Tag Archives: silverlight

Windows Mobile 7 Series

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Calling all Silverlight developers.

If you are a .NET developer today your skills and much of your code will move forward. If you are Silverlight or XNA developer today you’re gonna be really happy.

I am shit-hot excited about Windows Mobile 7 Series. I think it looks great, and I love the design elements from the latest Zune software (something I also really like). And I think what seems to be their developer strategy is awesome. Take expressive platforms like Silverlight and XNA and bake them right into the DNA of the phone. The result is going to be some really slick looking applications.

I also used to talk a bit about a divergence in the strategies for Flash and Silverlight. Obviously they’re still competitors, but if the Silverlight experience on WinMo 7 is application based, I think it does represent a big difference in how Silverlight and Flash are approaching the mobile space. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong, just different strategies based on the two companies strengths. But in the end, I have a lot of faith that the Silverlight designers and developers I know are going to help build an ecosystem around Windows Mobile 7 Series that will look next-gen.

Plus, with guys like Anand Iyer shifting focus to WinMo, it’s clear it’s a very important part of the strategy for Microsoft.

Gartner RIA MarketScope: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

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Boats ImageThere’s always a lot of back and forth between the Flash crowd and the Silverlight crowd. And that’s fine; everyone needs an enemy and competition ends up driving everyone to have better features, better performance, and a better platform. But one of the things I’ve always thought was that Microsoft’s entry into the RIA space would end up being good for everyone. Microsoft has a lot of developers but there are also a lot of developers who don’t like and won’t use a Microsoft solution. Those people also need RIAs.

According to the Gartner MarketScope on RIAs it looks like Microsoft jumping into RIAs pushed adoption across the board in 2009. I don’t have the full report yet but here’s the quote from the blog post that stood out:

Now that Microsoft has validated “heavy RIA” in the eyes of many enterprises, interest in RIA technologies is increasing across the board. Frequent Gartner inquiries indicate that clients pit Ajax vs. Flash vs. Silverlight against each other in evaluations for new RIA projects. What does this mean for JavaFX and other technologies? Tough to say for sure, but my bet is that the “heavy RIA” arena comes down to a battle between Adobe and Microsoft, and that there is enough room in the market for both to be successful.

This isn’t supposed to be a happy-feelgood post. I want Adobe and our community to kick ass and continue to be the leaders in the RIA space. But I’m glad Microsoft is raising awareness; it helps when we can talk about why our platform is better for RIAs and not go back to what RIAs are :) .

I’m stoked about 2010. Especially if it’s a battle between Ajax, Flash, and Silverlight. We’re starting to get a big lead in mobile, AIR continues to do well as a desktop RIA solution, and we’re starting to monetize our own RIAs with services like Acrobat.com. There’s been a slight trend towards “native”, which is being led by the iPhone, but don’t discount the persistent desire to create rich, desktop-like experiences with all of the flexibility and scope of the web. The web is still going to win and RIAs will be a big part of that.

Photo by Flickr user jal33

Google’s Chrome OS, Netbooks, and Rich Internet Applications

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The big news of the night is that Google is building an operating system (no, not Android) that’s based on Chrome. I’m not entirely sure of all of the details but I think it’s cool at first glance. It sounds like it’s going to be designed initially for netbooks and I like how they describe the OS:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

I think Google gets it: Netbooks are going to be huge and they’re going to be a place where the web can “beat” the desktop. In a lot of ways they’re the perfect combination for the next generation of the web. The devices are small, portable, probably going to be connected most of the time, and have memory and resource requirements that require an optimized experience. I love Windows 7 and think it’s beautiful, but I do wonder how well it will run on netbooks. Microsoft seems tepid in how much it’s going to support or encourage netbook use.

Netbooks: A Boon for Rich Internet Applications
But people moving to the web-centric netbook experience are going to want a close approximation to the desktop environment. User experience is still going to be important on these small devices. We’ve seen how important a great user experience is (and how much of a selling point it is) with the iPhone. Google is a lot of good things but they aren’t user experience gurus and they don’t get design.

So what fills the gap? If only we had a good, lightweight layer for this new operating system that could play video, support games, enable real time communication, and let developers create beautiful user interfaces that felt like desktop applications with a much smaller footprint. Oh wait, we do, it’s the next generation of rich Internet application technologies like Flash and Silverlight.

Isn’t the netbook: a hybrid mobile and PC device, the perfect fit for RIAs: hybrid web and desktop technologies? You get the audio/video aspect, a framework for building very rich user interfaces, real-time web connectivity, and an existing ecosystem of developers and designers. All in a small package that’s meant to run with less resources than a full operating system requires.

I think netbooks are going to be a big deal for RIA developers. I think it’s a large addressable market and things like Adobe’s work with ARM to optimize Flash for their chipset are going to pay performance dividends in a big way. Throw in the cross-platform aspect and you’ve got the perfect way to build applications for a hybrid web-desktop-mobile device like the netbook.

Pooneekay Vatsoom Ahdtuih

Differences Between Silverlight Out of Browser Experience and AIR

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A lot of stuff was announced today at MIX09 (and Scott Guthrie is always fun to watch) and one of the more interesting things was that Silverlight is supporting an Out of Browser Experience. At first I thought AIR would be the direct competitor but after sitting in on Mike Harsh’s session, I think AIR and the Silverlight OOB (Out of Browser) are two very different technologies for two very different scenarios.

Installation
Because you’re in the browser context, Silverlight OOB doesn’t make you install anything extra, you can just bring any piece of Silverlight content to the desktop. Silverlight OOB has both events you can call as well as a right-click context menu item that becomes available when you edit the application’s manifest file. When you do that, you get a dialog box with an icon you can customize and the option to add the application to the start menu and/or desktop. Uninstallation is done through the same right-click menu. Silverlight OOB applications don’t show up in the add/remove programs menu or Applications directory. In some ways it is similar to Gears’ Desktop API. With AIR applications, you of course have to download the AIR runtime and you get the standard AIR installation screen and the user has to click through a couple of times. We also want you to sign your applications because when a user installs an AIR application, they’re not in the browser security sandbox but a regular desktop security sandbox.

silverlight_install

System Access/Features
The major difference, and what really causes all of the other differences, is that Silverlight OOB runs in the web browser’s sandbox. That means you can’t do anything the web browser can’t do. That means no full file system access, custom chrome, notifications, native menus, etc. Silverlight OOB gives you a bit of isolated storage space where you can read and write from the hard drive, but not direct access like AIR. Everything aside from that isolated storage has to go through a save/open dialog. This is the clear separation between AIR and Silverlight OOB because the install process you go through with AIR gives you access to more desktop hooks. Silverlight OOB also doesn’t have any kind of SQL database and you’re restricted to non printable characters when you’re in full screen mode. Mike said in his session that the Silverlight OOB team was looking into SQL as an option down the road.

Updating
Tim Heuer has a pretty good post up about the differences in updating applications. The significant difference I saw is that with Silverlight OOB, your users are required to update. With AIR, the developer gets to choose whether or not to force users to download an update. The Silverlight team is looking at allowing developers a choice Tim says.

Summary
AIR and Silverlight OOB don’t really compete in the same space. AIR is about letting you take your web application skills to build desktop applications and Silverlight OOB is more about letting you take your Silverlight applications to the desktop. The different models will be different for everyone, but right now AIR gives you a lot more flexibility and more API hooks into the operating system. You can also combine HTML and Flash and it doesn’t sound like you have any HTML functionality in Silverlight OOB. I obviously work for Adobe, so I’m biased in favor of the AIR model, but I think Silverlight OOB has a lot of good scenarios; it just doesn’t really compete with AIR in my mind. And I think we’ll be watching to see how developers use it and if there’s a demand for that kind of experience with Flash.

What Can You Do With 10k Worth of Silverlight Code? Win Stuff!

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10k_logoAre you planning on going to MIX? Then why not get Microsoft to pay for it? They’re running a fun contest that is looking for the coolest Silverlight or WPF application that you can create in 10k – and that includes image assets, so you can’t be crazy with the bitmaps.

The winner gets an all expensed paid trip to Vegas for MIX09, AND they get a $1500 Visa gift card so they can take all of their friends out to dinner. Do they let you cash in those gift cards in the casino? There’s also a community winner which will receive a $1500 gift card and three runners-up get $500 clams each.

But the best part, and the reason I’m blogging about it, is that I get to be a judge. So if you’re doing Silverlight work, and are planning on going to MIX, this is a great way to get there. And I’ll help!

Flash and Netflix on Motley Fool

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This is classic, and it’s indicative of a wider trend as more and more attention gets paid to RIAs. People who don’t really have any sense of the history of our business or the technologies start writing about buzzwords. In this case the Motley Fool wrote a blog post about how Adobe is running scared because of Silverlight. The premise was that Netflix had switched from Flash to Silverlight and that Flash was in trouble. The problem is that Netflix never used Flash. In fact I doubt it ever will seeing as the Founder of Netflix is on Microsoft’s board.

So how do we fix this? How can we better educate journalists on the competitive landscape. I think everyone at Adobe has a pretty healthy respect for Silverlight, and that’s been great for our customers. We’ve added a lot of features to the Flash Player and have done a ton around innovation because everyone is gunning for us. I don’t think we’re “running scared”, we just know that we have to keep up the pace, and I think we have so far. The fact of the matter is that we’ve seen a ton of wins. Hulu, YouTube, CBS, and people switching back to Flash from Silverlight like MLB.com. Flash provides a great video experience. Our server software has made giant strides both in price and features like dynamic streaming and DRM. Competition is healthy but I’d be hard-pressed to name an area where we’re behind when it comes to rich media or RIAs on the web. But if you, as the customer, think there are, let us know. We’re listening.