I wish there was something significant in this article beyond MS's Ajax Library is dead - that's been pretty much understood by any seasoned .net guy for at least 2 years (aka, when jQuery support hit VS2008).
I wonder how jQuery and its continue improvement will effect things like Silverlight. I know I steer clients away from Silverlight and toward jQuery/Open standards whenever I can.
> that's been pretty much understood by any seasoned .net guy for at least 2 years
One would think, but you'd be surprised.
I've seen the defunct ASP.NET Ajax Library shown in presentations as recently as two months ago (and that's just what I personally know of). There's been a lot of confusion since MIX, because there was never an official announcement that the new library is dead and abandoned.
That's fine. Seemed like a good jumping off point for further thought/discussion.
Case in point - I wonder how much Silverlight is being negatively effected by MS's positive support of jQuery (a good thing in my mind)?
Seems inevitable it will follow a similar trajectory as the official ajax library, and let's face it users are not in any hurry to download a somewhat superfluous/unnecessary plug-in.
Personally, I'd be happy to see less gratuitous Silverlight usage in web apps. I think using it for anything you can accomplish with HTML/CSS/JavaScript is a mistake; modern-day Java applets and ActiveX controls.
On the other hand, Silverlight is the development model for Windows Phone 7. That alone ensures its survival for the foreseeable future.
Silverlight does excel when it comes to video too. Things like adaptive streaming, DRM[1], hardware acceleration, and fullscreen playback are things HTML5 falls pretty short on. For that matter, HD Silverlight video tends to run significantly smoother than Flash video on my machines. I've never seen any other streaming video that matches some of the full-HD adaptive streams like the Olympics and NFL have delivered with Silverlight.
So, I don't think it's reasonable to expect or hope that Silverlight is canceled. I just wish people would stop over-using it for things like LoB apps.
[1] Which, good or bad, is a requirement for most premium online video.
I missed that article, interesting, esp. the response.
I haven't followed Windows Phone 7 much - probably not a good sign as I'm a pure c# guy 99% of the time - but that is actually a smart/interesting way to leverage Silverlight. This is similar to Surface, which is (I believe) another variation on Windows Presentation Layer (everywhere).
Don't get me wrong, silverlight is compelling to any .net developer because it's pretty easy to pick up and get results fast. I just wish MS would make the web less muddy by NOT adding to the confusing with something that is more or less already handled by Flash. There just isn't any need for it in that space (the web versus win phone 7, surface, etc).
In the long run I'm sure you are right, it's not like Silverlight is going to be 'canceled', I just wish they would come to there senses about its use as a web plug-in.
I wonder how jQuery and its continue improvement will effect things like Silverlight. I know I steer clients away from Silverlight and toward jQuery/Open standards whenever I can.