The beta for Moonlight 2.0 is now available. It’s considered feature complete and is ready to test against Silverlight 2.0-minded websites. Microsoft has already gone and released Silverlight 3.0, but the Moonlight team is pretty confident that users will generally be able to access most if not all web content while Silverlight 3.0 is still young. Moonlight will ask to update itself to the beta automatically in Firefox, but new users can also download the plugin.
Linux users will always be playing catch up since it’s not Microsoft who’s developing the plugin.
Thank god Silverlight is not that popular yet.
At least the situation is better than with Flash, where nothing can be done but wait for Adobe to graciously upgrade their plugin (and fruitlessly wait for them to iron the bugs out).
As for always trailing Microsoft, it seems not to be a problem, as Microsoft itself have a tough time trailing themselves. Successive, incompatible versions of Silverlight pop up so fast that nobody on his or her right mind should put their money into an infrastructure that is sure to be obsolete by the time their project is done.
The absence of any Silverlight application of note makes me think that the worldwide consensus is to wait for Silverlight 17.3, expected… 2037? when the api is expected to be frozen. But it will be very, very good, let me tell you.
My surfing habits are pretty slim compared to most yet I do get around. I’ve never ever seen a website that uses silver light. It probably would be a useless website anyway, so nothing lost not having another flash creep/crap plugin on my computer, one is enough and even that one is toooooo much
On another note slightly off topic:
I wouldn’t use it anyway? Knowing how Microsoft(TM) love to bring in new things and then try to monopolise them; the world is littered with their casualties
Why would I want to help them create more?
Especially in LINUX(TM)
Gee can we have Netflix on Linux now?? Hmmm?
I just tried and Netflix seems to limit which operating systems it allows to use the service. I remember it didn’t work when I tried IE in Win7. It might work if you spoof Firefox’s user agent but I would have to look into that a bit later.
Any site I’ve been to that uses Silverlight requires an Microsoft OS. So having Moonlight installed did me no good.
They are really keeping up!
What will be interesting is how Novell intends to pay for additional CODEC support in Moonlight 3.0 when it is ready; h264, aac, and a few other CODECs – from the sounds of things, it might get a little expensive.
What I’d like to see are developer tools by Microsoft for Mac OS X and for Novell to create some developer tools of their own to run on Linux which can take advantage of Moonlight as well – it would be a terrible situation if Linux has Moonlight but all development ends up having to be done on a Windows workstation.
Edited 2009-08-18 11:20 UTC
I’m betting that Google releases its newly-acquired On2 codecs (VP6, VP7 and VP8) as open source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On2
If Google does this, then there would be no reason at all for websites to encode video and other rich content using anything other than these codecs in conjunction with web standards such as HTML5, SVG, animated PNG, SMIL and fast ECMAscript (using a JIT compiler on the client browser).
Websites could host content without having to pay royalties. Using the latest On2 codecs, considerable bandwith (and hence costs) would be saved. Browsers could embed decoders/players without having to pay royalties. Everyone on the planet could compose (and host, if they liked) rich media content without having to pay royalties.
No plug-ins required.
Everyone wins.
Edited 2009-08-18 11:48 UTC
I wonder how the Google buy out of On2 will effect JavaFX given that it is the video codec of choice for it – if they do opensource it then it’ll allow Sun to open source parts of JavaFX as well. Hopefully what’ll mean is a variety of options for developers; Silverlight/Moonlight, Flash, JavaFX or HTML5/Javascript. Competition benefiting not only the end user but developers as well.
Hopefully what’ll mean is a variety of options for developers; Silverlight/Moonlight, Flash, JavaFX or HTML5/Javascript. Competition benefiting not only the end user but developers as well.
It might benefit developers with capacious brains that are sheltered in nuke proof craniums. But you better stand clear of lesser ones, lest you be smeared in blood and brain tissue.
It would indeed be nice if Google release free the On2 codecs from patents. I think it would give HTML5’s video tag a lot more viability.
However, there would still be reason to use Flash and Silverlight, because the canvas isn’t nearly as performant as Silverlight or Flash.
Nor does HTML5 have a nice widget toolkit for writing RIAs – which is the whole point of Silverlight (and likely Flash as well).
Just because all you use Flash for is YouTube doesn’t mean video players are the only purpose for Flash and Silverlight 🙂
we FINALLY agree on something lemur.
The only good reason I know of to use something like silverlight, flash, or javaFX in the browser is as a media player, and <video> would make that go away.
The Moonlight 2.0 beta already has support for all of the codecs as well as hooks for codec plugins (like Vorbis, Theora and DIRAC).
Microsoft is paying for the licenses.
Microsoft are paying some third party to develop extensions to Eclipse for Silverlight development.
Novell will be adding support to MonoDevelop for Silverlight development (already started).
Edited 2009-08-18 12:55 UTC
Ok, I was unaware of that – I assumed that Novell was responsible for the CODEC licensing outside that of the CODECs owned by Microsoft themselves (WMV/WMA).
Cool – will this third party include the ability to encode videos into any of the CODECs supported by Moonlight or are we talking about the same crippled experience that Sun did to JavaFX developers on Solaris or the sad attempt by Adobe to create a Flash tool based upon Eclipse?
Edited 2009-08-18 13:29 UTC
are we talking about the same crippled experience that Sun did to JavaFX developers on Solaris or the sad attempt by Adobe to create a Flash tool based upon Eclipse?
You bet Microsoft’s freebie Eclipse plugin will be vastly inferior to their Visual Studio tools, for a variety of reasons (including that Visual Studio is a really good and mature tool, whatever my dislike for Microsoft may be, and that it brings Microsoft lots of both money and control — the latter much more importantly).
The editor support for XAML in studio is fantastic, but the GUI tools are pretty poor.
I’m not sure it will even contain media encoders. Visual Studio doesn’t, so I wouldn’t expect it from the Eclipse plugin that they are sponsoring the development of.
The Eclipse Tools for Silverlight project is located here:
http://www.eclipse4sl.org/
You may also want to check out the Silverlight Toolkit:
http://silverlight.codeplex.com/
The eclipse4sl project seems code-focused currently, though there is an Advanced Media Features bulletpoint on their roadmap. You can use any tool that outputs video/audio in your desired format. For formats not native to Silverlight ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189080(VS.95).aspx ), you’ll need to build/utilize a third-party codec for it.