based on your connection speed? Silverlight can. It is a great feature that they demonstrated.
One more thing — servers can be set to send only a few seconds of video in advance of your current ‘position’ in the stream and will stop sending the data if connection breaks. This can save a lot of bandwidth.
Just asking.
You can do that in php without installing extra stuff on the client unless I didn’t understand.
And I’ll be happy never to see that “feature” in the wild.
If a server’s too slow I don’t want it to downgrade me to stamp-sized video. I’ll just pause the video, read something else and come back 5 mins later. And don’t tell me that doesn’t work with live events. It does, you just get gradually de-live-d =). Better you see the end of the 100m 10sec later than the rest of the world, instead of viewing it at 128×32 pixels.
Another “feature” I hate. One of the great things about Flash is that you can save the vids.
Note to movie comps: Allowing me to save trailers to hd is not the first step in a chain of events that will lead to me downloading all your movies and stealing cars to finance my crack addiction (we know those two go hand in hand).
If Google goes bankrupt over Youtube’s bandwidth costs, it’s certainly not because of the overhead of dropped connections.
“it isn’t getting pushed over windows update yet. ”
It most certainly *is* being pushed with Windows update…
…as an optional update. It is not selected by default.
It is slightly worse on Vista however, I have found many useful driver updates being pushed out as optional updates, which could lead people into the habit of just selecting all the optionals.
Using flash or silversight for streaming video is one of the most stupid things I can think of. And still there are many flash videos on the web.
What is driving this trend? Stupidity? Money (do Adobe or Microsoft pay them)? Or is it just the trend driving the trend (the last cool thing)?
I believe we would all be better of if flash didn’t support video. Don’t provide the stupid web designers with weapons, or they’ll use it.
I agree. And to answer your question – I think it the ‘trend driving the trend’, though for Adobe the name helps too – marketeers love having a flashy anything to try to draw clients with.
I think what drove the video Flash trend is that it just worked. Before Flash, any time you wanted to watch a video on the web, it was a crapshoot if you had the right players and codecs.
You needed to have Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, and QuickTime Player installed. And then you had to have more codecs like DivX installed. And even then, there was about a 50% chance the video wouldn’t work.
On the other hand, everyone has Flash, they click play, and the video shows up and works. YouTube showed most people the value in this, and it quickly caught on.
You aren’t kidding about the reliability. I always find it annoying that a lot of Y! news videos don’t work in my browser (Opera 9 on Windows) due to the WMP usage. But the flash advertisement video before the newsclip video works 100% of the time.
They use Flash video because it just works, and it just works everywhere and in every browser. MS doesn’t have anywhere near the level of cross-platform reliability that Flash has.
It does *not* work everywhere.
It works (not even always) where there is a flash player.
Some OSes don’t have that, some have that disabled or admin forbids installing it.
On my laptop having 3 times the same ad on a page (as is stupidly done too much) just sucks up the cpu and the battery.
You know, I almost included a preemptive snarky comment about how someone was going to use the fact that Flash doesn’t work 100% of the time (only 99.9%) as an argument against me.
Flash video works on everything from Nokia N810s to Opera on windows, to every linux box that I use. That’s not everywhere, but its a much higher percentage of everywhere than silverlight (which works on some windows boxes, with most browsers, mac osx, and someday might maybe work in other places too). And its more places than the average wmp embed.
Although Microsofts’s WMP-plugin doesn’t officially support Opera(and don’t think the installer for it regonizes Opera) it does work very well with Opera. I’ve had no trouble with it.
You can find it here: http://port25.technet.com/archive/2007/04/16/windows-media-player-p…
And that is just another thing to install on top of codecs. Flash is proprietary blob that is not found on most distro without hacking proprietary repos. This is one of the most painful things to install on linux with proprietary drivers and pdf reader.
On the other hand, mpeg is perfectly supported out of the box by most browsers.
Everybody has flash now because of web designers who use flash.
It’s all about advertising and platform reach. Both companies want their platform to drive delivered ads, which will attract more developers, etc, etc.
It has been pushed to both my Vista machine and two XP ones.
However, I’ve failed to have it actually work under Firefox yet.
Edited 2008-03-11 13:22 UTC
Question : what can you do with silverlight that can’t be done with java?
I mean in term of results. I know you can use several languages, but what’s the point?
Silverlight 2 beta is currently around 4.5 MB in size and has a really nice programming model (markup + language of your choice /JavaScript, IronRuby, IronPython, VB, C#, etc/, plus all the goodies like vector GUI elements, animations, video streaming, etc). It is fast too.
Look at my previous post about some other really nice things related to video streaming.
Not sure if you can do all that with Java, so easily, just by installing such a small plugin?
Just take a look at JavaFX… that’s what Java is trying to offer as an alternative to flash and silverlight (instead of the complete Java package)… The point is basically small download size, better performance than standard java applet that loads the entire VM and more direct controls for usual stuff web devs need… not sure about the video support planned for JavaFX, but they probably will work with h264 or something similar if they want to compete with Flash and Silverlight.
…I don’t think Sun would be working on this if standard Java was as satisfactory answer to what developers want and end-users expect.
What most people don’t seem to get, is that JavaFX isn’t even in the same market as Flash and SilverLight. It’s much more appropriate to compare JavaFX with XAML or Flex (just the markup language, not the action script, runtime environment, multimedia support or animation).
http://www.scruffles.net/blog/2007/05/javafx-in-perspective.html
Video (and video standards, for example). Flash and Silverlight are reasonably good proof that desktop Java has failed.
I’ve downloaded Silverlight maybe five times, all for the same box. I only wanted it so that Microsoft’s web site could stop bugging me about it. Doesn’t seem to have clicked with their site that I’ve got it installed.
I agree, i must have installed it about five times on my mac, windows xp and vista computer, yet the sites (technet) all state that i need to have the plug in installed, it’s really annoying.
I’ve yet to encounter any site that uses silverlight outside of microsoft in my normal browsing. Really unless Youtube or something switches I won’t bother ever installing it. I still don’t see the point of it. In the beginning, Flash was used for all sorts of things, and people loved to build websites completely in flash, and offer all sorts of crazy animation gimicks.
Now, people have mostly realized that Flash is annoying, presents barriers to accessibility, and breaks the standard behaviour of the web. So Flash is now mostly relegated to the odd advertisement, video sites, and some flashy promo sites like for movies.
For those applications, Silverlight only has disadvantages. They’re not complex, so actionscript is just fine to make those kind of sites. And everyone has Flash installed, so going with Silverlight would be stupid.
I keep hearing about these web applications that people will build because of the better programming model in Silverlight (2.0 at least), but I really don’t buy it. Who exactly is going to make web applications? AJAX is showing us that we don’t need a runtime besideds HTML and JS to make complex web applications. If Gmail or google docs was written in some Flash knockoff I wouldn’t bother with it. The whole point is that it’s lightweight. Banks don’t need anything more complex either.. And the odd web app that I come across is scientific stuff that’s all Java. No particular use for Silverlight there either.
Really aside from some custom developed internal stuff, I don’t see many people jumping on the bandwagon.
And personally, I will do everything I can to prevent the spread of Silverlight. I won’t download it, and will complain to every website that uses it (so far, none). You might think I’m being a zealot, but I’m doing it purely for my own protection in the future. Flash was pretty crappy about Linux support. Only now are they putting some resources into making sure the Linux plugin works properly. It’s not great, but I can live with it. Microsoft will never release a Silverlight plugin for Linux, so we’re dependent on stuff like Moonlight, which is on shaky legal ground. If Silverlight was ever big and important, Microsoft could attack Moonlight to an extend that most distro’s would refuse to ship it. Even if they can’t win in the end, it would be years and years of uncertainty.
Letting a competing OS maker control an important part of internet multimedia is just a terrible idea. I would much rather go with Adobe or Sun.
Youtube is owned by Google. Given that Google and Microsoft are at war in the Web 2.0 space, I don’t think you have anything to fear about them changing to Silverlight.
Yeah, I meant any big site that uses Flash for video clips, including the big news networks.
You can thank that “competing OS maker” for forcing Adobe to finally get off of their collective arses and make a Linux port of Flash that actually works. Microsoft was instrumental in helping the Mono team write Moonlight, so how could they be on shaky legal ground?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_%28runtime%29#Micros…
Sure there are covenants in the contract, but any business would do that as a CYA measure.
Bull. Flash worked on Linux before Silverlight was even announced. Not saying it’s perfect, but I doubt Microsoft had anything to do with it.
Microsoft helping Novell means nothing legally.
Right, from that source, there is a covenant not to sue, which can be retracted at any time. And it only covers Novell customers. Awesome, that sure sounds like something that can be relied on.
“Microsoft will never release a Silverlight plugin for Linux, so we’re dependent on stuff like Moonlight, which is on shaky legal ground.”
You have shown your ignorance by this statement. Moonlight is a collaboration between Novell and Microsoft. It is fully legal because both Microsoft and Novell have agreed to co develop moonlight in their Linux lab. People like you spreading FUD is what turns off so many people to Linux.
Sure, but if Microsoft was actually serious about supporting Silverlight on Linux, they would release Silverlight on Linux with proper branding and actually advertise that fact on their website.
There is absolutely no mention by Microsoft on their Silverlight site that it supports Linux or that Linux even exists as a platform. http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/installationFiles.as…
Not even a “We are working on a Linux version of Silverlight with Novell” or “The Moonlight project is an unoffical version of Silverlight for Linux” or similar. If they were serious about supporting Silverlight on Linux they wouldn’t hide it.
So? That says nothing about its legality. The covenant ( http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx ) says that Microsoft will not sue Moonlight users/distributors for now, but there explicit provision for Microsoft to discontinue this protection in the future. Sorry, but that’s not good enough for me.
Microsoft has an active interest in hurting Linux adoption, and I wouldn’t just blindly trust them not to do so in the future (I would certainly do it if I was Microsoft). Adobe has no such reason, so I am much more inclined to take their efforts at face value.
Not my job to market Linux.
Makes little sense. Why should they expend the effort when collaboration with Novell produces the same result? And Novell can advertise it to ITS customers.
Hey, don’t get me wrong, I like Silverlight. I prefer it over Flash, but that’s a preference, and lets leave it at that.
BUT 1.5 Million, how many of those are people redownloading over and over. Because:
1) You have version 1 installed and X Site asks for 1.1
2) You have version installed and requires you to upgrade and it gives you error after downloading. Try it a couple of times and learn that you need to manually uninstall it FIRST.
I can say I’ve had a couple of times on some PCs that I downloaded it 3-4 times just to get it to work because of the problems I had with it. Most of the time it works.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many are getting the same problem and the actual download of REAL people is 500,000-800,000 per day.
That may be true, but so what? It is still a nice number.
During MIX08 they said Silverlight gets around 1.5 M downloads per day and Flash gets around 12M/day.
I think Silverlight is doing well considering that Silverlight 2 is not even finished yet (it is v.2.0 that most developers are ‘waiting’ for).
“Silverlight is being used in places like Netflix”
I wish this were true, Linux would have a chance at viewing netflix. Unfortunately Silverlight has only been experimented and demonstrated, NOTHING has ever been used – released to the public.
They are waiting for Silverlight 2.0. The beta was released at MIX08. Netflix will probably switch to Silverlight some time around September.
For more details: http://community.netflix.com/forum/topic/show?id=1993323%3ATopi…
You can install it, try it and junk it. That’s reality.
They are probably counting in bites. PR is all it is.
I don’t think so. They also said that Flash gets around 12 M downloads/day.
Umm, this isn’t surprising news, especially when; while visiting some web sites from Microsoft one gets a small popup showing me that one can get a “better experience” on that site when one installs Silverlight 1.0. Gee, I wonder how many people will blindly agree and download the software at that point. Come on Microsoft, quit padding your download numbers with pathetic tricks like this and then touting those very same numbers as somehow a metric of how successful the new software is or how much people love it! Give me a break!
To screw me as a web user. Now I’ll be required to jump through more hoops to get at some info because some developer has a fetish for the latest greatest piece of useless tech.
Can we just stick to standards please, life is just so much simpler and less stressful.
True support for CSS, Javascript/THE DOM, Ajax, SVG, PNG, and APNG, is all we need to do anything web wise!
Hehe, all we need is “just” – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ….. what other technologies do we need? Don’t get me wrong – I know what the web offers – you can rather decently run your apps in cross-platform way. But that does not mean there is anything genuine about it. It is crapload of layers over layers, added to patch one single deficiency – web was not meant for the apps from the beginning.
Non awailability of Flash or Silverlight for particular platforms might be a problem, but that does not mean, those technologies are wrong.
I come from the land of REBOL. REBOL 3, in half a year, will be “third to the game”, with complete app platform in less than 1MB. Having it as a plug-in, getting real-time UI apps in browser, will make even AJAX attempts still slower. I always try to look at various modern js libraries on the net, and have to ask myself – how is that one single lib is half the size of REBOL? How is that one single grid widget is ditto, and still under par with REBOL’s one? How is that Sun’s Lively javascript desktop attempt at browser desktop is just another showcase of how particular technologies can degrade performance of today’s PCs?
There is no silver bullet. But let’s just not pretend that cross-platform web technologies are there already. They are not yet.
Cheers,
Petr
Don’t count on Silverlight killing Flash anytime soon.
Adobe announced plans to extend the Flash platform in order support multiple languages (Java, Python, C, C++, Ruby, and probably Mono/.NET too), therefore no longer limiting people to only ActionScript.
The latest Flash Player 9 update supports H.264 and HE-AAC, which brings streaming video and audio formats up to par with Silverlight.
If Silverlight manages to beat Flash in the long-term it will most likely be because of monopolistic practices and not technical superiority.
Edited 2008-03-12 22:18 UTC
Silverlight has it’s own updating mechanism, you can set it not to update or autoupdate, very much like flash lets you know when there is updates. There is no need for Microsoft Update or Windows update, it’s a browser component not an OS one..
Microsoft isn’t requiring this as a Windows or Microsoft Update. It’s optional..
Of course the commenter above me, is defending Flash but Flash leaves me cold compared to what the Dot Net framework offers in terms of services that are built into Silverlight. You can defend away and say it’s coming but as far as web plug-in/runtimes, Flash has nothing like Silverlight’s .NET framework at the moment..
And unlike the previous commenter, Silverlight Video uses the VC-1 Codec, and honestly it has several advantages for decoding and quality of encoded materials. Look it up and do a comparision (don’t listen to the marketing hype).
Plus Microsoft announced that Silverlight supported intelligent streaming of Media something that most Flash video on the web doesn’t support. Silverlight on Linux is called Moonlight.
Edited 2008-03-13 03:23 UTC
Good one Microsoft – let’s flood the world with more garbageware like you did with Windows. Silverlight is another attempt to crush the competition. How two faced of them: attempt to appeal to the SFLC with their “Open Specification Promise” and then turn around and produce proprietary, closed trash like Silverlight.
And how does that differ from Adobe Flash, exactly?
It doesn’t differ – it’s still proprietary. What angers me about this is Microsoft is flooding the market with something that limits functionality unless you use Microsoft products. They do this on purpose to force vendor lock-in.
The Library of Congress deal with Microsoft will be a real travesty when Microsoft loses interest in Silverlight or changes the data formats, and the LOC is left holding the bag. Similar to all the Office customers who will be screwed when they create documents in a format which isn’t open and will be obsolete when the software eventually is forced into obsolescence by the vendor – all in the name of money.
A bit of a rant, yes, but it’s the idea of what this new technology represents that angers me: the “new” technology is a tool Microsoft will use to manipulate customers, nothing more. The actual technology itself is irrelevant.
I’ve said enough…probably too much already!
Silverlight runs on both Windows and Mac OS X. Microsoft has a partnership with Novell to help them produce a version for Linux. Sorry, but your “vendor lock-in” comment rings a little hollow.
XAML isn’t exactly a “closed document format”. It’s XML. Novell’s open source developers have an agreement with Microsoft and access to the specification and are actively building the technology for Linux. See http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight. This has a precedent with the Mono project. So, this notion that somebody is going to get “screwed” for using Silverlight technology is pure hyperbole and FUD.
Why are you “angry”? Ultimately, it will be customers that decide the success or failure of this technology, not you or me. Take it easy. Go in your own direction, if you don’t like it. But don’t fault customers who make their own choices.