If I were on the Silverlight team…

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I’d be a bit bummed that the Microsoft Surface computing team chose to use Adobe Flash for its Web site.

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

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53 thoughts on “If I were on the Silverlight team…”

  1. Silverlight isn’t out of Beta yet, so it is understandable why something aimed at a much larger audience than, let’s say Popfly, would not use Silverlight at this point in time.

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  2. Silverlight isn’t out of Beta yet, so it is understandable why something aimed at a much larger audience than, let’s say Popfly, would not use Silverlight at this point in time.

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  3. Microsoft wants this site to be seen. They probably figured a lot of people would not download a Silverlight player, application, viewer, whatever just to see this.

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  4. Microsoft wants this site to be seen. They probably figured a lot of people would not download a Silverlight player, application, viewer, whatever just to see this.

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  5. The fact that you can now use a WPF programming model in Silverlight, in Windows, and now on Surface is absolutely huge. My mind is racing at how cool that is going to be.

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  6. The fact that you can now use a WPF programming model in Silverlight, in Windows, and now on Surface is absolutely huge. My mind is racing at how cool that is going to be.

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  7. Silverlight is still in beta – they’re clearly just being practical. Is that so wrong?

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  9. You would also complain if they did and you’d have to install BETA software to watch the video.

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  10. You would also complain if they did and you’d have to install BETA software to watch the video.

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  11. I’ve basically got to browse the web with Flash disabled these days. IE 7 under Vista crashes so much (multiple times daily) due to Flash-related errors that I couldn’t deal with it any more. Sucks because it seems like half the web (and 99% of ads) are Flash-based these days

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  12. I’ve basically got to browse the web with Flash disabled these days. IE 7 under Vista crashes so much (multiple times daily) due to Flash-related errors that I couldn’t deal with it any more. Sucks because it seems like half the web (and 99% of ads) are Flash-based these days

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  13. Arjun: not wrong at all. PodTech uses Flash too. But it shows that Silverlight, despite being “better” technology might not win in the marketplace due to other concerns.

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  14. Arjun: not wrong at all. PodTech uses Flash too. But it shows that Silverlight, despite being “better” technology might not win in the marketplace due to other concerns.

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  15. Keith,

    I had the same problems with Flash on Vista, but that was just one of many problems I experienced with Vista so I went back to Firefox on XP. Flash isn’t perfect on this setup but it’s much better than Vista/IE7.

    Is there no way for Microsoft to setup both a Silverlight and Flash site? I can’t think of another product that’s more tailor made to show up the advantages of Silverlight. A big win for Adobe. A big loss for the Silverlight team, IMO.

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  16. Keith,

    I had the same problems with Flash on Vista, but that was just one of many problems I experienced with Vista so I went back to Firefox on XP. Flash isn’t perfect on this setup but it’s much better than Vista/IE7.

    Is there no way for Microsoft to setup both a Silverlight and Flash site? I can’t think of another product that’s more tailor made to show up the advantages of Silverlight. A big win for Adobe. A big loss for the Silverlight team, IMO.

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  17. Wow, that has to be the worst page I’ve visited for years. 20 seconds and still a black page. The throbber has stopped – what is going on? I guess from your post that flash is doing something… but there’s no feed back?

    monk.e.boy

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  18. Wow, that has to be the worst page I’ve visited for years. 20 seconds and still a black page. The throbber has stopped – what is going on? I guess from your post that flash is doing something… but there’s no feed back?

    monk.e.boy

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  20. Heh heh.. good point there…

    Since Silverlight is not platform independent (it doesnt run on Linux), i guess it made sense for MS to put it on Flash 😀

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  21. Heh heh.. good point there…

    Since Silverlight is not platform independent (it doesnt run on Linux), i guess it made sense for MS to put it on Flash 😀

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  22. This is getting stupid. No matter what Microsoft would do in this case Robert Scoble would always have something to throw at Silverlight in return. “They are forcing you to download BETA software”, “they are using Flash”, “they need a Flash backup page for their Silverlight BETA page”, … you name it. What they did makes the most sense, keeps my machine clean and I’m sure once Silverlight ships new sites will use it.

    Robert, you have to explain what “other concerns” are. iPhone is clearly a total failure at this point as it hasn’t shipped, Nokia is winning everywhere I look.

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  23. This is getting stupid. No matter what Microsoft would do in this case Robert Scoble would always have something to throw at Silverlight in return. “They are forcing you to download BETA software”, “they are using Flash”, “they need a Flash backup page for their Silverlight BETA page”, … you name it. What they did makes the most sense, keeps my machine clean and I’m sure once Silverlight ships new sites will use it.

    Robert, you have to explain what “other concerns” are. iPhone is clearly a total failure at this point as it hasn’t shipped, Nokia is winning everywhere I look.

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  24. “Arjun: not wrong at all. PodTech uses Flash too. But it shows that Silverlight, despite being “better” technology might not win in the marketplace due to other concerns.”

    No duh. The main “concern” is inertia.
    But at least let Silverlight get out of beta (and the CLR version is still in *alpha*) before expecting it to get wide use even within MS. MS is using it where appropriate (msdn.com, the Mix07 and popfly sites, etc), but Microsoft’s wide audience sites (e.g. xbox.com) will use Flash at least until Silverlight is actually released proper.

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  25. “Arjun: not wrong at all. PodTech uses Flash too. But it shows that Silverlight, despite being “better” technology might not win in the marketplace due to other concerns.”

    No duh. The main “concern” is inertia.
    But at least let Silverlight get out of beta (and the CLR version is still in *alpha*) before expecting it to get wide use even within MS. MS is using it where appropriate (msdn.com, the Mix07 and popfly sites, etc), but Microsoft’s wide audience sites (e.g. xbox.com) will use Flash at least until Silverlight is actually released proper.

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  26. Pingback: Microsoft Surface: Rich Internet Appliance « SmoothSpan Blog

  27. “If I were on the Silverlight team…
    I’d be a bit bummed that the Microsoft Surface computing team chose to use Adobe Flash for its Web site.”

    Why? You think I’d download that silverlight piece of junk to view a single video?

    And how would I do so on a Mac? Why?

    Absolutely 100% Microsoft-free since 2005 and never going back.

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  28. “If I were on the Silverlight team…
    I’d be a bit bummed that the Microsoft Surface computing team chose to use Adobe Flash for its Web site.”

    Why? You think I’d download that silverlight piece of junk to view a single video?

    And how would I do so on a Mac? Why?

    Absolutely 100% Microsoft-free since 2005 and never going back.

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  29. Robert – Have you fogotten that Silverlight is still in beta? This seems like a pretty petty gripe. I doubt the Silverlight team is disappointed in any way. I bet they’re looking forward to having sites like this use Silverlight when it is released and surprise users with the better video quality than Flash. But when it’s ready.

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  30. Robert – Have you fogotten that Silverlight is still in beta? This seems like a pretty petty gripe. I doubt the Silverlight team is disappointed in any way. I bet they’re looking forward to having sites like this use Silverlight when it is released and surprise users with the better video quality than Flash. But when it’s ready.

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  31. Regarding the Silverlight on Linux comments…how many of you are using Flash on Linux? How many of you can honestly say that Flash on Linux is a good user experience? Which Linux distributions does Flash work on at all? Which does it work well on? What is the installation experience like?

    I keep hearing the griping about the current lack of a Silverlight runtime for Linux but have to wonder whether those doing the complaining are actually using Flash on Linux. I doubt many are.

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  32. Regarding the Silverlight on Linux comments…how many of you are using Flash on Linux? How many of you can honestly say that Flash on Linux is a good user experience? Which Linux distributions does Flash work on at all? Which does it work well on? What is the installation experience like?

    I keep hearing the griping about the current lack of a Silverlight runtime for Linux but have to wonder whether those doing the complaining are actually using Flash on Linux. I doubt many are.

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  35. I had that exact same thought when I saw the website this morning. Beta software or not, it’s a pretty strong statement when Microsoft is forced to use its competitor’s application.

    Sure, Silverlight’s in beta and not that many people are using it right now, so it’s understandable they’d use Flash. But it definitely amused me, and I’m sure a few people at Adobe are amused as well….

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  36. I had that exact same thought when I saw the website this morning. Beta software or not, it’s a pretty strong statement when Microsoft is forced to use its competitor’s application.

    Sure, Silverlight’s in beta and not that many people are using it right now, so it’s understandable they’d use Flash. But it definitely amused me, and I’m sure a few people at Adobe are amused as well….

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  37. It’s because Microsoft realizes that it’s kind of hard to evangelize to Linux users if they can’t actually see any of your content. So Silverlight is a non-starter…which is really funny when you think about it.

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  38. It’s because Microsoft realizes that it’s kind of hard to evangelize to Linux users if they can’t actually see any of your content. So Silverlight is a non-starter…which is really funny when you think about it.

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  39. Notaprguy: Flash on Linux right here. Runs just fine. I’m running Firefox on Ubuntu and view Flash content all the time.

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  40. Notaprguy: Flash on Linux right here. Runs just fine. I’m running Firefox on Ubuntu and view Flash content all the time.

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  45. But the majority of people using Linux are using it as server and not as a client. The market for running Silverlight on Linux is even smaller than the Mac market and Silverlight is a client technology not a server one. Really for market coverage Silverlight is cross platform. Anyway I think the Mono guys with Moonlight are doing something on Linux.

    I would expect that once Silverlight 1.0 ships that more people, including Microsoft will use Silverlight in preference to Flash. This seems a storm in a teacup discussion.

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  46. But the majority of people using Linux are using it as server and not as a client. The market for running Silverlight on Linux is even smaller than the Mac market and Silverlight is a client technology not a server one. Really for market coverage Silverlight is cross platform. Anyway I think the Mono guys with Moonlight are doing something on Linux.

    I would expect that once Silverlight 1.0 ships that more people, including Microsoft will use Silverlight in preference to Flash. This seems a storm in a teacup discussion.

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  47. Well, it looks like the era of “eating the dog food” has fallen into the “Building 7 Vortex”.

    It will be interesting to watch that homepage for any changes from Flash/Flex to Silverlight.

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  48. Well, it looks like the era of “eating the dog food” has fallen into the “Building 7 Vortex”.

    It will be interesting to watch that homepage for any changes from Flash/Flex to Silverlight.

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  49. It could also indicate Microsoft openness in accepting other technologies rather than trying to always think that their’s is the best.

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  50. It could also indicate Microsoft openness in accepting other technologies rather than trying to always think that their’s is the best.

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  52. about this post – that’s not so bad – talk about bad – our SMSGR group (the training/readiness group inside microsoft) just pissed away $$$$$$$ in dollars, time, and resources developing a Flash UI for MSFT internal training. I can see some dimwitted marketing group using flash forthe surface page, but what SMSGR did is idiotic. The managment should be called on the table for that.

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  53. about this post – that’s not so bad – talk about bad – our SMSGR group (the training/readiness group inside microsoft) just pissed away $$$$$$$ in dollars, time, and resources developing a Flash UI for MSFT internal training. I can see some dimwitted marketing group using flash forthe surface page, but what SMSGR did is idiotic. The managment should be called on the table for that.

    Like

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