Silverlight!

[Vitoc]

I'm currently learning Silverlight.  If you haven't seen it yet, you will.  I honestly believe it will bury Flash when people realize what it's capable of. ;)

It uses a very lightweight version of the .NET framework on the client side, in browser, and allows developers to use .NET to do graphical stuff in the client's browser.  It is truly cross-platform as well.  In plain English, it's something .NET web developers have been dreaming of for years, and it's finally here.

Here's an example of it provided by Microsoft:
http://www.tafiti.com

It will prompt you to install Silverlight if you haven't already, but it's only 4 megs in size and installs very quickly.

[The Crazy Animal]

I can't say I'm very impressed but I've lost alot of the wow factor over the years.

[Vitoc]

I can't say I'm very impressed but I've lost alot of the wow factor over the years.

Way to rain on my parade dood!

j/k

Yeah, to most people it's "just a competitor to flash" and the benefits aren't immediately apparent.  It's going to take some time  before its true benefits are fully realized.

[The Crazy Animal]

Grin I don't rain I pee.

Its just that I've done a lot of multimedia work with flash and flash video and unless they can match the proformance and compression that flash offers to that its not going to get the marketshare that it will need to be a true competitor. Since Flash these days is used for much more then just web development.

For example I did a 12 second animation in after effects that is 400mb in size after it was compressed with flash its only 1.8mb. Now I can take that FLV file and bring it directly into a flash swf project and both create and fully intergrate the app around that video. That might not be that impressive but the latest project that we're kicking out at work is a Flash DVD with 52 2-9 minute HD quality videos on it we're talking 100gb of video stuffed down into less than 4.7 gb leaving enough space for text and other graphical data and the flash app.

So I just think Silverlight has its work cut out for it if it wants to compete on the same level.

[Grox]

I just installed this yesterday, and unfortunately, I can't get it to work.  it's fully installed and says it's up to date, but the page where it's supposed to be operating from keeps showing me the link to go install it.  I tried closing browser, hard refresh, total reboot, re-installed 3x, all in varying orders, and all to no avail. even tried it without a firewall.   I can get flash programs to work just fine, but this one just won't light up.   I am wondering if it is possibly due to my connection being on a satellite dish through what they call a shadow wall, or something.  I don't have my own specific IP, but I can get yahoo im and windows live messenger to work, and can telnet in and out without problem.  And as I said, I can get flash programs to work just fine.  This one won't however, for whatever reason.   Any ideas?

[Vitoc]

I just installed this yesterday, and unfortunately, I can't get it to work.  it's fully installed and says it's up to date, but the page where it's supposed to be operating from keeps showing me the link to go install it.  I tried closing browser, hard refresh, total reboot, re-installed 3x, all in varying orders, and all to no avail. even tried it without a firewall.   I can get flash programs to work just fine, but this one just won't light up.   I am wondering if it is possibly due to my connection being on a satellite dish through what they call a shadow wall, or something.  I don't have my own specific IP, but I can get yahoo im and windows live messenger to work, and can telnet in and out without problem.  And as I said, I can get flash programs to work just fine.  This one won't however, for whatever reason.   Any ideas?

I'll bet you probably have version 1.0 installed.  Lots of pages require 1.1, which is an alpha release.

If you see the "Install Silverlight" thing when you view our page then you'll need version 1.1:
http://greatermud.com/SLTest.aspx

You can get version 1.1 here, but you will have to uninstall v1.0 first (yes this is retarded):
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/LicenseWinDev.aspx

Fyi, Microsoft isn't going to release v1.1, instead they've decided the new features will be released in version 2.0 which has a beta scheduled to be released "before March 5th."

[The Crazy Animal]

I get the "Install Silverlight"    So I installed the thing..  then the damn install program wouldnt close on my computer I had to reboot to get it to go away.

  It would be really ironic if Microsofts Product Silverlight doesn't work with Microsoft's Product Windows Vista. 

  Although It would not surprise me that much.

I'm thinking its just you it works on my copy of vista..... try uninstalling it and re-installing it.

[schema]

After the server move i tried the silverlight page and got the following errors. I just thought i would let you know.

IE 7

FF 2

[Vitoc]

The reason people can't view this page properly anymore is it was written specifically for Silverlight 1.1 which Microsoft shit-canned at the last minute and went with 2.0 instead.  To make matters worse, you can't find the Silverlight 1.1 download *anywhere* which has rendered our Silverlight page completely unusable for pretty much everyone except for the few people in the world who installed 1.1 when it was available.

I'm planning on porting it to 2.0 in the not too distant future, so until then consider this page defunct.

[El_Jefe]

Flash is so unimpressive and runs like crap on many computers causing reboots and blue screens even on high end gaming machines.

be nice for something else.

silverlight eh? yeah i have it.  looked decent but didnt know it was a flash alternative. 

[The Crazy Animal]

Flash is so unimpressive and runs like crap on many computers causing reboots and blue screens even on high end gaming machines.

be nice for something else.

silverlight eh? yeah i have it.  looked decent but didnt know it was a flash alternative. 

Flash only does that if its poorly coded... Same with any other lang. Silverlight isn't really an alternative but it overlaps in some important web/IT areas that makes it look like one.

[Vitoc]

Flash only does that if its poorly coded... Same with any other lang. Silverlight isn't really an alternative but it overlaps in some important web/IT areas that makes it look like one.

For the sake of discussion, how is it not an alternative to flash?

With Flash you have swf files which are sent to the client and contain all the logic necessary to be rendered on the client using the Shockwave player (or whatever it's called) in your browser.

With Silverlight you also have files which are sent to the client and contain all the logic necessary to be rendered on the clietn using the Silverlight framework in your browser.

They are extremely similar in their capabilities and in their functionality.  Both focus on presentation while allowing developers to build more complex data-driven applications.  The benefit to Silverlight is you can write applications with it in C# using components from the .NET framework that are provided in Silverlight.

I contend it is definitely an alternative, a very attractive one IMO, and you will be seeing a lot more of it in the next few years as more web development shops adopt it.

[El_Jefe]

You should make a megamud webbrowser plug in in silverlight that interfaces more deeply with gmud.

moan.

how pimp.

[Vitoc]

You should make a megamud webbrowser plug in in silverlight that interfaces more deeply with gmud.

moan.

how pimp.

That's the direction I was going with this.  I was going to have all the scripting logic built into the server itself, and have this Silverlight app so people can tweak their settings in a web page.  The best part about this is people wouldn't need to run MegaMUD on their home computers 24/7.  They'd still have the ability to connect with Mega or some other terminal program via telnet, but it wouldn't be a requirement anymore.

[The Crazy Animal]

For the sake of discussion, how is it not an alternative to flash?

With Flash you have swf files which are sent to the client and contain all the logic necessary to be rendered on the client using the Shockwave player (or whatever it's called) in your browser.

With Silverlight you also have files which are sent to the client and contain all the logic necessary to be rendered on the clietn using the Silverlight framework in your browser.

They are extremely similar in their capabilities and in their functionality.  Both focus on presentation while allowing developers to build more complex data-driven applications.  The benefit to Silverlight is you can write applications with it in C# using components from the .NET framework that are provided in Silverlight.

I contend it is definitely an alternative, a very attractive one IMO, and you will be seeing a lot more of it in the next few years as more web development shops adopt it.

Flash is now used to make dvd menus....  I also use SWF files compiled from photo programs to take my incremental still photography shots 1 frame per second and then turn them into avi files for later editing in video programs... So that's how in short... I also use flash to edit pictures sometimes especially if I want to turn a jpg into a vector graphics. Flash was built as a multimedia based development suite and then they added the data features afterwards... Silverlight is being built in the opposite way data and code first... It will take them a while to become full alternatives so really thats what I mean...