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.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-11-10
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.
Member since:2006-04-18
Member since:2006-08-29
Member since:2006-11-17
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.
Member since:2007-08-22
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.
Member since:2006-09-26
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.
Member since:2006-01-06
It's all about advertising and platform reach. Both companies want their platform to drive delivered ads, which will attract more developers, etc, etc.
Member since:2007-03-01
Member since:
2006-02-05
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)